A nerdy selfcelebration

Not sure if I was what you would call “nerdy” during school time. Sure thing is, I had interests that were popular among a number of students but not among everyone. And I kept myself a bit out of the big lights, enjoying my freetime to do stuff I liked more.
I had average marks in all subjects, and a few top marks in subjects like Arts, English, Informatics and History. I even got top marks in Italian and Literature every now and then.
I really enjoyed learning how to analyse and compare with each other different works. Art pieces as well as literature pieces. And I started pretty young making my own websites and stuff like that.
My nerdy side was reading comics and playing boardgames, cardgames, videogames... Nothing too original, most teenagers do that don’t they?
Being so enthusiastic about that, I attended a comic art drawing school, applied for a study program in Japan and after high school enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts.
Here is where I got to learn a lot of different things, or don’t learn things you were supposed to (Thank you, professors, for not showing up for classes. Really, this changed the life of all your students. Really helped us a lot in our future careers. T_T). And when and where I started to have discussions about comics systematically.
To the point, I presented a comic’s analysis as my final work paper for my Bachelor.
I already was famous for picking comics as a theme for every exam I had to make papers or presentations, so nothing unexpected.
I applied what I learnt in high school during art class and literature class. You know. You can “read a picture” or “comment an artwork” and you can analyse a text or poetry. So I did all these things to comic books and related them to the historical time they have been published and even interviewed the authors if it was possible (for contemporary titles, of course).
It has been a real productive time, I got invitations for lots of local comics related events and asked to be a speaker or a moderator in conferences or discussions about comics. I wrote articles and updated a few blogs. And I was barely 20.
A few times I got people stop me on the streets to greet me because they saw me at a conference speaking or they followed my blogs. That was so cute!

I feel a bit nostalgic. And I feel I need to state this as a curriculum so that people know why am I so friendly and give opinions about things. It is not just because I can’t keep my mouth shut but.....it is because my opinions and point-outs can be really helpful for artists or for readers.

This is why I leave comments on webcomic platforms or make a few posts on this blog or facebook or instagram or twitter. I need to share that bit of knowledge I have and am able to combine and apply in different fields and new titles, I so want to share it and just can´t keep mouth shut.
So dear readers, happy readings! And please always try to see what is behind the “check out this story” or “look how beautyful the art is”. There are so many things playing together in a comic or in any other piece. You maybe just need to adjust your point of view or maybe need a few hints. And here I come with all my suggestions and relationships between titles that apparently have nothing in common!
I will be making a guide for my readers. Join me in this amazing trip!

Few thoughts about new comic formats

It has been over a year that I am thinking about writing a long article about different comic formats, what I think about them and a general comparison of pros and contras that you can objectively see.
On one hand the time to do it throughly is missing and on another hand I probably need more readings of newer and current titles, and I am not the avid reader I used to be.
That said, my analysis might be missing something and I don`t like to write articles halfhearted unless it is something I really have an urge to yell out loud and now. And I have to communicate and share something about this topic right now.
My attention was caught on some social media, as the shared link was shared again and again till it reached my dashboard and I read it.
It is an article in Italian, originally published by the english version of a korean publisher, with the information that the article is Italian and talks about the said title.
What title? What publisher?
The article can be found here on wired.it and it is an interview done at Lucca Comics&Games 2017, few days ago.
The interviewed are Kooji, author of Killing Stalking (the title I was talking about), and an editor of Lezhin Comics (the webcomic publisher of the said title).

What really took my attention was that everyone was so fired up that “Italy is the first country ever to publish this title on paper in a book version”. So the author as well as the publishing company were skeptical about the results but once they saw the draft adaption of the book they accepted.
I do prefer paper over digital, still. But I have to tell I DO read webcomics on my mobile phone while going to work or coming back from work, the mobile phone fits in my hand and I have it with me anyway, no need to bring a book with me making my bag extra heavy. With the risk, I won’t even open the book and carry extra weight for nothing. So I see so many positive things on reading on mobile phone! Comic books keep piling up at home and I don’t get a chance to read them. I DO buy them, but I DO NOT read them.
What is it wrong with that!?
Answer is simple: I don`t carry them around and at home I have so much housework that needs to be done before I can gain those 15 minutes for myself to read something. Or I need to lighten up the book correctly if I want to read books in bed before sleeping. The mobile phone lighten ups itself and I don`t need anything else than just it for my readings.

Now, do comics on paper work as comics on mobile devices?
Of course you can find .pdf or scans version of paper comics and read them on your mobile device (there are both legal and illegal options for that) and a lot of artists publish their online comics following the set of mind and organize the work as you would when you work on a paper page-after-page version of your comic. This still works as everyone still knows how to read a comic book and it still is easy to adjust to this hybrid version. But. Webcomics, also called webtoons, have the component of dynamic as you let the images scroll down and you don`t turn any page. So the mindset that the author uses (or should use) is slightly different than working on a comic book.

Translating a webtoon into a comic book seems a legit action today, but will soon be pretty blasphemous in my opinion. Why? Well, would you ever try to “translate” a statue into a paint?
You can surely make a paint or a picture of that said statue, but you can`t translate it into a picture.

Today it propably still doesn`t feel like this new comic format is so different from the classic comics format. But I feel it already, it has its own grammar and words and we all gotta learn them to communicate using this form of media.
No worries: it was the same when comic grew from strips into comic books. Wasn`t it?

P.S.: Just to let you know: I did buy the comic version of the korean webtoon “NOBLESSE” in Japanese, when I was in Japan. I am a collector and I needed to have something I can hold onto. And I also have to say you can notice the change of grammar and words in this serie as it goes on. At the beginning the translation into comic book works great, the webtoon itself is still in the comic book mindset. But look up the newer chapters: would you be able to do a good job translating them into books? I probably have to make a trip to Japan again and check the new released books. LOL

That`s all, folks.

Are you having a nice time?

Hey, hello and welcome on Siemgirl´s blog. Again.
I have been wondering since a few days how come that I still have to read lots of chapters of webtoons that have been released during September!?
HOW COME!!??!!
It seems like I don´t have much time for reading. And I still haven´t had time to write reviews about the comics and webtoons I read recently. Shame on me!
August was such a nice month, dispite of how busy I was at work, I was able to read so many webtoon series and even a few paper comics.

If you check my instagram account you will notice that I really had lot to do at work, tried to take part into drawing meetings such as the Munich´s Drink and Draw and I also had a bit of social life meeting friends.

Having a nice time, somehow. Still busy but able to focus on different things than just work. Work is a lot of fun. Too.
What I have been missing is blabbering about things I read o saw and expressing my opinion about random stuff. So I will try to do my best to write at least some short articles soon. Or that`s the plan right now. Trying to stick to it.

It will be my birthday soon. I already know I won`t even have proper time to celebrate but.....I hope I will at least have a few drinks with friends and maybe eat a cake. Finger crossed! If you want to give me a birthday present check my instagram account. I will be posting suggestions about that starting today!