Well hello there, and so forth. Apparently time has come for me, the artist and webmaster of this page, to introduce myself. *does a virtual bowing-movement*

 

Contact information: Email: minna -at- minnasundberg.fi, and my Deviantart account is shadowumbre.deviantart.com, for those who might be wondering.

 

Starting with the basics: my name is Minna Sundberg, I'm born in january 1990 and live in Finland, yet my birth place is Sweden. But I can't really say I'm originally swedish, since both of my parents had moved to Sweden from Finland in the 70's. I just happened to be born on the other side of the pond before they both decided to move back "home" when I was merely seven years old. But as a gift from that little trip I have both Swedish and Finnish as my mother tongues and double citizenships, yaay. And I was enrolled in a swedish-speaking school which means all of my studies up to eleventh grade were in swedish. So yeah, I do regard myself as both Finnish and Swedish. Or maybe just Nordic, that's both cooler and simpler. And yes, I do have an arrogant jerkface-expression in that picture, for some reason my face is like that in about every single picture since fifth grade.

 

 

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I'm currently studying full time at Helsinki School of Art and Design (which is part of Aalto University) at the department of Graphic Design.  I'm a second year bachelor student, so I may have over three years left if I decide to also get a masters degree. Lots of work ahead, yup yup.

 

 

 

Listing likes and dislikes is a very effective way to present oneself. I guess I could just spew out a couple of lists here, but naw, simple lists almost fall under the category of "dislikes". Apart from my obvious enthusiasm for drawing, I have a couple of specific interests: video games is probably the most time and money consuming one.

I almost would like to say I'm able to enjoy a good game from no matter the category, but I'll just say I enjoy games from a wide array of categories. Turn-based  strategy games is my top genre right now for the simple reason that I can play those kinds of games while doing something else. Just let the game stand for a while while I doodle something in my sketch pad. They're also almost completely non-stressful and don't give me sudden, un-wanted adrenaline rushes. A couple of games that come in mind are Civilization IV and V, Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem (only played the one for GameCube, but it was great.)

 

RPG's are my second, long standing favorite type of games, especially single player games (my unsocial tendencies stretch even into video gaming). Everything from Pokémon to Final Fantasy to the newer Fallout games are my cup of tea. As long as there is enough level-grinding, collecting and customizing involved to satisfy the primal hunter-gatherer inside me.  A great story is a plus, of course.

Other games I've enjoyed that don't exactly fall into mentioned categories (alright, I made a list anyway): Portal, Dead Space, Tekken something, Crash Bash, Crash Team Racing, some other Crash Bandicoot games that I can't name anymore,  Spyro 2 and 3 (I did not enjoy the first spyro, too...eerie. And I never managed to beat the final boss, either, I always ended up in the lava pit at the very end of the fight)  Okami aaand Super Smash Bros Melee.

Oh, and Age of Mythology! The very first real PC game I ever played (bacause "learn the alphabet"-point-and-click games don't really count.) The other "age of"-games were fun too, but that one really stuck with me. Oh, how I wish for a sequel, the expansion simply wasn't enough.

What is that, no WoW? Yes, thet's very much correct. I've made a holy vow not to touch that game or anything too similar to it before I'm safely retired.  I know myself well enough to be sure I'll be hooked for life and never get anything done again. I already got addicted once to that game Runecraft when I was a teenager, I'm not making the same mistake again. No matter how much my heart tells me to...

 

 

Err, enough about video games? Other things I enjoy: 

American sitcoms are the greatest thing to ever grace the world of TV. I've probably wathched through a couple of dozen series by now, and the ones I didn't particularly care for could be counted by just one hand. Most of the time when drawing I have some sitcom episode running in the background. Since almost everything in those kinds of shows is built around dialogue they're perfectly comfortable to follow without even having to look at the screen.

My favourite currently airing shows are, hmm, let's see: Community, The Big Bang Theory, American Dad, Family Guy, It's always sunny in Philadelphia and the show that has with its nevest season risen to take the place as my all times favourite sitcom ever(sorry, Arrested Development, you're number two now): Parks and Recreation. Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson are in my mind the greatest characters ever created, oh how I love them, and the whole dysfunctional crew. 

 

Nature. Nature is awesome. Hiking, fishing and just staring at ants is all great fun, and the fewer people there are around, the better. I dream about fishing almost twice a month, but in real life I suck at it so bad I didn't catch a single fish last summer. Doesn't really matter, though, just sitting on a rock waiting for something to happen is nice too.

Learning languages is a little interest of mine that started as  a stress-controlling exercise a few years ago. I had quite a dilemma: I was really stressed out about school work and everything else in life, but whenever I tried to take a break I just felt like I was wasting time and started to feel even more stressed out. The solution was simply to start trying to learn languages whenever I needed a break, that way I felt like I was doing something useful but without the pressure of actually getting anything done. So now I'm rather fluent in Estonian and understand Icelandic well enough to listen in on their radio broadcasts

 

 

Moving on to the dislikes part of this non-list: First up;  I positively detest social events of almost any kind. I won't get any deeper into that because I'll start to seem like a murky old troll if I do.

Second thing I can't stand are bugs, more spcifically spiders. The rest I don't actually mind as long as they refrain from biting me, or crawling into my clothes, which usually leads to biting. This is why I could never enjoy lying in a summery field looking up at the sky: I would be imagining tons of tiny and not so tiny spiders creeping up on me.

 Hm, that's probably that for dislikes. At least the kind that stand to be mentioned, the rest are just petty little things no-one likes and the kinds of dislikes that make me seem...odd, to put it lightly.

 

 

 Let's talk a bit about my art, shall we? Most of my stuff is some kind of fantasy, either anthromorphic animals or the more fantasy-fantasy kind with dragons and knights and all that girble garble. I can't really pinpoint my favorite genre; it varies from year to year and goes in waves, back and forth. Some times I have gryphons and dragons on my brain for months, then it's other it's foxes or cats or ruined cities and I have the feeling "this is what I want to draw for the rest of my life, and nothing else". After which I have a dream about robot whales and feel like that is my calling instead. 

 

My style and subjects will probably be changing a lot and several times in the coming years, I have a itching in my toes that tells me my time to mature as an artist is at hands. What is clear is that I'm constantly on a path somewhere, trying to become better, and what I think is "better" than the pictures draw now varies all the time. But at least I'm on my way forward.

 

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That should suffice as an introducion. (Kind of a lot of stuff about video games. Ahem... )