Last day at the Göteborg Book Fair! Activities planned for the day included an interview with comics expert Fredrik Strömberg and a “How Kick Off! was made” workshop. As usual, finding your way around on the Book Fair is a bit tricky, so we had to split up to look for the place where we were to meet Strömberg. Funnily enough, we all saw his signature hat at the same time, which enabled us to successfully corner him.

The interview

After finding Fredrik, he brought us to the fair’s press area (a special area with restricted access!). Phew. It was much more calmer and quiet here so we could take it easy. After getting a cup of tea each, we went to a separate, secluded room where the interview was held.

Two happy SkÃ¥ne boys making bonds. Jokes were exchanged before the interview started. We answered questions regarding the history of the studio, our working progress and how Kick Off! was made. The interview will be published in the magazine Bild & Bubbla next year, by the Seriefrämjandet association. We will of course notify everyone about it when it’s out!

The workshop

The interview went well and time just rushed away without us noticing it. We had to stop twenty minutes before the workshop began. Stress, stress, stress!

The first part of the workshop was held by Strömberg, who talked about manga in general and his new book Mangabiblioteket (”The Manga Library”). On the picture we see Strömberg, Lina (our editor) and Kajfa engaged in a conversation.

Strömberg mangafied.

Then came our turn to enter the stage!

We had a wonderful and focused audience who listened to our talk.

We talked about the progress of making Kick Off!, all the way from the script to the finished product.

Lina helped us sellling Kick Off! and Yosh! Teckna manga! during the workshop.

Yosh told the audience about Yokaj Studio and our previous work.

You could of course have your copy of Kick Off! signed after the workshop!

A happy girl who bought both of the books. But we’re probably the happiest after all, thanks!

Celebrity spotting

Much to our happiness, we ran into Mikael Thörnqvist, the author of the Bollkänsla book series which Soya draw the covers for. Since Soya is away in Japan, Mikael sent his warmest regards to her via us through this picture, posing with Bollkänsla and Kick Off! (both involving soccer).

For those of you who are curious for Bollknsla, here’s a picture of all the books currently released neatly lined up at B. Wahlströms’ booth.

The other celebrit we found was this cute and wonderfully blue Radio Ape, the mascot for Barnradion (The Kids’ Radio) of SR (Sweden’s National Radio Broadcaster). We couldn’t help but take a picture with it! Say cheese!

Summary
It was a wonderful experience to be able to return to the Book Fair. Meeting our fans as well as new people who were interested in us was great fun. We also got very surprised about the huge line for the Kick Off! signing session, we did autographs for 80 minutes non-stop (new record)! This year had many interesting and mixed activities and we really enjoyed ourselves and hope that everyone who came to see us at the talk sessions did as well! As usual when you’re at the fair, you can’t escape the slightly chaotic and busy stressful atmosphere, but that’s the way it’s supposed to be! We hope to be able to return to the Göteborg Book Fair next year again, and if so, that we will be able to see you there!

Thanks
First and foremost, we want to thank our hardworking editor Lina and the B. Wahlströms crew for inviting us to the fair and taking such good care of us. Next, we want to thank SF-bokhandeln for arranging the signing session and for helping us getting all the technical equipment. Thanks also go to Fredrik Strömberg for the interview and the nice talk we had. Thank you to all the artists who came to the get-together and thank you, the staff at the fair, especially the guy who helped us fixing the sound when we appeared at Nallescenen. Last but not least, a big thanks to all our fans and readers, and everyone who came to listen to us on our Kick Off!-workshops! Thanks everyone!

Yosh, Kajfa and DoraJen har now back from the Göteborg Book Fair! The fair is an annual highlight for the publishing industry, which authors, publishers and readers all look forward to. Because we at Yokaj Studio are currently working on our new teenage manga Kick Off!, B. Wahlströms, the publisher, decided to invite us to the event this year again (we were invited in 2007 and 2006 as well) to promote the book. Plans for these two intense days included a book signing session, holding a talk about the difference between Swedish and Japanese manga and holding a short presentation about the progress of making Kick Off! We also took the chance to gather a small group of manga artists for a short inspirational meeting. To make it short, lots of fun activities were waiting for us!

Saturday morning began with a train ride down to Göteborg with the book fair as the final destination. Needless to say, we were really excited and had our minds set on making the first day of the fair a good one. But who would’ve thought that our first 15 minutes in Göteborg would start like this?

Björn Gustafsson with Kick Off! in his hand! Who could’ve thought that we would (literally) bump into the star of the Swedish comedy world? Because one of our characters in Kick Off! is inspired by Björn, we would’ve loved to have him knnow about this, so we took the opportunity to give him a copy of the book. We hope that he’ll like it!

Activities

We tracked down our editor Lina Jauhiainen before entering the stage. You know how there always has to be some kind of technical trouble for occasions like these? Again, Lina was kind enough to help us once more!

