new faces.

Today I start the new story. Not a very big one, neither very small. It's just the right size for what it's suppose to tell. All in all, each story should be measured for the moment it carries, not for the amount of pages it has.

As it's just the first page, I'm yet unfamiliar with the characters. They are strangers to me.

I hope to change that before the end of next week.

Talking a lot but saying very little.

The days are really flying before the San Diego Comicon. We're both drawing new stories and, aside from that, a really big number of projects are coming together quite nicely. Soon, we'll have something new and exciting to say.

Well, if you like comics, that is.

If you don't, chances are you're lost on the internet and ended up in some crazy brazilian twins' website. They talked funny and you stayed a while.

Maybe you'll be back some day.

Maybe I'll have something related to the crazy fashion week that's going on in Sao Paulo this week to share.

If you're lucky, maybe I'll show some new pictures.

I just checked out the previews page for Smoke and Guns.

Great way to begin my day.

Do you feel like running?

It happens every time June arrives.
The hurry.
So many thing to do, so many pages to prepare, ideas to put down on paper and projects to read and write. Every year, it's crazy around June.

There's no reason to wait for something exciting to happen. You, and you alone, is responsible for your success, for your accomplishments, so you better go after what you want whenever you can, all the time, until you get it.
And, if you're going after your dreams, do it fast.

Comics are hard. You'll have to work a lot, more than most people you know. You'll probably have to believe in yourself more than most people you know. Most people you know feel like shit, but even like that they can do their jobs. You, on the other hand, is going after something higher than the average. You're fabricating dreams, putting down on paper the life of characters, of people, of ideals you (and hopefully others) believe in.
You're in it for good and bad, so you better give it your best if you want it to last.

You know you'll always be a comic book storyteller, but if you don't work hard, you'll only be that inside your head.

Follow the lines.

As we move towards new things, this is something that we do: sketches. As we're translating our ideas into a story, we have to always translate what we see to the paper through our drawings, and it's by constantly drawing that we guarantee that, when the time comes to do the actual paper, we have no problem drawing anything we feel like drawing, all these things we think it's cool until we reach the annoying point of having to draw them.

After the weekend.

I had a dream with comics this weekend. I don't remember much of it, but it made me feel good while it lasted. It made me feel I was on the right track, despite the bumps on the road.

We're less than a month away from the San Diego convention, which is, mostly, our biggest link to the american comic book market. It's there that we meet new people, just as well as we meet the ones we already know. It's there that people who have bought some of our books have the chance to meet us face-to-face, have a book autographed and even get a sketch - just don't ask for horses!

I wonder if we put too much of our energy into this one trip. In doing so, we're mostly putting a lot of effort in our artist's career, as we're always showing what we've done between conventions to the editors we know (and to some we just met).

But what about the stories? How much easier does it get, year after year, to tell our own stories?

MirrorMask trailer

Here's the link for the new MirrorMask trailer. As I have no idea when the movie will be shown in Brazil (and even if it will be shown at all), I marvel at this little internet treats.

I think the best way to describe anything Dave McKean does is "Hey, this is incredible, I have no idea how he did it and it looks great!" He mix elements of drawings, painting, sculpture, computer 3D images and effects, real people, real sets, all together to create something that looks unique. He does not use "special effects" to do the ordinary and the expected.

He's a weird man, and his vision of the world is a fascinating one.

Loose...


Sometimes I feel you have to play with the images to jump-start your brain.

The Gunned Down Crew, top row from left: Jefferson Costa, Grampa, Kako, Bruno D'Angelo, Ricardo Giassetti, Clayton Jr.; bottom row from left: Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba, Shane Amaya, Cobiaco. Not pictured: Rafael Coutinho, Jeremy Nisen, Pam Noles, and Peov. Photo by Douglas Kawazu.

Aside from Shane, all others on this picture are brazilians. It's probably the first time I've been in a project where I knew most of the people involved (and this amount of individuals was bigger than four). Strangely enough, I wasn't familiar with everybody's work and was pleasantly surprised when I saw all the pages from the book.

Some news should be broadcasted.

