#comicart

KALWA AND AMBER SHAKE IT UP

| Peter Ahola

I’m back from a trip everyone. I was actually away for five days to attend my brother’s wedding in VA, in fact everything you saw on the 9th was actually scheduled. Once I got home I started working on a bunch of stuff that I put off in an attempt to fill the void in my absence. A part of that is working on new artwork for getting the Kalwa comic on other sites such as webtoons (which it’s already on), Tapas and Webcomics. Plus I’ve been focused on other ventures beyond just Kalwa such as establishing myself and Green Raptor Studios as an artist. So forgive the silence, there is still more to do but I’ll try to keep up posts here as best I can.

Meanwhile, here’s a piece to satisfy. Kalwa’s once again under the sea with Amber, Green Raptor’s OTHER comic star. She’s got her own one shot comic over on the Green Raptor website, looking to do more with her when I get around to it. I’ve kinda been obsessed with Taylor Swift’s song “Shake it off” and that’s kinda where this image came from! Everyone enjoy the mermaids shaking things up!!!!

Annoucements

| Peter Ahola

So I haven’t do much posting since Halloween, and that’s because I’ve been preparing for a short trip and I’ve had to prepare other work in advance since I won’t be near my computer to finish them up. As such, everything has just been backed up and bottlenecked. But I wanted to catch everyone up on what progress we got going.

So I recently decided to it was finally time to get serious about publishing books. It’s long been a serious project, but never really got off the ground. The first book I’m looking to make will contain the first five chapters of the story, we are looking to release it digitally on sites like Amazon first and then move into physical copies. The published version will contain some art and dialogue updates that will make them different from what is published on the site here. The first four chapters have all been edited, but the fifth chapter still needs it’s dialogue changed. We are looking at a February release date, so I will get a bit more serious one working on that once I get back from my trip. More to come on that as we get closer.

In addition, I’ve started posting Kalwa back onto webtoons in new episode formats. I had started uploading to Webtoons a few years ago, but gave up on it. Back then we didn’t have as many chapters as we do now, and in order to constantly update and make the comic active, I was only uploading a few pages per episode which I think really padded it out beyond audience attention. Now chapters are uploaded to the site in two parters and on the same day. I’m also looking to upload to Webcomics and Tapas, again probably after I get back from the trip.

Well continuing on from the last paragraph, I was preparing this weeks double chapter update and discovered that chapter 6 and 7 were each missing a page that I failed to upload to this website. This issue has now been resolved and chapters 6 and 7 now have their missing pages on this website.

Finally news on chapter 27, I started writing it but only got five pages done at this point. Again most of it is due to work to prep for the trip and the fact that my youtube music is tainted right now by annoying ads, but mostly the former. We are going to be doing this chapter a little differently than before. The process up to this point is I write the script, step away fro a week, go back and re-edit then hand it over to Ryan to edit. He gets me the re-edited script and I start working on a page by page basis.

This time I’ll be taking a different approach, I’ll be roughing the entire chapter at once after my original chapter and then start penciling pages as I get his edits. Also I won’t start uploading until I’ve completed ten pages at least. This way, I can hopefully provide a better product by being able to walk away and take a second look at the work rather than having to crank it out in the moment. This will also allow the freedom to work on other projects and illustrations and have a “social life” by creating a buffer to allow for more pages to come out in the future. This might take a little longer to get it out, but it will make things better in the long run. Meanwhile I’ll still be posting artwork, behind the scenes work and more as we are getting there. This site is meant for more than just promoting the comic after all.

So I wanted to bring this up right now and let everyone know what’s going on. I appreciate everyone who follows this website and keeps up with the work that goes on here, it really makes it all worth while. And I’ll do what I can to keep everyone in the loop of what’s going on!

Ninja Kalwa

| Peter Ahola

Back from a bit of a break. I’ve been working on some other artwork on the Green Raptor website and other online accounts, plus preparing for a trip. So I’ve been a tad distracted since the end of Halloween. But here’s a new art piece for the time being, This ninja Kalwa drawing was actually started last month, but I didn’t want to disrupt the Halloween sprit, so I put it off till I finished the Halloween draw off over on the Green Raptor site. Hope you all enjoy.

