Behind the scenes

The last 12 months have been pretty rough both work-wise and in personal life. Everyone knows I've always been a workhorse, but 12–15 hour days have recently become a norm, and it's beginning to take its toll. A few larger projects need to be finished by the end of the year, so I'll need to shift yet into another gear. It's a challenge, but possible. :) I'm keeping myself motivated by thinking about my own projects, which I'll hopefully have the luxury of turning to after the crunch time. But yes, I think I'll need a short breather in between...

Anyhoo, finding myself swamped and stuck at the studio 24/7 inspired me to begin documenting our daily life at Kaiku collective. I share a studio space with fellow freelancers Petri, Daniel, Camilla and Mikko (soon moving in), located at an old freemasons' congregation room in downtown Tampere. The place is great and the bunch is fun, which is actually a big relief considering the amount of time we spend staring at each others' pieholes each day. :)

Readers often think that Villimpi Pohjola is some kind of an autobiographical comic strip. Well, it's not. Sure I use bits and pieces of real conversation, occurred events or other fun ideas from friends here and there, but it's all written fictional material. To counterbalance this (both the laborious writing and somewhat polished drawing), I thought I'd begin doing these fast warmup comics of our collective's daily mishaps. I'll be posting them online every Tuesday from now on, so sorry for the spam. ;) Hope you enjoy the small peek behind the scenes, though. The life of a cartoonist is action-packed and exciting, full of danger and adventure lurking behind every corner...

See you later, fellas!