Scandi-Merica #13 - Flying Machine

 

After Sven stops giving lake access, the fisherman finds a new way to get to the water.

This is the fourth strip in the first Scandi-Merica story arc that stretches across several comics, read the previous here.

Read the next one here 

With this part of the story getting into cartoon absurdity, I had a lot of fun drawing the beginning of the Lupin-esque lengths that this fisherman will go to for his legal exploit for lake access. I also did a lot of experimenting with different perspectives for the helicopter/boat frame as it was something new that I haven't drawn before, and I'm really happy with how it turned out after several studies. As a reference for the helicopter I took inspiration from one of the Moomin comics. I love the layering of background/foreground in the first frame too.

All art, writing, penciling, inking, and coloring created by me.

View on Newgrounds 

Happy 11/11, new album Phases of Waves!

 

 

Happy 11/11! With it comes a new release, this time a little bit longer than my EP's where I feel confident in calling it an album, therefore being my first. I released one song as a single at the beginning of this year, Phasing, which is also the first song I recorded out of all of these. 

Listen to the album on Youtube and the song Omr Þors Reið on Newgrounds (Other songs to be uploaded in the coming weeks)

The songs and this album have been in the works since last year, 2024, with getting my phaser pedal. It's an experiment with a range of different waves and aquatic sounds, there's some harmonic rock, grungy songs. and even playing around with some borderline surf thrash. Omr Þors Reið, Ægirs Feast, and Waterfjalls were all improv'd, the latter being my first guitar recording release. I kept going back and forth between keeping it as it is to adding additional instruments, but eventually I went with keeping it as it is as I first intended. I just like how it sounds, and maybe in the future I'll develop it into a more layered song with additional instruments as I would like to do that. Accoutrement Croissant (I just realized I spelled Accoutrement wrong on the back cover), Phasing, Snow Thrills, and No Comma were all recorded in 2024, and Omr Þors Reið, Aqua Frolics, Ægirs Feast, Swans of Urð (Phasing Mix), and Waterfjalls were recorded this year, 2025. 

Accoutrement Croissant is honestly one of my favorite songs of mine that I've released so far, it's the least phaser sounding song on the album that's centered around that sound, but the way the melody grows throughout the song and the emotion expressed, it just sounds so joyous! Aqua Frolics too, which is in DADA tuning, builds in such a cool way and appropriate for the title I sample some quotes from Rifftrax's Aqua Frolics short to segue into different sections. Snow Thrills additionally has an MST3K sample. Swans of Urð (Phasing Mix) I recorded around the same time as my EP of the same song, but I felt it appropriate to put the phaser pedal version on here instead of the EP. 

 The album cover is a drawing by me of Lord Shiva coming out of one side of the waves, and Oðinn, the other. This duality is connected to my belief of Shiva and Oðinn being very similar deities in their search for wisdom and creating to learn more about themselves. In both Hindu and Norse stories I feel a connection, the languages share some common words and meanings, and the ancient lord of the animals believed to be Pashupati (Shiva) relief from the Harappan dynasty in India reminds me of Oðinn's ancient origins being associated with many animals along with his two ravens and two wolves. The trident is also a symbol to both Shiva and Oðinn in Icelandic depictions in manuscripts of the Prose Edda. Interestingly the drawing started as the crescent moon over the waves, but then the inspiration came to me to draw Shiva and then after drawing the trident I thought of Oðinn.  

Played on a 5-string bass, except for track 9, played on 6-string guitar. Recorded and mixed in Audacity/OcenAudio All music and cover art created by me.

Scandi-Merica #12 - Lake

 

Sven thought the fisherman needed lake access for food.

This is the third strip in the first Scandi-Merica story arc that stretches across several comics, read the previous here

Read the next one here

While story wise this is kind of an in-between strip, I really enjoyed drawing Sven's expressions here as well as the contrasts between the colors in the inks. The purples, magenta, orange/red, and turquoise really compliment each other well. The colors also kind of remind me of artwork of Þor and Hymir fishing for Jörmungandr, the Midgarð Serpent, from an 18th century manuscript of the Prose Edda.

All art, writing, penciling, inking, and coloring created by me.

View on Newgrounds 

Scandi-Merica #11 - Fish

 

Turns out the speed lines were coming from a fisherman, but why is he in the village waters?

This is the second strip in the first Scandi-Merica story arc that stretches across several comics, read the previous here.