Happy Halloween

| Peter Ahola

Happy Halloween everyone, another year has come for treats, scares and fun. So as many of you should know, over here at Green Raptor Studios we LOVE Halloween. Every year we sharpen our pencils (digital pad really) and draw as many monster, horror and other fun stuff as we can. And of course there is always the finale, which in recent years is Kalwa related.

This year we are bringing in a number of faces that we have met recently, mainly Kalwa’s dojo friends Izuha and Suzume. Kalwa’s already appeared in this outfit before as the Witch of Time, but now you get to see her friends join her for the witching hour, and of course the boys get to play the minions. HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO ALL, and join us next year for more Halloween fun.

Vintage Kalwa Art

| Peter Ahola

Today’ I’m showing y’all some artwork from my deep archives. Today I’m showing you all the very FIRST drawing of Kalwa ever done and an early sketch of Juro, who would go on to become Reko in the current story. These drawings were original drawn in Middle/ High school (hence their more amateurish proportions).

As a little backstory, the original concept for Kalwa was first created in middle school at a time I was making a lot of my own stories, more than I could probably fine tune and perfect. Kalwa was actually the fourth story I came up with, the original concept was instead of a phone, she had a time traveling watch that was damaged and flung her back in time, resulting in her having to find all the pieces in different eras in order to return home. While today, Kalwa is an eccentric adventurer with a positive outlook on life, the original version was an isolated loner whose unique interest caused others to distance from her.

Juro wasn’t initially Kalwa’s friend, but rather a loner himself who wished to befriend her but couldn’t work up the nerve. Juro would work with Kalwa’s brother Risto (later changed to Zack), in order to find out about A-Tech and what was really going on. This concept was completely dropped in the story today, as Kalwa would just discover these secrets herself and therefore the whole concept would just be repeating what Kalwa and the Audience already knew. Also Juro was supposed to be of Japanese decent which would tie in to another arch where a character in Japan would propose to Kalwa. Again this storyline was dropped and thus Juro was a given a proper Finnish name of Reko.

Sketchbook Outfit Updates

| Peter Ahola

Coming straight from the sketchbook a few more pieces on the new outfit designs. It’s been kinda hard to work on these due to the big Halloween draw off over on the Green Raptor Site, and the day job with social media. These are a little more refined versions of the previous drawings posted. After watching the Owl House on Disney+, I grew kinda interested in the idea of leggings after seeing them on series protagonist Luz Noceta. Thought I’d try them on Kalwa, plus it would help avoid any underwear shots and better hide her legs scars. Zack I’m looking to make the official supply guy, kinda dress him up have a faithful sidekick carrying supplies for the adventure. The idea for gloves is kinda meant to reflect his fragile nature, showing he’s taking small steps to better himself.

Kalwa Outfit Sketch
Zack Outfit Sketch

Kalwa Zombified

| Peter Ahola

A colored page from the sketchbook just for Halloween. The original sketch was posted to the Kalwa facebook page earlier this month, but here on the website you’re getting the colored version of our three protagonists… ZOMBIFIED!!!!! Yeah, can we deny that Zombies are cool? Of course not. So for this special month of horror, enjoy our three heroes like you’ve never seen before.

Outfit Sketchs

| Peter Ahola

Sharing a bit of behind the scenes work today. So while attending Tuscan Comic Con, I got a little note that my characters all wore similar clothing, and it was a bit hard to tell them apart at times. The specific moment was more about the opening training battle between Kalwa and Suzume from chapter 26, however while drawing the last page of that chapter I realized that Zack and Kalwa do wear the same outfit. While they are different colors, this is mostly irrelevant on black and white manga.

So I’m looking at an outfit mixup to make them more distinguishable from a certain distance. I still want to keep the hoodies since those are kinda a signature for my characters, but give them a little more skin so they can engage in combat and do some “better” adventuring. I don’t have it pictured here yet, but I’m planning on giving Zack some kind of utility belt/fanny pack or something. These two will soon be embarking on some more serious adventures and will need supplies, you’ll see why in about three more chapters.

Kohaku Kalwa

| Peter Ahola

Once again it’s Halloween time, and Kalwa’s dressing up this year as Kohaku from Dr.Stone. More Halloween fun is on the way this year so stick around!!!!