Space Deer's 10th Anniversary! New PDF!

Hey there!

This might sound strange to some of you reading this since Space Deer only started in April this year. But the character is in fact much older than 3 months.

This is the first Space Deer comic I ever drew. First I doodled Space Deer in my sketchbook, sitting in that pose from the second panel. Then I fired up Manga Studio (as Clip Studio was called back then) and drew this whole comic without much thought or planning behind it. I published it on tumblr, I was very active there back then and it became the most popular thing I had ever done. I had never had so many strangers care so much about a character I made.

To this day there are still some people who follow me because of this old proto-Space Deer.

I made a few more pages like it, but I didn’t build a story or anything. They were all intended as little glimpses into this deer’s adventures. Like a comic strip.

Maybe you recognize these pages, that’s because I’ve reused these ideas in some of the new strips. Such as this one.

I only drew 17 or so Space Deer comics back then. I felt like the quality declined and I honestly wasn’t sure what I was doing, I didn’t feel like I had much to say either. So I gave up and tried to move onto the next thing. Thinking I had used up this idea completely.

But a lot happened in ten years. I moved out of my parents’, I struggled to find work, I went through some stupid drama of my own making, I studied in Stockholm, I met my partner and moved to France with her.

Thanks to all this life experience it became easier to find subjects to write about.

And I had become kinder to myself too. Perfectionism and unrealistic standards was my biggest enemy.

Now I’m glad that I had this long break from the character. I don’t think I could’ve come up with the current design of Space Deer back then. I also studied storytelling and writing a lot these last years. The Space Deer that exists today couldn’t have turned out like this any earlier.

Good ideas never die. Let’s see how much longer Space Deer sticks around!

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The Ancient Comics collection!

In order to celebrate this anniversary I put together a special PDF!

It’s 40 pages and contains all of The Ancient Comics and a bunch of other bonus content. Here’s what’s inside:

• 17 pages of Ancient Space Deer comics

• 5 pages of old artwork, sketches and experiments

• 6 pages about designing the new Space Deer character

• 7 more pages comparing the old comics to the new strips

You can buy it for 5 euro over on itch.io! I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Let’s hope we’ll make it to an official 10th anniversary too (I’m not even halfway through year 1 yet, lol).