Read the next one here 

I'm really enjoying how the colors look when I do them simultaneously with the inks, and it helps me with using thicker more distinct lines, I feel it makes the colors and characters 'pop' out of the frames more. Also, similar to Scandi-Merica #8, I played with the frames a bit, with some text and characters popping out of the frame borders.

All art, writing, penciling, inking, and coloring created by me.

View on Newgrounds

Scandi-Merica #10 - Dynamism of a Boat on the Lake

 

 

Ætta, Jarpr, Brúnn, and Gulr are enjoying a nice boating picnic on their longship, but where are those speed lines coming from?

This is the first of a series of Scandi-Merica strips that will read as a whole story, and is actually the first idea I had for a story when I first created Scandi-Merica. However, as it was more involved, I put it on hold and started with shorter comics that were contained in one strip to start it off. With classic newspaper comics being an inspiration to me, I love both, but many of my favorites have always been and continue to be the ones that do tell a longer story over a series of strips (Be it something as long as a Moomin story, or as relatively short as the paper bag arc in 80's Garfield). Now for the 10th comic I felt ready to get this started, and the following strips will be posted in the following weeks. I'll link to the next one in this description when it's posted. View here

With how much I love and enjoyed working on the album cover for my song Own the Unknown with Evaleigh (view here), I decided to experiment with inking and coloring simultaneously for my comics as well. I really like how it turned out, and especially with the futurist style for the last frame. Which speaking of, the comic's title goes beyond my usual one word titles, as I wanted to reference a common titling theme of classic Itallian futurist paintings and sculptures. (One of my favorites being Giacomo Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, which I made a post about).

All art, writing, penciling, inking, and coloring created by me.

 View on Newgrounds

New song! Rhino on the Piano

 

 

New song! Rhino on the Piano! This is my first song in my harmonic rock style experimenting with adding some drums and layering of tracks. I've done some experimenting with industrial stuff before (which I continue to work on, and I'll release a song I have completed in that style sometime here), but this is the first time I've played around with mixing my harmonics with my drum machine. I actually started with a drum beat, and I was really liking how the cymbals sounded, and after that I thought a simple harmonic melody would sound nice and I improv'd something close to the drum rhythms. The bass track isn't edited, but the drum recording was much longer, so I took a few different sections and synced them up to the bass track.

The song idea came to me while reading some of the Moomin comics, hence the cover art being my drawing/rendition of a frame from Moominvalley Turns Jungle, as where they say the rhino is hiding in the piano it reminded me of the song Dog in the Piano by the Y2K breakbeat musician Indian Ropeman. So I wanted to try something a little electronic.

Also came out to 2:22, though rounded up by Newgrounds and Youtube.

Listen on Newgrounds or Youtube. 

New song! A collaboration with fellow independent musician Evaleigh, Own the Unknown!

 

 

 

Listen on Youtube, Newgrounds, Spotify, Apple Music

I'm proud to release an ultimate thrashterpiece of a song that's been in the works for about two years now! Even before releasing my first solo harmonic rock song, I've been writing a wide variety of different music, and one was this thrash song. I had this full song written on bass in 2023, but I was hearing it in my head with full metal band instrumentation, not only bass but guitar, vocals, drums. I reached out to one of my favorite fellow independent artists, guitarist/vocalist Evaleigh, for a collaboration and thankfully he was up to it and I'm really proud of both of us for how well it turned out. It was a real step out of my comfort zone reaching out to another artist, and my first time collaborating on a song with someone like this (outside sending my friend Windsock some bass samples to use here and there). I'm so glad I did and had a lot of fun working together, suggesting different things to add, sending recordings back and forth, and here's to the new independent creative renaissance that's been awakening these past few years!

My cover art for this song is also a huge milestone, it was the first time I've done inking and coloring simultaneously after my penciling (and first time I've used inks and color at all in an album cover for that matter!). I've been wondering for a while now how to retain the sketched quality and textures that I get from pencils into inks, and I learned that this is one way to do it! I really like how it turned out, especially the stark contrasts between lines and fire/water element. I was going for a German Expressionist style, but with the added colors it reminds me a bit of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and the Icelandic illustrations of the Prose Edda. I've been really resonating with the fire and water elements lately, especially those beautiful teal blues like I used here. The balance between igniting the flame of your heart and riding the waves of your emotions and intuition and reaching into the unknown. To quote one of my original lyrics for the song "Like a viking sailing across the Northern seas, exploring lands unknown. A journey within, the seas of my soul".

Check out Evaleigh's music here or here, and Evaleigh's lyric video for the song here