Save the date! 2018 Edition

Guess what!? I’ll turn one year older in 2 days! On Wednesday is my birthday!
Anyone wants to gift me any presents? Very welcome!
I have a short list on amazon:https://www.amazon.de/registry/wishlist/1RUL9IZPMRLTL
But you can also gift me here some higher tier (just upgrade your tier to an higher one for just this month) or using ko-fi.com/siemgirl , buymeacoffee.com/siemgirl
Or you can buy some of my merchandise, you give me kind of a present doing so too.

Lot of love

Cheese in the Trap - Webtoon review

I recently started reading a comic published on WEBTOON. Its name is “Cheese in the trap”. It started publishing awhile ago but I just recently started reading it and it felt great to be able to read more chapters at once. There are many chapters with massive cliffhangers that I just could not stop reading. Using the word addictive seems appropriate. In less than two weeks I gulped down around 200+ chapters. Suddenly stop and need to wait a week for new chapters to come out has been a terrible torture over the past month.

Cheese in the trap started publishing on the Korean Naver Webtoon website in 2010 and came to an end in 2016, same year a TV Serie inspired by this comic was aired in Korea. The name of the TV Serie is the same as the comic’s.

The first chapter of the English translation on webtoon.com appeared in 2014. The author is soonkki. I have been looking for informations about the author and her past and current works, but the only informations I found out are: it’s a woman born in 1985 and she wasn’t 100% satisfied with the TV Adaption of her comic.

If any of the readers have access to more information about soonkki and likes to share please let me know via comment on this article or privately. Would be very appreciated.

Comic Salon Erlangen 2018 - part 1

Finally I get some time to write about my experience at the Comic Salon Erlangen.
It was not the first time for me to participate in a booth at a comiconvention (plenty of experience in Italy and my second time in Germany) but I still was thrilled because of the role I would cover. My other German booth experience was back in 2013 when my German was good but not as sophisticated as now and, I was registered as an artist so no real need to talk but more drawing and look friendly weird.
This time in Erlangen, my first time in Erlangen, I had a staff badge for the booth held by Comic Festival München. My role would be make people aware of the festival in Munich, present comics from features artists, entertain random passersby and hand out the limited edition stickers and coasters made for the current event. Nothing too complicated, just need to master the content to present and the language you use for presenting.
There were so many foreign visitors who did not speak German that I found it so funny to talk in English that often. I am so happy! I did not expect to talk in English unless it's foreign artists, but so many visitors from neighbouring ans non neighbouring countries! Thank you all for visiting Germany for the comics events!
I even had a second task: to go around in the self publishing and small publishing booths area and invite the artists to join for Munich. Most non German artists do not know about the German rising comic community, and less they know about conventions in the country. Erlangen is probably the most important one for comics.
Some times you are shy to try something new so if none that you know is joining that event because of their other scheduled events, you may not come. So it was very important to get to know everyone in person and let everyone feel at home. I am sure some of you are reading this. Just drop me a message any time, I am there for you. I might not be able to post officially on the blog as soon and often as I wish, but I try to respond to private messages any time I have 5 minutes. I will get back at you. So please contact me!

Our adventure started in Munich when me, Michi and Carsten (save the names, they will be around a lot in the Munich comic scene too) tried to make everything fit in the small car we had.
Not so wild: meet up time was 7.00 am. Luckily Munich and Erlangen are close to each other: about 2 hours ride.
The ride itself has been so pleasant. We spoke about everything we were expecting from the event, the artists we wanted to meet and have sign for us, comics we want to buy... And we sang along some songs from our teenage days, with a music cassette. That was so unexpected! But also refreshing.

Lipstick lovers? There I got suggestions for you!

It looks like spring colours are already waiting for us on the shelves in store for grabs. I went to buy something in DM Drogerie Markt (German store) and could not resist trying a few new lipstick colours.
You have seen pictures of my hand full of lipstick trials on Instagram!
Well here is what I found and bought:

From P2 Cosmetics - Full shine lipstick - 260 believe in dreams

You may also find a short review on instagram.

Or you can buy it on amazon and check out yourself how amazing this colour is!

Mia and Me. Gemeinsam für Centopia. Boardgame review. (part 1)

Do you by any chance know the cartoon serie Mia and Me ?
I watched it the first time in Italy last year. And it has been on air in Germany too. I remember, when I was a child too, there were a few series half movie half cartoon. And Mia is one of this kind. There is this girl in a real life scenery who can travel to some fantasy world and be an elf. By becoming elf and traveling to this magic world, she is in a cartoon.
The elves have different tasks in each episode. They usually are looking for something and rescue it. Or they learn some magic things about the place they live in. There are unicorns and dragons, and a bunch of other creatures. Mia is the only elf who is able to talk and understand what these creatures say.

So Princess had birthday and she wished for some Mia stuff. I wasn't sure what to get her and if the things I found were worth the money they cost. Then I saw this boardgame and decided to pick it.

I already had it in my list since Christmas. But I didn't buy it yet because it says it's for kids age 5+ and Princess just turned 4.
But. It was discounted. And Princess did ask for some Mia products.
And I am a boardgame collector. And player. Well, not that I play that much anymore actually. But yeah.

So we played the game Mia and me. Gemeinsam für Centopia. Wich means Mia and me. Together for Centopia.
The game is simple. All players try to save Centopia from the bad guy.

Here is the link to the game on Amazon if you want to buy it or give a closer look or read reviews from other people. I tried to take as many pictures I could, to explain you the game and maybe see the illustrations.

There are 6 illustrations in total. 4 are part of the board, one is the figure you move around and one is on the die.
They reflect the typical illustrative art of the serie that you find on all branded products but it is not 3D as the TV serie is.
The one on the die represents the antagonist, the figure to move is the group of main characters from the serie, the elves, 3 out of 4 illustrations on the board are unicorns and creatures of Centopia, one board illustration is made of some papirus or similar items.
There are also dice numbers up to 4 on the board.

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!

First Patreon☆GiveAway is up!

No way!
I am promoting my Patreon page with a giveaway. You can win some original Hello Kitty chopsticks I bought in Japan just for this!

How do you enter the raffle?
Join my Patreon today !
More informations about the giveaway are in the specific post linked here. Please do not forget to navigate my Patreon a bit around. I post some original content on there. And I take requests from patrons, so feel free to make suggestions or requests and I´ll do my best to create something inspired by you ;)

Since I am currently listening to this right now and I find it so inspiring I wanna share it with you:

Lady Gaga - Poker Face