Backstage Pass March: Alakotila

Here's Your Pass! Slip Behind The Curtain Today And Meet

Alakotila

So Alakotila, Tell Us About Yourself? 

I’ve been making webcomics on and off since 2003, but university stalled my first webcomic. I picked up with a new comic in 2011 and have been going strong since! I have a degree in Fashion Design, which might explain my interest in character costuming… I find all kinds of clothing fun and soothing to draw, and lately I find the same joy in drawing landscapes.

Main Projects:

Spidersilk: spidersilkcomic.com

Sunlit Silence: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/sunlit-silence/list?title_no=213703

Patreon: patreon.com/alakotila
This includes early updates and exclusive content, for example, monthly short stories or sketches.

Fell Swoop — recently completed: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/fell-swoop/list?title_no=129950

Hobbies, obsessions, and guilty pleasures: 

Courtesy Of  Yaoyao Ma Van As

Well, a lot of my work is personal work so I will have to include drawing here! But also, I enjoy dance, playing games, being outside, and hugging my cat. Taking a walk in the woods always really inspires me to get to work on illustrations and comics. Somehow it all feeds back into comics!

Early Experience and telling stories:

My mother read a lot of comics. Archie Comics, Casper, Wendy, Hot Stuff — things like that. Comics in newspapers and magazines, too. It very quickly just seemed like a normal way to consume stories and as a way for me to express my own. One of my first comics was meant to help me overcome my fear of the flu shot, but… didn’t really work… Still, I kept making stories of all kinds.

I was introduced to manga as a junior high school student. Comics like Ranma 1/2 and Peach Girl were formative. A friend introduced me to webcomics in my late teens, which was also eye-opening, and after nearly a year of him swearing up and down it would be great and that I should launch my own, I did. While that story eventually petered out, what I learned from it went into Spidersilk, which is still going strong!

I also enjoy writing (prose), but I think I love comics a little bit more. I love drawing my characters. I love working out the panels, the pacing, angles to best tell their stories… I just love everything about making comics.

What Media Do You Use To Produce Your Work?

Right now I’m using Clip Studio Paint (CSP) and an Intuos Pro tablet to create everything. Spidersilk is my first digital comic, and had I switched pretty much out of necessity (late 2011), but I’m really happy with how I’ve grown as a digital artist. I use Clip Studio, Photoshop, and InDesign to prepare PDFs for print. I also keep a sketchbook, of course, to throw random notes, scripts, and scribbles into as I’m thinking about particular storylines or just need to work out costumes.

Can You Tell Us About Your Typical Working Day?

I try to look at weeks instead of days since I have so many jobs that pop up one day a week, three days a week, etc. My time is pretty much split evenly between personal comic work (preparing for print, making new content, etc); freelance work; and a day job. When there’s not a ton of snow on the ground I try to get out and hike once a week as well. Other than that, I make sure to take time off and play games, read things, watch things… It’s important to recharge!

What Do You Find Most Difficult In Your Work? 

Marketing! There is a lot of advice out there (i.e. “you must table at cons”) and it just takes time to sort out what works for you, your work, and your situation (finances, health, location, etc)… and what doesn’t. I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but it still often feels like yelling into a void.

Can You Tell Us About Your Script Process? 

It’s very different comic to comic.

Fell Swoop was a stand-alone I wanted to complete in a certain amount of time, so I hammered most of it out early on with the help of a friend who is skilled at story development editing. There are some deviations from the script near the end, but I like to leave room for those kinds of changes to happen in my work — sometimes things just don’t really click until I’m pencilling, no matter which comic I am working on.

Spidersilk also has a script, but the nature of longer webcomics means my writing is always getting better, and I am always nudging things around, removing/ adding chapters, and editing as I go. I edit things out when I realize it was lazy writing, or just unnecessary, and in some cases, insensitive. I edit pretty heavily the next four or five chapters, or more if it’s a continuous arc, and then smooth out the remaining chapters when I hit chapter breaks. It’s not the same script I completed seven or so years ago, but the ending is pretty much unchanged. I know where it goes, just the journey has changed a bit… for the better.

Sunlit Silence is my latest, launched just over half of a year ago. It’s a little meandering, a bit of flying by the seat of my pants. It’s a gentle, soft exploration adventure comic, so I think that suits it. It does have a script, but it’s not nearly as strict as my other comics.

What Sort Of Buffer Do You Like To Keep? 

I have never really been good at this, mainly because of how long it used to take me to do a single page. My free time was barely enough for it. Somewhere in the last year and a half or two I have become much quicker — I think this is from my work on Fell Swoop — as such, I have been building a buffer for Spidersilk and it feels pretty good.

What Question Do You Wish People Would Stop Asking?

I can’t think of anything specific at the moment…

What Would You Go Back And Tell Yourself If You Could? 

Yes, take that advice to make a short story first. Learn from it, and make another. And another.

I would also say to focus more on learning and experimenting (within reason! A comic needs to be consistent in ways) and less on perfection. If you approach a comic thinking about how much you are going to learn rather than trying to make every page perfect, you will grow so much, stress less, and may hit nearly perfect more than you expected.

Don’t wait until you feel you’re ready to draw comics in general or a specific kind of comic, or you will never be ready. Yes, prepare, but at some point jump in… You learn as you go!

What Message Do You Hope Your Readers Take Away From Your Work? 

I think all of my work deals with caring for other people and the environment, but I think I could be a bit more clear in stating that now that I think about it…

It’s also important to me to include a majority LGBTQA+ cast. I hope it is comforting for queer and/or trans readers to see worlds like this, with heroes and adventure and mystery and magic, full of characters they might identify with. And for those who are not LGBTQA+, I hope my work can offer looks at these characters outside of what we struggle with in reality — we are more than our pain. I also hope they will enjoy the ride, too.

When someone tells me my work helped them get through something tough, helped them understand themselves better, or that an illustration feels like a hug, I just feel so grateful that the energy I’m putting into my work is coming through. I have focused on making warm, comforting work in the past couple of years, and I’m glad to see it received that way. If it helps someone else along the way, that’s wonderful!

What Keeps You Telling Your Story? 

Something that I do to pace myself on long stories is add another project. Having a smaller project I run alongside it helps me keep the energy up for it. I also take breaks between chapters now, where I fiddle around with the script and do some concept art and get excited for the next chapter. The last break was particularly fun because I got to draw a lot of the Spidersilk crew in fancy ball costumes!

I learn from all those projects and bound from item to item with renewed energy and new skills. Spidersilk has been a constant, but I have finished several smaller-scale projects alongside it, from an ebook, to games, to coloring books, to another comic. On the one hand, I wonder if Spidersilk would get done faster if I focused solely on it, but the truth is I know I’d burn out. What keeps it going is this variety.

Now that it’s been going for so long, knowing there are people waiting for this story and love the characters gives me a lot of energy — that also helps me keep moving forward on this long story!