Name: Tinet Elmgren
Story: Her 18th Birthday
1. Tell me a little about yourself. How long have you been active as a comic artist and what have you been up to?
I've been drawing and writing for as long as I can remember. When I was little I wanted to write novels ("
real books"), but I always ended up drawing pictures with my stories, too, and feeling frustrated with only text, so at some point I just accepted my fate.
I've drawn comics in extreme seriousness since I was 15 and began my epic socialist maritime fantasy comic
Driftwood. I've published the almost yearly comics zine "Tunguska" since 2000, featuring
Driftwood and various short stories.
Eva ♥ Asbesthjärtan, a book collecting my hard boiled action stories about Eva, was published by Epix in 2009.
2. Why did you want to participate in this project?
Her 18th Birthday is a flash-forward from
Driftwood. One of the elements in
Driftwood is the love story between these two characters. Last summer when I had lyme disease I got this random silly idea for something they would say during their first time together:
But since I don't include much sex at all in my comics, I sadly assumed that I would never get to use that idea. :(
Last year I thought a lot about sex in comics and what interesting reasons there might be to actually do a story centered around sex. Sometimes it seems to me that my own experiences of sex aren't quite reflected in the image of sex that you get in most of popular culture.
Some friends encouraged me to draw sex comics that would reflect my own point of view, and then
SCS editor Natalia at one point suggested that maybe I could contribute a story to
Swedish Comic Sin.
So, after some fermentation in the back of my head there was a complete short story around that idea from last summer.
3. Have you drawn any erotic comics or incorporated sex in your stories before?
This is really my first comic that's mainly about sex. The heroine of
Eva works as a prostitute, and there are some sex scenes in that book, but the focus there is much more on the action and ultraviolence.
4. What has been the most difficult and challenging thing about this project?
Drawing a toddler.
And I guess it was kind of hard to draw people naked, because I haven't done that too much before. ._.
Also I think I partly failed in my specific mission to present more beautiful and sensual manliness and beautiful and sensual hairiness. The latter because the characters in this story just aren't that hairy - he is partly Asiatic and she is still young. But I should at least have included some armpit shots. :3
5. What has been the most fun part?
Masha the doggie.
It's always fun to spend time with these characters, and it's nice to see them happy together.
Also, it was really nice and relaxing to have a strict and orderly submission schedule.
And it was really great to get feedback from my fellow artists and our editor!
6. What are you up to now and where are you heading? Any plans?
I've actually finished
Driftwood now, after working on it on and off for 16 years. It's going to be published as
a big fat book in Swedish now at the end of April, and this summer in English.
After that I have plans for a shorter book with a perhaps more realistic, everyday kind of story about people who will be drawn like pigs. Then maybe I will start the longer comic for which
Driftwood was only the prequel. :D
Website:
www.kommiekomiks.com
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