Key posts by Minna through the comments and on twitch

[Fimbulvarg]

I'm not sure but I seem to recall her mentioning that she designed it herself as part of her university coursework.

[Rabbit]

I think someone asked this in the comments not too long ago and Minna replied that it's a font she designed herself for a typography class and that it's called AAAAAAA or thereabouts to make it appear on the top of font lists

So lamentably, that means small chances of us Minions ever getting our grabby hands on the font file.

[JoB]

So lamentably, that means small chances of us Minions ever getting our grabby hands on the font file.

Well, I guess we've seen enough of it to reimplement at least the fixed sizes (say, in Metafont), though ...

[Richard Weir]

... then hand over all copies of the files so Minna can distribute them as a fundraising method?

[Nimphy]

... then hand over all copies of the files so Minna can distribute them as a fundraising method?

Yyyyyesss...?

_{Okay, maybe not...}

[woolly socks]

Yeah I asked her, and as someone mentioned she made it herself for a school project, calls it AAAAAAAA for easy access in photoshop.
I think if we start a polite, nice petition we might get her to sell A8 or give it out as a part of some future "skald's tools" special comic pack or something. Or possibly she wants to keep it just for the comic, as a special, unique thing.

In any case, it's a really nice font, catching the spirit of weird displaced historicality while still being legible. I really respect that level of detail, even creating a new typeface to fit the visual feel of your world. Nice.

[Yannick]

This topic is made to help new readers see all the olds posts made by Minna on http://sssscomic.com/
So I think I will start to post them, and if you have suggestions, let me know.

1- Find ways to add more informations to the forum.
By exemple, we could aggregate all significants posts of Minna in one thread for SSSS (and later one thread for aRTD)

1.  Key posts by Minna would be good in an archive...  if someone wants to start searching through the comments, I think that'd be a fine thread to make.

[Yannick]

23 october 2013

Minna will SSSS have a voting system setup for TWC? I've been voting for aRTD everyday since I found it, including Sundays.

It definitely will, I really enjoy the slight competitiveness of ranking sites and TWC remained as my largest individual source of new visitors for aRTD all the way to the end, I wouldn't want to lose that source for SSSS. But I'll wait a couple of weeks, I don't want to have too many new people wandering in going "Oooh, new comic! ...Meh, only 4 pages... *Gone*". x3

Original post

[Yannick]

Presentation in Sunflower style 

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TBA
Minna will SSSS have a voting system setup for TWC? I've been voting for aRTD everyday since I found it, including Sundays.

Minna Sundberg
It definitely will, I really enjoy the slight competitiveness of ranking sites and TWC remained as my largest individual source of new visitors for aRTD all the way to the end, I wouldn't want to lose that source for SSSS. But I'll wait a couple of weeks, I don't want to have too many new people wandering in going "Oooh, new comic! ...Meh, only 4 pages... *Gone*". x3

23 october 2013
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Callrin
Minna, I have so many questions I'd want to ask you - about aRTD, your drawing style, you generally etc... The F.A.Q. on the aRTD page is okay, but very... uh, general. Is there a chance you'd gather questions from your readers and answer the ones you're... fine with answering (I mean, I don't want to overdo it, privacy is privacy ). I hope you know what I mean.
Thank you for the amazing experience of reading aRTD, which inspired me to draw more myself and made me smile so many times. I can't wait to see SSSS

Minna Sundberg
Hmm, I could do some kind of general Q&A thing in the future, I never really mind answering questions. I might totally forget about it though, so feel free to remind me about the idea if time goes by and nothing seems to ever happen, heh.
(And I'm probably going to chop down the aRTD-faq even further to total bare-bones, I don't want any answers laying around there that I would need to go back and update in the future. x3 )

october 2013
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Minna Sundberg
Post-apocalyptic Hannu and Ville, adventurers of the wastelands!
I remember that I drew this on the boat ride from Finland to Sweden when I was taking that sudden trip to go check out this place that I'm now renting.

24 october 2013

[Yannick]

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Kiril
Hello!
I wanted to find your old comic, but could find only a few pages, I do not know even the names of
http://storage8.static.itmages.ru/i/13/1023/h_1382564412_6435996_5d993e82a7.jpg
http://storage6.static.itmages.ru/i/13/1023/h_1382564588_2064375_ffa105b537.jpg
http://storage9.static.itmages.ru/i/13/1023/h_1382564635_9181765_afa0e5eecb.jpg
http://storage5.static.itmages.ru/i/13/1023/h_1382564658_9162420_8601f52fad.jpg
http://storage6.static.itmages.ru/i/13/1023/h_1382564673_7257224_3ee326b5f3.jpg
http://storage7.static.itmages.ru/i/13/1023/h_1382564697_4153769_50835f9ba6.jpg
http://storage8.static.itmages.ru/i/13/1023/h_1382564715_8728769_49febb8445.jpg

Minna Sundberg
Hahah, oh that old comic. It only had like 20 pages and had no plot, point, ending or name. It's not online anymore (I used to have it on my Deviantart page) but maybe one day I'll dig out the pages from my backup drive and post them here.

