I haven't actually collected the books yet, but they're ready, so I can announce that Patchwork Sky volume 1 will be at Expo :) It will contain chapters 1-5 of Patchwork Sky, plus extras, and will be sold at the discounted price of £7 (if you can't make Expo, it will be sold at the same price in the shop and will be available shortly after Expo).

New books, new books, come and get them while they're hot :D

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I am honoured and incredibly pleased to be able to post this. The Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards are run every year for books either self-published or published by small independent publishers. The books are sent out to actual readers appropriate for each category (they cater for preschool all the way up to adult fiction, and have a non-fiction category as well). Each book gets read, analysed, and judged by those readers, which is actually quite a daunting prospect - the feedback is returned to each entrant.

Anyway, I came across the Wishing Shelf last year and, since Sun Fish Moon Fish was published by a small independent publisher in 2011, I thought I should give it a go. I entered it into the Teenage category - and it won the first prize :spin:

If any of the readers find their way here, I'm so glad you enjoyed the book ^^

Hello everyone!

I've started a kickstarter for my new book. :D Please check it out! I have some super cheap rewards, so you don't have to spend a fortune to read it! :D http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...cs-about-women

As it says, it's four short stories about women. I kinda feel there's not enough manga in English about older, female characters. (There's some, but there can always be MORE!)

Any help would be appreciated. :o Thanks!

Starting on April 1st, White Violet 01 will be updated weekly on Sweatdrop's online comic page.

A full year(and a bit!) after it's debut, White Violet 01 is coming to the internet!

Since I'll hopefully be releasing the second volume in the series at the end of this year, I've decided to begin uploading the first two chapters of it as a webcomic, as a little preview into the world of White Violet. :)

Check for updates on the comics forum, my twitter and deviantart.

Patchwork Sky 6 is finished! It's been way too long in the making, and all that for only 20 pages - but I hope you enjoy them nonetheless :) You can read them at their toothycat home or here on Sweatdrop; have some panels to whet your appetite :artistic:

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A Pocketful of Clouds volume 2 is here! Thanks to everyone who contributed questions, comments, encouragement and lovely lovely fanart :love: The book, which contains all the strips from 2012 plus recipes, art, fanart and the Occasionally Asked Questions omake, will be on sale at Minamicon and is now in the shop for the princely sum of £5 :D

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Hello all!

Do you want a chance to flex your creative skills and have a chance at winning some Letraset goodies and Sweatdrop comics?

This year we're running a Christmas comic competition!

We would like you to make some Christmas themed short comics! Submit your comic either on the forums or by e-mail, and we will choose a number of winning entries, who will all receive prizes from Letraset and Sweatdrop!

Submission guidelines:

- The entry must be a short comic or a 4-koma comic (like a newspaper strip comic) ranging from 1-3 pages.

-The entry must be Christmas themed

-Make a jpeg version of the final comic. To submit your entry, you can either post it here in the forums on this thread, or if you would prefer, please e-mail your submission along with your name to competitions@sweatdrop.com.

-If you are e-mailing your submission, let us know if you would like it posted on the forums!

-Wherever you decide to send the image, please send us an additional e-mail to competitions@sweatdrop.com, containing your name and postal address :)

You can make the comic whatever size/medium you want, colour or not, do whatever feels best and have fun!

The deadline for this competition is the 17th of December, so please complete and send your comics by this date!

Winners of the competition will be decided over the following week, and will be announced on the 23rd of December, just in time for Christmas!

Good luck everyone, have fun!!

This is to announce I will have a new comic for Expo, in a different form than the usual. Allsorts is a collection of four short comics and a short story aimed at readers of 8 years old and above :) It's an A4 comic in full colour, and I've attached pictures below of the cover, and of three of the comics. It's not just my comics; Chasing the Wind is a collaboration between myself and En, and there is also a comic by Emma Vieceli, so in a way it's a very tiny anthology ;)

Come and get them at Expo, fresh from the printers and with that extra colour-printing shiny scent! :D

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Sweatdrop Studios will be attending the London MCM Expo, as usual! 26-28 October 2012. We will be found in the Comic Village section and will be there Friday, Saturday and Sunday!
http://www.londonexpo.com/

Members who will be attending include:
Rebecca Burgess (bex)
Hayden Scott-Baron (dock)
Irina Richards
Morag Lewis (Sunkitten)
Shazleen Khan (+Shiny)
Sonia Leong

Click on our names above to read more about us and see which comics and books we made!

