Attitude.
and a bit of memory loss.

If the previous strips were based on some of my girl friends' experiences, this one was entirely mine. Sometimes, you're asked flat out about something and, suddenly, you forget the answer that you always knew. If you're at work and your boss asks you something you know but just can remember right there on the spot, it can cost your job. If you're at a bar, it can cost you the girl you saw.

Doing comics is a serious matter.



I guess yesterday was a serious day. The "I get a new book out" day. As such, we decided to try and look serious. It was the least we could do, and our best shot at being taken seriously at our new book's party. We do comic books, after all, and there's a limit to how serious we can get. But we try.

You went and made a joke and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Okay, that's that for being serious. Now I'm back to trying to come up with girl situations. I'm not much of a words on a t-shirt kinda guy, I preffer my tees flat, but I'm always trying to figure what the person wearing the t-shirt is really saying.

Or maybe what each one reads.

This is not realy something related to comics and it is not something you will enjoy at the most, but we have changed our website 2 weeks ago and there are lot's of interesting things about us and our work there.

What;s the problem, then? Well, the site is in portuguese. There is ONE page in english where we point people the way to end up here.

My point is, even if you don't understand the words, there are a lot of nice images and we put some effort on the design and usage of the site, so if you have the chance, go there and take a look.

Free time.

What are you going to do with all your free time? You can rest, for your day must have been hard. You can go out and have a good time with your friends. You like them and they like you. I'm sure you're all busy people and always wish you had more time to spend with each other. You can find yourself a hobby for your free time and spend quality time improving your body and soul.

That's right, there's a lot of things you can do with your free time.

You go and enjoy it.

If you want to become a comic book artist, when you get some free time, you'll always be drawing. Or writing, if you have any dream about becoming an writer. You can do both, of course, I sure do try, but you only have so much free time and you'll have to squeeze everything in it in order to work (free) time enough so someone will be interested in looking at your work.

"If I do my comics on my free time, am I working for free?", the smart ones may ask. Yes, you are. And you'll probably work a lot for free before someone hires you. Try to see it as practice. We all need to practice. The comic book artist needs to do comic book pages in order to learn how to be a comic book artist. No sketchbook, no illustration work, no story-boards, no other drawing job, nothing teaches you how to do comics the way you learn when you do comics, so you'll need to practice doing comics. Those ones, you'll most likely will do for free and there's a good chance they'll suck.

We have to do several bad comics before we can do a good one.

Next week, my new brazilian book comes out. It's a collection of short stories I've been working on with my brother for the past three years. This book is the result of a lot of well spent free time. Here is the cover.

I like it.

What single women think.

I've been playing here with this ideas for comic strips about girls. Not always funny, they were made so that I could explore more female characters, trying to find more about the way girls think, the way they behave and how interesting they can be.

And just so nobody starts thinking otherwise ('cause I read his blog regularly and wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings), I have nothing against gays. Two of my best friends are gay. But I also have a lot of female friends complaining about the lack of men in their lives. That's how this strip started. When I showed this strip to my gay friend, he just said that he was having trouble finding gay man as well.

In the absence of men, I suddenly found myself in a Vertigo book. I better go look for my monkey.

Weekend girls.

My favorite subject, as an artist, is without a doubt the woman. I just love drawing women.

When you stop to think about the super heroes, you'll see that the guys, in their tights and uniforms, are made of shapes. Muscles and more muscles define the super guy. The girls, on the other hand, are made of lines. The line of her hair, the line we trace from the top of her neck to the bottom of her back; their shoulders, delicate yet strong; their lips, drawing a smile from which we ourselves can't resist and follow. When I'm drawing a guy, I'm building. When I'm drawing a girl, I'm following a line.

I guess that's why I don't see myself as a big super-hero artist. When it comes to drawing the strong guy who can break a wall, I prefer drawing a girl who can break your heart.

Ursula.

In Brasil, there's a lot of love for Ursula. Some say it's their favorite story (from the ones we made, that is). It's great to have it published in english as well so we can continue spreading the love for Ursula.

We already sold more than a thousand copies of Ursula in english.

I'm happy.

Work in progress.



Even one panel (this one is from a new story) is several at once. It's the panel you imagine when you write the story,it's the doodle you make on your thumbnail, it's the panel on the actual page once you pencil it and it's the same one, again, when you ink it.

You better like what you do in order to stand seeing your work over and over before it even gets out to the reader.

Another review on URSULA and the first bad one, for that matter. Reviews are always a good thing and they show us that different people like different things.

To read the review, click here.

The best teacher.



If you really want to do comic books, and you want to draw them, you must know Will Eisner's work. I'm not telling you that you probably know who he is and what he did, I'm saying that you have an obligation of knowing how he did - and still does - some of the most innovative and atemporal comic book pages of our times. He's the kind of artist that, if you look at his work over and over, there will always be something new for you to learn from it.

Eisner always put the reader inside the story, making a world we all believed in. His background showed us people lived there. His characters had the best body language you'll ever find in a comic book, and his style was everything at once: modern, classic, classy, bold, expressionist, minimal, poetic and sincere. He would do whatever it took to tell his stories. And he told them well.

Go buy yourself a Will Eisner book. NOW!

While doing the Smoke and Guns pages, I picture how would this particular page be if it were drawn by Will Eisner. I know my version will look different, but just the sensation to be working on the kind of story you can image Will Eisner doing always makes my day.

Good Luck today.

or
Meanwhile in Iraq...