VVolfsong
The old comic was called "Nightfallen" if I remember correctly. It used to be in Minna's Deviant Art gallery, but that was years ago. Its been removed now.
I was sorry to see it go. Minna is really awesome at drawing facial expressions on anthros and animals. That's probably the one thing that bugs me about SSSS. It seems its all humans this time around =
(I'll still read SSSS off course, and I'm sure it'll be awesome regardless!)

Minna Sundberg
Noooo, I never came up with a name (nightfallen would totally be the kind of generic pretentious fantasy name I would have come up with though, haha). And the reason I couldn't come up with a name was that whenever I though about it I realized that I didn't know what the comic was even about. x3

24 october 2013
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Minna Sundberg
The old tutorials-page is still there, its link is just in the gallery now: http://www.minnasundberg.fi/tutorials.php

24 october 2013
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SSSS CONCEPT ART FROM 2011-2012

BUNCH OF SSSS CHARACTER DRAWINGS

OLD PRACTICE COMIC IDEAS

[Yannick]

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Omicron
to continue yesterdays comment thread, I found another old comic.
http://www.minnasundberg.fi/archive/Comics/pahistenlistijat/indexaukeama.htm

Dammit Minna, how many of those old comics you have and don't show us?!

WaterWishes11
What in the world was that!!!!!!!!! Another comic you though of starting?!?!?!?

Minna Sundberg
No, no, that one's actually complete! It's a small graduaton project I did during my last year of upper seconday school (aka 11th grade). IHeh, 'm actually pretty fond of that one, I think I'll translate it some day so you all can read it.

Omicron
Hurray! Those are great news. I'll like to read those wasteland bad guys
But it's still not an answer to my question: How many of these old comics of yours exist? As time passes, we find more and more of them!

Minna Sundberg
Ehm...I think I made four total comic with the characters in the linked comic, that one is the last one. The three before that are...ugly messes that I just made for fun and threw up on the web because every other Finnish person with a online art site seemed to be doing webcomics at the time.

The first one has no ending and for the other two I pulled that teenage " I'm bored with this comic now, ending in four pages, they all died!"-stunt. Okay, they didn't die, but the endings were abrupt and crazy.

I should have at least two of them saved somewhere, I think I even translated one once.

26 october 2013
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Xeiran
One last thing, you should consider expanding the scope of what you sell in your online store; this can be critical for the extra revenue needed to support yourself and turn this into a full time job should you desire such. Of course, if you are like Bill Watterson and similarly feel merchandising would only cheapen your creations, that's also perfectly understandable.

Hopeful
Yes! T-shirts would be awesome, especially as Christmas gifts to buy.

Minna Sundberg
I think I will, once I have the time to organize all that. I quite like merchandise and don't feel lke it cheapens anything, I'm just afraid I'll drop the ball and mess everything up. But I'll look into that once the book is done and I have more brain juices left over for new stuff. (And hey, at least the book will be in there!)

29 october 2013
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Minna Sundberg
It probably won't get too dark, It's mostly about goofy characters epxloring interesting places and doing silly things.

29 october 2013
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Minna Sundberg
Just asking here in the comments is fine, preferably on the most recent page that I've posted, since I don't usually go back more than a couple of days to check up on old comments threads and might miss it there. And I try to always answer comments that have direct questions.

29 october 2013

[Yannick]

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Mischief12
Minna!
Thanks so much! Here are the questions.

1. How expensive is it to run a site like aRTD? The project my friends and I are doing is a web comic also.

2. I am the main artist for it, and I'm not any good a humans. My specialty is animals. I wondered if you had any tips.

3. If you had any tips in general for this kind of thing, they would be very much appreciated.

Those are them. And your sketches are amazing and inspirational as always

Minna Sundberg
1. Not very expensive, the only cost is hosting and a domain name and I paid a total of about 15€ a month for the aRTD site, and the same for this new one (so now I pay 30€ because I have two sites and two domains). And that's on the expensive side of it, I buy my webspace from one of the pricier Finnish webhotel services because they have a reputation for being very reliable and having good customer service, and that's important enough for me that I don't mind paying a little bit extra.

2. Learn how the human face is built, what the skull structure looks like, what kinds of muscles work together to make different expressions and where fat tends to start building up for chubbier faces. And learn the same for the body, but personally I felt like learning how faces work is the most challenging part.

3. Eeh, I'm not very good at "general" advice, i can never think of anything smart. Just...make sure to have a buffer of pages so that you don't miss any updates and try never be a jerk to people who might read your comic.

30 october 2013
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Victoryblog
I CANT WAITTTTTTT!!!! YOU ARE SO AMAZING! I want to make a webcomic one day. right now I am saving up the money.

I was wondering. Do you have any tips for someone that can only draw traditional (can't afford a drawing tablet or anything) I only have water colors right now. should I use the watercolors to color the comic or should I wait until I can get something else?

Also (sorry) would you suggest anything for coloring? any type of paint or colored pencils? anything?

thanks!