And so the time came for us to enter Nallescenen (”The Teddy Stage”) to run our first activity. We talked about the difference between Swedish and Japanese manga and explained, among other things, that Swedish manga still is taking its first toddler steps, which makes it difficult to draw comparisons to the Japanese equivalent. There just aren’t enough titles to build arguments about differences on yet. Therefore, we made our own manga Kick Off! the base for the comparisons.

Of course, we showed our trailer for Kick Off!, which we are very proud of!

The audince were very concentrated when watching the trailer. Many passer-bys stopped in the middle of their walk out of curiosity when the trailer started to run. That was fun! Afterwards, some people came to us and explained that we succeeded in turning their skepticism towards Swedish manga into a more positive attitude! We are very happy to have been able to inspire the audience.

After our first activity, we had some time to spare before our signing sessions would begin, so we walked around the fair grounds and checked out the booths and the celebrities. You wouldn’t believe how crowded it was!

We found Anna Book, who was signing her book “Boken om Anna Book” (”The Book about Anna Book”).

We also found Henning Mankell, seen signing books deeply concentrated on the task on hand.

No celebrity here! But we couldn’t help but to take a picture of this cute little dog, loyally watching the magazine rack.

The fair was not only centered around books, there were also smaller booths selling and exhibitig other things, such as cute stuffed animals.

After a short walk around the grounds, we headed to Science Fiction-bokhandeln’s booth, where our signing session would take place. To our big surprise, there was already a group of fans standing there waiting, a whole 20 minutes before planned! We got very touched about this. Thank you so much girls, for waiting so patiently for us!

Left: And now, let the signing commence! Of course we didn’t want the girls to wait around for us, so we decided to start 20 minutes early!
Right: While we were signing, we had our Kick Off!-trailer running in the background with its catchy music.

The line got longer and longer without us noticing it, and there were boys as well as girls waiting! While the boys acted cool and careful, the girls on the other hand were more open and happy. Andreas (a character in Kick Off!) is apparently a real girl magnet!

We signed all the Kick Off! books by drawing portraits of the visitors as Yokaj dolls! It took slightly longer than our usual signings, but people waited patiently for us despite all of this. Thank you all for your patience! We were very happy and hope that everyone liked their Yokaj dolls!

The artist get-together

Having artist meetings is always fun, so this year, us folks at Yokaj Studio decided to organize one again! We managed to gather a bunch of talented artists and we had a really nice talk about manga and anime. Attendees: Yokaj Studio, Nosebleed Studio (three fifths of the studio were present: Alice, Catarina and Natalia), Jesper Nordqvist, Stef Gaines, Tomas Antila and Stina Lövkvist

From left: Stef Gaines, Tomas Antila, Natalia Batista, Catarina Batista, Yosh, Kajfa, Jesper Nordqvist, Alice Engström and DoraJen..

The meeting was sadly cut short, partly because of the fair being in a temporary standstill due to a false fire alarm (a chef on the floor above apparently went too far when showing off his skills!) and because we had to have it canceled when a security guard came to shoo us out of the venue in order to close down for the day. But we had a nice time anyway!

“GO GO GO! Artists get out!”

Mingling and dinner

After a busy and intense Saturday afternoon, it was finally time for our favorite event of the day - dinner with the publisher! B. Wahlströms had arranged a cozy dinner gathering at a restaurant called Bryggan under bron (”The bridge under the bridge”) for its editors, sales people, authors and the like. Everyone who was interested were to gather in front of the venue and then proceed to the restaurant by boat. Of course we couldn’t pass this up!

Waiting outside the fair hall.

Heading to the boat together. It was all slightly reminiscent of those school trips back in the good old days! Heehee.

Mingling with champagne and alcohol free drinks under beautiful autumn trees.

Being all excited and giggly when taking our seats in the boat.

The boat trip was incredibly relaxed and cosy, although it was difficult to catch the atmosphere in the pictures. We had a very skilled guide telling us about the city, and a pleasant waiter who made sure that everyone on the boat had a nice time. We passed under several bridges during the ride and many of them were so low that we had to crouch down in order to avoid getting hit on our heads!

Finally at the restaurant!

Buffet! The food tasted as good as it looked like.

Kajfa in the middle of a conversation with Lasse from B. Wahlströms. Our other table partners were Lina Jauhiainen, Ritta Jacobsson (author of the Afrodite book series), Pia Hagmar (author of the Dalsland thriller series) who was there with her son, who also works in the publishing industry. Happy and satisfied after dinner, we returned to the hotel to charge our batteries for the Sunday activities!

Next post
Our second and last day at the Göteborg Book Fair will be about the interview Fredrik Strömberg did with us, a talk about the progress of making Kick Off! and other fun stuff. Don’t miss it!