Online Gigs Spreading

Like we all are very aware of, this global pandemic time has been difficult for many businesses, event producing being one of them. It's good to hear that some artist have figured out alternative ways of engaging with their audiences and supporters. Many artists have created online gigs and events to support their work and to give an alternative way for their fans to engage with their creations. J-P Ahonen, a very well known local illustrator and comic artist, is one good example of that. He's one of the artists who had lot of events cancelled but creatively managed to start something new for the replacement.

J-P Ahonen has published a lot of comic books during the years, Villimpi Pohjola and Belzebubs being probably one of his most recognable series. I personally came across to his works many years ago. That time I studied Fine Arts in Lahti, and had a phase where I read almost every comic book available in the city's library. J-P Ahonen's works were definitely one of my favourites from the Finnish comic artists.

J-P Ahonen

Nowadays Ahonen has had his hands full with different projects considering Belzebubs. For him it began as a simple improvised webcomic with heavy-metal vibes, but now it has evolved into a larger cross-media concept which combines music, animation and storytelling in general. Ahonen is a great heavy metal fan himself, so he's quite lucky being able to combine these passions together. He wanted to push the comic online since working for the web means you do not have to stick to certain rules or formats, and you can also incorporate music and animations. He had the idea of doing some music to use under his own animations. But as he knows musicians, one of his friends offered to provide some material. Things evolved, and Belzebubs grew from one thousand online followers to one hundred thousand, and they started to make proper demos and pitch the music forward.

Belzebubs The Comic

The comic strip is humorous, while the music, on the other hand, sounds quite serious. The comic artist says himself that they are two separate things, but sees no problem in them existing close to each other. He says he likes the contrast in that. The sharp difference between the humor of the strip and the seriousness of the music might get people off, like people don’t know how to approach it. And that's part of the fun for him really.

The corona outbreak hit J-P Ahonen and his partners with the Belzebubs concept hard as they were supposed to get their show on the road but were forced to cancel all their upcoming concerts. That left them in a big debt. They were thinking about alternative ways to survive this with the help of their fans. They didn't just wish to make a simple fund campaign, but actually give the supporters something back in return. They came up with the idea of animating two-song 360° video with the help of their fans via Indiegogo. With that, they could try to cover the pre-production costs from the live gigs while simultaneously producing something new and making up for the concerts the pandemic cancelled. The show was called The 360° Hexperience and was supposed to be viewable on a computer, tablet, smart phones and VR goggles when it's finished.

Participating myself to something - well - different :)

I really appreciate the work of J-P Ahonen and when I saw that he’s looking for people to support and participate in his virtual online gig, I took part with great interest. The process just seems interesting as it's something quite new and has lot of different elements there included. In their Indiegogo's page there were many different kind of ways to participate. At first I joked around taking part in one of the available options called crowd voice cast, but then I really ended up choosing that from all of them! :D

I did my part in the beginning of this October. They sent me the instructions and one audio file as an example. The task was that I needed to voice act being in a concert crowd and cheer on. Pretty simple - and at the same time not. If you didn’t have any fancier recording equipment you could just do it with your phone.

I knew I couldn't do that inside the apartment without any distracting sounds or getting the neighbours doubt my sanity so... I drove to one distant parking lot to do it inside a car. I was able to lend my friend’s microphone and recorder. My friend waited with the recording button and held the mic as I tried to make myself in a fitting mood for the concert. That means I basically listened to the music from the headphones really loud and just imagined myself being at a real gig.

The recording was great fun, and one of the weirdest things I’ve done in a while! :) I tried cheering and shouting in many kinds of ways and different lines that came to my mind. It was really hard not to feel super weird and die laughing at first, but as I didn't have too much time for the retakes I quickly got more serious about it. When my throat started to become sore and the higher pitched notes to crack up, it was time to wrap things up and drive back home to listen and edit the results.

That was another part where I died laughing. I separated the different lines and ranked the shouts and also asked a couple of friends about their ranking opinion. Then I edited the four best ones into one MP3 -file and sent it. I got a reply with thanks soon, and got some new updates about the process. Hopes up that the event will take place in December or soon in the beginning of the next year. :)