The Black Diamond will be available for retailers with a free 50% overship, so you'll be able to see the 6 page preview of Smoke and Guns before the book actually comes out.



And, speaking of books, here's the official press release of Gunned Down, the western anthology my brother and I did stories for. After you read the press release, you'll no doubt won't stand your curiosity to discover the brand new Terra Major website, which has several pages of preview art from Gunned Down and from Prey 2, another comic book Shane and Bruno are releasing for the San Diego Comicon.

You know it, don't you?

You go to sleep and you're thinking about it. You wake up the next morning and it's the first thing on your mind. Something has to be done.

That's when you read. You go, open a book and start reading, trying as hard as you can to dive into the book's world, forgetting your own and, hopefully, forgetting about this idea that doesn't leave your mind.

It's useless.

In the book you start finding words you want to use, characters you want to use (and kill, of course), you find yourself writing a complete different book as you read the one you hold in your hands.

Same thing with movies. Try watching a movie and you'll see the actors acting, in your mind, the story that's growing inside of you, speaking the lines you want them to speak, doing it in a dark alley just like you imagined.

Sight.

Let's go back to the blank piece of paper, then. Let's stop in front of it, breathe, think that you really want a cup of coffee, and go and stand up to get one.

Coffee always helps.

It won't save you from your story, though. You will still come back to the blank piece of paper and still you'll have to create your next story, your next characters, your next step on the way to the rest of your life.

But it somehow seems easier now, with my warm cup of coffee on my hand.

I can almost smell it. I love the way a fresh out of the printer book smells. I guess that, for this book, I would love it even if it smelled really bad.

Hand me your cigarette.

One of the good things of working on a big story with lots of characters is trying to find a different movement for each one. I like to draw people smoking, holding their cigarettes, puffing and everything, because I know that many people do smoke but they all probably do it differently.

There are several ways you can hold your cigarette, just as many as you can keep it between your closed lips. Some smokers can talk while still with the cigarette in their mouths, some can't.

Hands are very expressive and are great tools to make a character more dramatic. When this character smokes, you almost always have something in the character's hands so you are always using the hands to say more about the character.

Today.


Let's all work for a better today. Let it be today (and tomorrow, and the day after) the day we go after our best. Let us chase our future as if it's only up to us to be grand.

It is only up to us.

Today, I was born. So was my brother.

Today I remember that life is great when you live it fully.

Let us live life fully.

Let us do what we love, and love who we have around, and dream of the life we want.

Let us wake up to realize the life we want is already the life we have.

Happy birthday, my brother.

If you want to draw, there's nothing stopping you and you should always be drawing. There's nothing that will do better for your skills than practicing.

It's much like dancing. You have to keep doing it so you can learn to listen to the music.

...

I hear the color guide to the cover of Smoke and Guns is awesome, although I would have to be in San Francisco right now to really know. But I'll see it when everyone sees it, and that's good enough for me. I'm glad it will be ready in San Diego, just in time for some signing.

...

The other day, a friend of mine said you had more control over the story when you were doing comics compared to movies, 'cause comics are like small budget simple movies. I then interrupted and said that comics were the complete opposite of small budget movies.

Comics are big budget movies. We can do whatever we want. We can have our characters look like big movie stars, we can have fancy locations, around the world sets, the most incredible especial effects. We can go back in time and do epic historical stories. If you see that most comics turned into film were big budget movies, you'll see what I'm talking about.

The great thing about comics is the freedom we have to do everything we want. And that alone is priceless.

Sequential interview!

There's an interview with me at Sequential Tart, and it's a big one. Go check it out.

Talking a little about what's going on around here a bit, I also finished the story I did for the Gunned Down western anthology. The book is turning out to be a great collection of stories, from vey different artists, every one with a very distinct style. The cover's almost really, when it's done, I'll post an image here.

Did I mention all the artists in the anthology are brazillians? Well, they all are, about ten of them (of us). And, since we're all braziilian artists doing western stories, I found it peculiar that yet another brazillian artist is also drawing an western. It's funny how sometimes all these things happen at the same time.

Back to the drawing board.