I'm not here right now.

artwork by Gabriel Ba.

CASANOVA #1 is DONE!

And it will make the cover of April's Previews, of books shipping in June.

Research

We have been drawing a lot. Maybe that's why we don't have more time to write anything decent around here. There's a downside to that, but stories are being made. That's the most important thing.

To show some images, let's just say that my brother Gabriel does a lot of visual research. He loves creating worlds and loves to portray worlds that already exist.

In the spirit of the forthcoming New York convention, and to wish my friend Joe Prado good luck on his frst trip to the big apple, here are some sketches Ba did for the story we just finished that happens in NYC.







Still to come: from the thumbnail to the finished colored page.

Color.



This week, I have to finish the colors on our NYC Mech story. Last week was crazy busy with the last minute storyboard, and so this week I shall do the remaining pages.

It's looking really good so far. The best coloring I'd ever done.

I'll try to write up a step-by-step of part of it when I'm done, to show here.

Even if no one is looking.

Also, my brother and I have just come up with a new story for brazilian publication. We had the beginning already, but today we sat in front of each other and ping-ponged ideas until we had the whole thing plotted.

It's going to be big.

Nameless, as of right now, but that will change when the pages start to pour (I'm not sure I can say this that way and get my point across, but I'm brazilian, I can write weirdly).

We have been drawing stories other people have written for some time, specially for the american market, but what we really like to do is to tell our own stories. That's why we decided to do comics: to be storytellers.

We have some things to say, and we learned to draw so we could show those things.

...

Yesterday, we had a long conversation on the phone with Diana Schutz, our editor at Dark Horse, about our upcoming book De:TALES. She made a lot of notes about the order of the stories, about the cover and about the design of the book. We could see that she had spent a lot of time actually reading our stories and thinking about what would be best in one book, and that's what an editor should do: see what works for the book and what doesn't. And tell you why.

She told us all the whys she had for our book.

And she told us we're in very good shape.

The book should be on PREVIEWS shortly.

e-mail.
I'm testing sending off post via e-mail. I'm not sure if that will fasten my side of things, or if I'll post more, but I thought it couldn't hurt to do this test. Lots of comics on our table this week. But then a storyboard comes and I feel a wreck. It's two in the morning and I'm going to sleep, should be up at nine.

While I'm sleeping, you should read this: Paul Pope is shortly interviewed in Wired. If there's a guy nowadays to always keep an eye on, this guy is Paul Pope.

This week.



Doing comics is fun. It's like something inside of you is just set on fire, and you become somebody else when you're doing it. Or maybe you become yourself when you're doing comics, and that's why it's so hard to do anything else after you tasted the sweet flavor only comics can give you.

I did a story with my brother for an NYC mech anthology book. It was a blast, and my share of the work so far was only coming up with the story together with him. He did the artwork (and took a break from Casanova for that) and now I'm back on the job to color the story.

I'll just say this. NY is fun to draw.