Please come and say hi to us at the table - we only have 2-3 friends/spouses acting as sales assistants :D so if you speak to someone at the Sweatdrop stand, most likely it will be one of us, the creators behind the books :o

OUR LATEST BOOK:
Creating Manga Characters!
The official cover price is £16.99, but as a limited offer from our stand, we will be selling the book for only £13!!!

We will also be offering lots of stuff aside from books!
Badges! (like these ones! and LOTS MORE)
Keyrings!
Lucky packs/BROKEN BISCUITS! Cheap comics!
Original Art Prints in A5, A4 and A3! Details here!

and...

EVENT SKETCHES/COMMISSIONS!

Several of our members will be happy to do sketches for you if you ask! We are all very individual though, so our styles are very different, we may use different sizes of paper and offer different finishes (pencil, inks, coloured markers). Our prices ranges from £5 to £20 depending on the request. Always subject to availability, as our members need time off for food and shopping too X3


LETRASET MANGA SCHOOL SESSIONS!

Some of Sweatdrop Studio's members will be involved in running teaching sessions for Letraset at this October's event! They are happening over Saturday and Sunday. Keep checking their blog to find out more details, or enquire at the stand on the day and drop in! http://letrasetblog.com/

Morag Lewis will be running sessions on Manga Storytelling and Preparing For Print, and Backgrounds!

Sonia Leong will be running sessions on Head Construction & Design and Drawing Hair & Choosing Styles.

We hope to see lots of you there :)

Hello! You all know that we make and sell comics, but whenever we have a table and there is space, we try to sell some of our original artwork too. So - this is just to inform you that we actually have a print folder full of artwork!

Our prints are all original creations, only printed in small quantities as and when needed, on silk card 160gsm stock, by a professional printer.

Currently, our prints folder contains art by Hayden Scott-Baron (Dock), Sonia Leong (me!), Morag Lewis (Sunkitten) and Irina Richards.

Prices are £2 for A5, £3 for A4 and £5 for A3 sizes. We always provide envelopes or wrapping paper when we sell prints at the table, and we're all very happy to sign such prints if you buy :o

We tend not to sell prints online unless it's organised in private directly with the artist, due to shipping being annoying and the small quantities, but it never hurts to ask us personally if we can post anything to you, ^^

Here are some of Sonia Leong's larger print selections! (Most of these will be A3/A4 size, some will also be printed in A5

I will put up more of my designs, including the smaller sized ones, as I have time to arrange them, order them and make previews.

Sonia Leong's profile http://www.sweatdrop.com/about-us/sonia-leong

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New instructional book by Sweatdrop Studios - Creating Manga Characters!

We are absolutely delighted to announce the release of this new book. Creating Manga Characters was written and illustrated by Morag Lewis, Chloe Citrine, Irina Richards, Rebecca Burgess and Ruth Keattch, and published by The Crowood Press. The book has been a long time in the making, so we're thrilled to finally see it in print.

Creating Manga Characters is different from your average "how to draw manga" book. Each of the authors invented a character and used it to demonstrate step-by-step character building. The book teaches readers so much more than just manga drawing - it includes aspects of storytelling and world-building, creating settings and inventing character mascots. We poured every bit of knowledge we possess into this book - to your advantage!

The book is now available in the Sweatdrop Shop! A further preview of the book is available on The Crowood Press website and it is also for sale on Amazon.

Full colour, 144 pages. We are selling it for a discounted price of £15 - although if you can bear to wait until Expo, we may be able to manage even better, watch this space ;)

So..I've been a part of Sweatdrop for eleven years.

No, scratch that, Sweatdrop has been a part of me for eleven years. A massive part. Without Sweatdrop and its many members past and present, I wouldn't have started making comics, I might not have even carried on drawing; I certainly wouldn't be working in comics as I am today.

