Our History
After finishing the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 1999 and a successful separate art exhibition in Stockholm, my brother contacted me in the spring of 2000. He had recently started working with comic strip syndication and had a big deal on the cards. The client, however, had one demand - that all the strips that were in black and white would be colored. My entrepreneur of a brother asked me if I could do the job. Not only were there a hundred of them, but the deadline was also apparently yesterday.
The office back in 2009
Thankfully I had previously taken a course in digital design, where they had taught us the very first version of Photoshop, and studied art graphics at the academy. In two days, all files were ready and delivered! The customer was thrilled and demanded that “whoever had done such a good job - had to continue doing it". So I turned my father-in-law's sauna into an office and started producing.
Soon more clients started showing up with new individual assignments. As the business grew I upgraded from the office-turned sauna into a new place, which felt very luxurious with its stable internet connection and windows.
Up until then, I had worked on my own as a freelancer, but after some major clients such as Egmont and Strand & Øverli expressed their interest in both coloring and layout services, I decided to form a company. Back in October 2001 I bought an office in the center of Vilnius's old town and called some of my old coursemates from the academy. I invested the profits I had received from my art exhibition in a new computer and office equipment. Soon we were a group of eight people with a very nice office!
ASII receiving a diploma for outstanding color work from Svenska Serieakademin in 2015
Alf Steinsvik and Tony Cronstam at Stockholm Comic Con in 2015
Our clientele continued expanding both in Scandinavia and Central Europe. Today it has been twenty years since I started ASII in my father-in-law's sauna. Going from volume coloring of comics, to book and game design has made our work increasingly more advanced. The work we do is challenging and provides a lot of variety, making every new day at ASII just as exciting and creatively stimulating as the previous one.
- Alf Steinsvik │2021
