Mari Ahokoivu Interview

I am happy to present what should hope­fully be the first in a series of inter­views with Finnish com­ics artists; Here is Mari Ahokoivu.

1 / Can you intro­duce your­self? What is your background?

I’m Mari Ahokoivu, Finnish com­ics artist/teacher/producer. I grew up in Oulu (a town up north of Fin­land) and I’ve been liv­ing in Hel­sinki for about 3 years. I’ve stud­ied com­ics in Liminka Art School and In EESI, Angoulême. I just gratu­ated from Oulu Uni­ver­sity of Applied sci­ences from visual media program.

2 / What drew you to comics?

I’ve always read com­ics, but I didn’t start draw­ing them until I was about 17. I have been draw­ing all my life, but not com­ics, only single pic­tures. I was read­ing some Finnish com­ics when I was a teen­ager, which inspired me to start draw­ing com­ics myself. Com­ics have always felt like my way of express­ing myself. I’m not really a good writer or speaker, the best way for me to tell stor­ies is through com­ics. It’s not that mak­ing com­ics would be easy, some­times it is really really hard, but for some reason I feel like I can tell my stor­ies more clearly in a com­ics form than in any other way.

 

3 / Who do you count as your influences?

4 / Can you describe your work­ing process?

I start with chaos. I col­lect all my ideas and thoughts in small papers (post-its are the best) and put them on my wall. Then I start to organ­ize the mess as a whole story. I focus on the atmo­sphere and the feel­ing of the com­ics, the story comes after all that.

When I’ve done the sketches for the pages I ink my com­ics while watch­ing tv or listen­ing pod­casts. I try to avoid work­ing with the com­puter as much as I can but I still end up spend­ing most of my time in front of my Mac­Book pro. If I can, I use the tra­di­tional copy/paste, scis­sors and glue.

When I’ve inked some parts of the story I look at the whole thing and do some edit­ing. I might have to draw some stuff again, but that’s just part of the whole pro­cess. I don’t draw the pages from first page to the last: I start with those parts of the story that are the most clear to me and skip those pages that I have some prob­lems with. When I’m done with the “easy pages” the pages I had some prob­lems with are a bit easier to solve.

I color my com­ics with com­puter, but I try to avoid using too many col­ors. about 3 or 4 col­ors per pages is max­imum for me.

5/ What is your favor­ite work tool?

I’m kind of in between tools right now. I’ve been using pilot hi-tec-c4 for three years now, and I’ve kind of got­ten sick of it. It does really nice fine line, but right now it feels like too thin to work with. I’ve been try­ing to use pilot G-1 0.5 but I don’t really know how to act with that pen. So now I’ve tried dif­fer­ent brushes, which is nice, since I haven’t used a brush for such a long time. I think the tools fal­low the mode I’m in when I draw.

 

6 / What does your workspace/studio look like?

Trans­la­tions for the crazy Finnish (from Dolly to the right): Dolly <3, Sketches on the wall, Candy on the desk, desk lamp found in the garbage, post-it, desk found in the garbage, Chair from my pre­vi­ous life, stool; the only fur­niture I’ve ever bought as a new, vinyls (not mine), desk from the garbage, tex­ting work, light table that by brother made.

7 / How do you earn a living?

I get most of my money from teach­ing com­ics and work­ing at the com­ics centre in vari­ous pro­jects. From time to time I get grants from the gov­ern­ment so I can focus on draw­ing and I have couple of com­ics series that I draw for magazines.

8 / What are you work­ing on at the moment? Show us a sneak preview!

Right now I’m work­ing at for the Finnish Com­ics Soci­ety with vari­ous Nor­dic com­ics pro­jects. I’m also doing some let­ter­ing works and couple of short com­ics for dif­fer­ent antho­lo­gies and magazines. And I also should have time to work on my next album, a comic album for kids that I’m doing with a friend of mine. If that’s not enough already, I’m also try­ing to fin­ish a col­lec­tion book of my short stor­ies for next spring.

 

 

From the book that will con­sist of short stor­ies, some pre­vi­ously pub­lished in my blog, some (like this one) new ones.

9 / What are your ambi­tions for the future?

 

10 / What advice would you give to an aspir­ing ama­teur cartoonist?

Draw. Draw a lot, and don’t stop draw­ing. When you stop, even for one day, it’s more dif­fi­cult to start draw­ing again. And if you draw every­day you will get bet­ter and better.

I actu­ally gave some advice at the dw-wp blog just recently.

I would also recom­mend to start a com­ics blog. It’s free and easy to use. Through a blog you’ll get more read­ers for your com­ics and have a reason to draw everyday.

11 / What do you think of the health of the Finnish com­ics scene at the moment, and what do you think it can do better?

The Finnish com­ics scene is grow­ing quickly at the moment. The fest­ivals are get­ting big­ger, there’s more people inter­ested in com­ics and it feels like com­ics are finally start­ing to get accep­ted as an art form. But you still can’t really earn your liv­ing by doing com­ics (there’s maybe 5–10 people in Fin­land who can do that). We need get more organ­ized, more pro­fes­sional. And cre­ate a good edu­ca­tion sys­tem that would help the artists to actu­ally deal with being a com­ics artists as a real profession.

12 / Where is the best place to buy your work?

Right now almost all my com­ics are sold out! So until I get some new stuff out, the best way to find my works is from my blog(and that’s free yay!) at http://ahokoivu.sarjakuvablogit.com. There might be some of my com­ics left at my pub­lish­ers Asema and Daada.

Need­less to say, click all the links and go and check out Mari’s web­site and then fol­low her on twit­ter. Thanks Mari!