Project Timeline

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September 2015

Surprisingly, the story of Nettle didn’t actually start out like my projects normally do. I actually had an idea of a girl who saw her anxiety as a giant black cat… or a tiger? I’m not sure! This is a random cover sketch I did for it as a possible children’s book for fun. This is definitely where the idea for Nettles story began!

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January 2016

Where it officially started! During the end of my second term at FZD School of Design, we got the assignment to pitch our own story. We had to present this in front of the class as a possible show or game! I was inspired by things that interested me when I was younger and decided on two things: Pokemon and Monster Allergy (a comic). I’ve always loved creature design and this was the perfect opportunity to have fun creating a similar IP! I was also listening to Robin Hobbs book series (Assassins apprentice) at the time so I named my character “Nettle” (if you've read the books you know why it breaks my heart) and that name has stuck since then. For the word Hush-hush’ I have to credit my lovely friend Stephanie Rudin (a fellow concept artist and FZD survivor) with coming up with it! I was struggling with naming my creatures… I needed something original like Pokemon. So when I told her that Nettle was scared of the creatures and she’s been able to see them since she was a child, Steph said “What if you call them hush hush… because it’s something she can’t talk about because grownups think she’s crazy? Thats probably what a child would name such creatures.” And I will forever be grateful for her amazing creativity, thank you Steph! It’s stuck.

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May 2016

Nothing more interesting that me having a go at redesigning Nettle for fun. But I thought it was worth adding the sketch in here ;)

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June-August 2017

A whole year and a bit later I returned to Nettle and her story! During the past year I went from finishing FZD to working at Atomhawk design in the UK and I had also started making regular videos on YouTube. I found my old files for Nettle & The Hush-Hush’ and I got inspired to redesign her and make a short 7-page prologue comic showing how her and Cat first met. I was determined to finish this but I never actually did. Here are the sketches, pages and videos I made for the prologue!

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September 2017

Even after dropping the prologue (I’m not sure why, I’m guessing time and motivation) I still wanted to continue working on character designs for the story. Nettle and her friends was actually the only real OC’s that I had at the time, so I drew them in a lineup for a video!

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October 2017 - November 2018

More Nettle art for fun! Nothing that will actually happen in the story, but fun to explore her and her character. So no work on the actual story happened between October 2017 and November 2018.

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January 2019

This month marks a very interesting point in the development of Nettle’s story! In the process of writing The Snow Cat Prince, I had to make a document where I tried to figure out how my world and magic system worked. I wrote almost 4000 words over two days, outlining the world history and rules, how the world was created and how all my projects tied into the same universe. During this process I also managed to plot out all 5 books of Nettle’s story! Not to the finest detail, but the overarching story that will happen in each book. I still love this document as it contains all the secret little details that I won’t be able to share for many more years!

Writing the world rules made me want to work on Nettles’ story desperately, but I still had a year and more before I was properly finished with the Snow Cat Prince. So I had to let Nettle's story sit on the shelf for a bit longer.
(I did get excited though and redesigned Nettle a little)

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September 2020

Having some more thoughts about Nettle and really wanting to start the project. At this point in time Snow Cat is pretty much finished, just some small changes needing to be done for the Norwegian publication with Egmont, and I’ve started thinking about the next step… the next big project! And naturally I lean towards Nettle & The Hush-Hush’. Originally I thought I would never dare to start because it’s so big, but after talking to my new Norwegian editors and the other people they have published, a bigger project didn't sound too bad. Egmont mainly publish longer fantasy series with 4+ books and when I mention Nettle to them they were intrigued. But I still needed to write a proper pitch to sell them on the idea and hopefully land a contract. I also drew Nettle again, redesigning her a bit more, for fun and also to show the editors.

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January 2021

I am finally done with Snow Cat and its Norwegian publication was published the 21th of January 2021! I finally have the time and brainspace to start working on Nettle & The Hush-Hush. I started with some character sheets for Nettle, her sister Tilly and Cat, both big and small versions. This was also the time I wrote and shared the full plot of book 1 with my editors to see what they thought and if they were interested to go ahead and work with me. They said yes :)

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February 2021

This month I didn't get to do as much as I had hoped because of health reasons! But I did sketch the first draft of chapter 1 and sent it over to my editors. They naturally had some feedback and I also got some great suggestions from my Patreons who also get to read my rough sketches, sort of like test readers! But after this I kind of put the I sketching on hold.

Here are page 3-6 out of the 26! They are quite rough and this is usually how rough I keep them until I do lineart.

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March 2021

Mid-march I got back to work! I realised I didn’t like the first draft of chapter 1 at all… it was too– stiff? It was too rough and didn’t introduce the characters like I wanted and imagined, so I decided to redo the whole chapter keeping in mind the feedback from my editors. It is the first book in a big series so I wanted it to be as close to perfect as I could get it! Finished not perfect… but still good right?

I also drew a mock-cover for the book! Just something to use as promo. I don’t think it will end up being the official cover but I like it!

This is also page 3-6 out of 26 for the first chapter! Instead of seeing Nettle immediately, we’re introduced through Cat’s eyes which I think is a lot more elegant.

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Onwards

The last update on this timeline was 24th of March 2020.
If you want more secret sketches and want to be a test reader, consider supporting me on Patreon! The $5 tier gets you all the goodies :) Even if I have a contract with my publisher, the advance they give me is not big enough to support me the full year this comic will take, so thank you everyone for all your support <3