Back when I first met the original, brave few, there were two conventions a year for our fandom. There was no Tokyopop UK, no Neo, no Markosia, no MCM Expo, no Manga Jimann, no SelfMadeHero, no manga studio. Even Letraset were yet to really leap into the scene back then.
Perhaps more scarily and importantly at the time, there was no facebook, no twitter, no instagram, no tumblr, and no myspace (so it wasn’t all bad XD).
Minami and Aya were the two chances in the whole year that we had to talk to other manga and anime fans unless we were willing to brave scary chat sites like ICQ or join up to the fairly new and shiny Livejournal, so the Sweatdrop site became a hub of sorts once we graduated from yahoo groups and onto our own forum. And what a hub!

Of course, because of the lack of wider communication, we couldn’t have known that at the same time there were equally small and contained gatherings of other non-manga inspired comic fans and creators happening. All that wonderful cross pollination would come years later ^_~

Sweatdrop’s goals, and my goals with them, were fairly simple and – back then – felt as much like pipe dreams as anything. Imagine a convention in the UK where you could walk through an entire marketplace of small and independent press like at comiket. Imagine having a full graphic novel on the shelf and not just a single issue ‘zine. Imagine how cool it would be to see the elements that inspire us acknowledged as not just something made in Japan, but as an important addition to the world’s comic industry; as able to morph and blend and sit alongside other mediums and stories as any other.

Well, at May’s MCM Expo I stood at the Sweatdrop stand, behind an array of shiny graphic novels, and I looked out over the ComicVillage that I had built, but that we had all made real, filled with amazing and talented comickers, and I realised ‘wow. We’re actually doing it.’ I got all teary eyed and a little pathetic, but the reality and scope of the last decade just hit me in that moment.

I also realised that I’d gone about as far as I could personally go as a Sweatdrop member.

I can’t even begin to tell you how immensely proud and happy I am with what my time with the group has seen. Not just how much I’ve learned as an individual creator (and so many of those lessons have put me in good stead for whatever I continue to learn as an independent), but how many amazing creators and comics I’ve seen the group produce, how many competitions and events and organisations I’ve worked with and helped establish alongside my fellow SDers, and how many friends I’ve made. From the first conversation I had with Stu Taylor about this cool new magazine called Neo that he was starting up, through meetings with the Japanese embassy to discuss a possible new competition called Jimann, right up to building and organising the comicvillage at the MCM and taking it from five tables to over a hundred; in eleven years we’ve seen independent press in the UK explode into something vibrant and exciting and of massively high quality and I am just stupidly happy to have been a small part of its growth.

And of course, I have every intention of remaining a part of it. It’s hardly going to stop growing now and I’m not about to disappear (I hope!). We’ll all keep learning and growing and improving and I can’t wait to see what happens next. But, it’s time for me to be part of it all as myself. Sweatdrop and its community gave me the confidence to build myself a career, and I hope that my part in the group has managed to inspire and encourage other creators too. I have nothing but love and respect and warm fuzzies for Sweatdrop, its community, and every creator who’s ever been a member. Eleven years? That’s a third of my lifetime! I never dreamed that we could achieve so much.

Onward!

www.emmavieceli.com
www.inkytasty.tumblr.com
@emmavieceli

Something else is due out at Expo and I almost forgot! "Words to make you happy" is a little pack of 6 cards featuring Jenny, Cian, Muffin and Cloud from A Pocketful of Clouds, each one with a different design and for a different occasion. They almost, sort of, tell a story if you put them together in the right order too ^^

The pack will be £5, and will include envelopes - a snip at the price. But there's only 20 of them, so don't be late!

EDIT: Now available online, so get them while you can ^^

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We are very happy to announce to return of the Broken Biscuit value packs - as the legend says, lightly damaged comics, a little broken but still tasty! Each pack contains a set of comics and/or books worth £7 or more, but because they are slightly damaged we're selling them for a bargain £4 :) And we even have a very few Broken Biscuit print packs for sale too!

Come and check them out at Expo - and if you want to open the pack to check the damage or find out precisely which comics are included, just ask :)

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Yes, it's here! The first volume of A Pocketful of Clouds, collecting all the strips and some of the recipes from 2011, is now in the shop ready to buy, and I've attached a photo as proof. It's printed in full colour and is cute and tiny and only £5 - what more do you need? Buy now and avoid the postage price hike Royal Mail are going to inflict on us on 30th April! :D

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