Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's blog

It's no tourist attraction


Comics are fun.

I grew up loving the fun in comics. They made me laugh, they made me cheer, they made me happy. That's what they do.

But doing comics is no ride in the park. I know a lot of my friends who, like myself, dreamed about becoming a great artist in our then-favorite super-hero book when they were young and nowadays have given up on doing comics just because it's too hard.

Is it really that hard?

Yes.

I think the bigger difficulty is to realize in how many levels doing comics is hard. First, you have to finish your comic, and most people I know give up before that. Those are the lazy ones, the "blame it on the system" ones. Then, after you finished your first - hopefully, not the last - comic, comes the part where you see what's right and what's wrong in your work, and for that you need to have an objective view of your own work. Not many artists have that. Not in the beginning, anyway. In the beginning, they think they're great and those suckers who disagree are schmucks. That's the wrong attitude, artists must learn to listen to criticism.

Well, you finally learn from your previous mistakes. Is that enough? No, of course not. By learning from what you did wrong, you can become a better artist at your work, but then a question arises: what if the work is not your own? Believe it or not, you have to be a better artist to tell somebody else's story, or at least to be paid to do it. If you're working on your own, you are an artist, and that's great, that's what I want to do, but if you want to work for others, then you have to become a professional.

Being professional is the hardest part. It's work at it's basic. You have to wake up, sit down and work till the work is done. Everyday. All the time. Always doing your best. Always trying harder.

And then it's ready.

Your comic book.

And you look at it, flip through, and realize it's still fun.