Minna Sundberg
Watercolors are great for coloring comics, go ahead and use those if you've got a handle on them! Other than that some acrylics or guache paints could look cool too, or alternatively color markers like copics. I almost decided to color aRTD with watercolors too, but degided to go digital in the end simply because it's easier to fix mistakes that way. (Colored pencils are generally a really bad idea for comic coloring though, just as an fyi. They're almost as bad as crayons. )

Esn
Why, what's bad about colored pencils or crayons? I'd actually been considering one of those two for something.
Is it because it takes too long?

Minna Sundberg
No, they just tend to look messy and amateurish unless you're really, really skilled with them and/or have a distinctive style that suits the kind of mark that crayons and colored pencils leave. They can look quite nice in combination with another media though (watercolor base+details with colored pencils is relatively common).

30 october 2013
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Esn
Both of these are really cool, and I'm really interested in seeing how you planned out an entire 124-page comic in advance! Did you do something similar for aRTD as well? Are you doing it for SSSS?

Minna Sundberg
Kind of, but not in a detailed way like that. I drew out very simple thumbnails sketches for some key points in the story and just figured out the rest in my head. For SSSS the whole story arch is mostly in my head too (quite clearly though), but this time I also write an actual script WITH WORDS of the chapter I'm drawing before drawing it.

30 october 2013

[Yannick]

((014))
Minna Sundberg
Some of you have been wondering about the mood of SSSS, and I'm going to claim it's not very different from that of aRTD.
Yes, the setting is different, it has some more drama, some scarier things and a bit more action-y stuff, but in its core it's still a quite light story with an unhurried pace, a lot of friendship and a journey through the unknown.
So if you enjoyed aRTD you'll probably enjoy SSSS too.
the storyline of SSSS is more of a traditional arch with its various lows and peaks.

31 october 2013
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Minna Sundberg
Oh yes, they do have an animal! I won't tell what kind yet, it'll "join the team" a bit later in the comic.
And it won't die like poor little I Am Legen-doggy did! For me that movie pretty much died with the dog. ;_;

31 october 2013
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Minna Sundberg
One day I think I'll do something more with the visitor statistics I have from A Redtail's Dream,
like a curve on the growth of the comic readerbase and such, I'm sure that would be interesting for many to see. *
But I'll leave that for later Until I've got some good stats on SSSS to follow up with.

Some site and print drive stats for ARTD
27 November 2013
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Minna Sundberg
Oh yeah, I hate it when page numbers are completely absent!
I have a couple of craphic novels where there are simply no page numbers even on pages where they could be,
so I don't even know how many pages are in the books. And I really want to know that for some dumb reason!
(One time I even counted the pages of one comic and wrote down the total count in the back of the book myself. ._. )

11 December 2013

[Yannick]

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The-Colloquial-Yokel
I love this comic =) its absolutely beautiful- and on that note, I was wondering if theres any chance of a fanart page?
lol, yeah I know that might not be everyones cup of tea but this comic is inspiring and theres no more sincere way for one artist to say they respect and admire another than fan art in my opinion

Minna Sundberg
Maybe sometime in the future, I do like fanart. I don't think there's any around for SSSS so it'd be pretty pointless right now.

Zeggo
I hope you do know of this page? http://minnas-minions.deviantart.com/

11 May 2014
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((019))
eishiya
Do you know how long the series will be once it's done (in terms of chapters or books)?
I'm wary of purchasing a first book if I'm not sure I'll be able to afford the rest.
Your books are beautiful and deserve to be owned as a complete set.
(Also I just hate leaving series unfinished in general.)

Minna Sundberg
Right now it looks like five. That'd be the first adventure/mission that's its own full story arch.
If I'm still enjoying making comics then (like a decade from now, who knows!) I'll continue on with more adventures/missions, but five books should round of this set.

19 September 2014
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Minna Sundberg
I'll be printing extra copies that'll be up for sale next year after all the print drive backers have gotten their books.
They'll cost about the same, depending mostly on where you'd need it to be shipped then.

16 october 2014

[Yannick]

((021))
Riorlyne
I have two questions: (1), Will there be a donate button? and (2), Minna, will you add Topi and Ellu to the character page for aRTD?

Minna Sundberg
(1) No, not for a while. I think I will if/when I start running out of money again, and that depends on how well I'm able to keep myself within my budget on the aRTD book expenses.

(2) Eeeeh...maybe? I hadn't thought of that, perhaps I should. :/

Page 1 = 1 Nov. 2013
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Ewa
And oh, right, I really love the limited colour palette in these first few pages! I guess the entire comic will be like that?

Minna Sundberg
Probably, unless I get really inspired by something insanely colorful suddenly, myeh. x3  But for now I'm trying to keep a "two main colors +detail colors + black and white" philosophy.

Page 5 = 4 Nov. 2013
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Barium Sulfate
Is Stand Still, Stay Silent only in English?

Minna Sundberg
Yup, only English this time.

Page 5 = 4 Nov. 2013
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Minna Sundberg
I'm pretty comfortable with perspective these days. Instead the real struggle for me is coming up with enough different angels and perspectives for each page, and not keep repeating the same kinds too much. :S

Page 6 = 5 Nov. 2013