Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's blog

How do you learn? And how do you know if you HAVE learned?

I spent the last month making a new comic book. I came up with the story with my brother and we called two friends to divide the artwork. In a three chapter tale of adventure, mystery and horror, one artist would draw each chapter, leaving the remaining artist the cover job to divide the chapters. We all agreed to give it our best and to do something we haven't done before. It remains to be seen if we succeeded.

After I was done with each page, I would look at it with my brother and we would decide which one was the best panel of that page. When the next page was finished, we would do that again, only to discover that every new page was better than the previous, something that one should expect of himself when producing his work but that I was pleasantly surprised for actually seeing it happening. I have never been so satisfied about my own work before, nor have I been so dazzled by the magic of being impressed by my own work, so I can't help but wonder: when did I get so much better? How could I have learned so much from one work to the next?

This I know: The best way to learn how to make comics is by making them. In doing so, you'll make the mistakes you need to make to get it right, you'll see how you deal with the reality of creating worlds, how you manage to remain the same during the entire story in order to give your story a consistent voice, your own. I can say that every story I've made was the result of all my effort, and that, if I improved over the years, it was because my world got bigger, my reach went further and I could try to always do more.

The new comic book is done. We did our part. We must now set our baby loose so he can fly.