Inktober #4 - Moon Girl

These drawings exercise my brain and my hand and my creativity. Maybe I'm spending too much time with them, time I should be spending on any other one of my... my...
I don't know how to call stories that aren't stories yet. I don't want to call them projects (even if that's what I call them when I have to write an email and say I'm already working on too many projects), and I don't want to call them ideas, even if that's what they are. My ideas are much more something that I feel that I want to turn into a sequence of images, to try to prolong this feeling and, perhaps, to make it grow into unexpected interesting moments.
"You hold the key to my heart", I say to her.
She knows.

Script/Layout

I had this one-page story to do and I usually draw a thumbnail and think just on the key sentences and dialogues. But I realized this one would have so much text that I needed the full text in order to see how much space I'd have left for the art.

So first I wrote all the text for the story. After that, I divided it in small blocks that would end up being the captions and balloons (that column on the left).

Then I started laying them down on the page. At first I wanted to do big panels, some "narrative panels" only with text (just like in Casanova), but I decided it would be best for the story if I did lots of small panels, even if a little art just to make it a real comicbook, you know?

I drew some panels there for guidance and now I'm gonna print this and draw on the remaining space.
I really don't do it like this very often, but sometimes you gotta go with what you get.

I gotta finish it by tomorrow. I'll miss the All-Star game to do it.

He speaks!

As most of you may already have noticed, Fábio does most of the talking – writing – around here. Not that he's the bright one or he's the one who knows how to speak in english, but the fact is that he's been trying harder to enchant the american public with our ideas than I have.

I think I've been too busy drawing comics – monthly comics for that matter – that I didn't feel the need to write so often. Also, for being so busy drawing, I didn't have lots to say other than what I was putting on paper, which was, on most cases, a secret until it went to press. So as much as I wanted to talk about what I was working on, I felt I could not.

But now that last year is gone and most of The Umbrella Academy has been published already, I can talk a little about some of my ideas and my worries and what I care about when it comes to comicbooks.

I think it's fair to start with Umbrella, since it has called so much attention and it took so much of my time last year (and, yes, it will take some of my time this year also). I gave up super-hero comics for a while now because I thought it was all too worn off and it was just a part of the big machine of selling comics, toys, T-shirts and making movies and it was not about the stories anymore. So from the first script of Umbrella when the kids are fighting the Eiffel Tower and "flying towards camera" and stuff like that, I had cold feet and feared to have had made the wrong choice about taking on The Umbrella Academy. When I got to issue #3 I was very worried, because it's almost all action. The parts I enjoyed the most were when Vanya appeared, because they were the pages with more emotion and depth.




But you know what? Since I was one of the skeptics of this series (maybe the most skeptical of all), I'm now also one of its biggest admirers, because I have to give it to Gerard that he told a great story, created some instant-liking characters and gave this worn-off genre a very fresh tale.

I'm kinda sad to confess this, but i've made the best pages of my life for The Umbrella Academy. It's just sad because I'm a storyteller and I like – and I WANT – to tell stories of my own and I wish I was drawing my own stories right now, or at least more of that and not only stories someone else has written, even if it's a good story. The fact that I liked the Umbrella story helped me a big deal when coming up with the pages, because as the story was taking shape in front of me, first on the layouts and then on the actual pages, I instantly knew I was doing something good, worth reading, something that was not like all other super-hero comics on the stands. And that's the main reason I want to work on new comics, just to make something different from everything else.



But you know, we have lots of new stuff cooking and in 2008 I'll be able to fulfill my need to tell stories, as well as drawing and working with other authors. Too bad we can't talk about any of these things right now. But that's the fun of it, right?



Changing the subject a little, or entirely, I'd like to say why I don't really write as much here as, let's say, on our blog in portuguese we keep for our readers in Brazil. Yes, as you may know, we are from Brazil and we've been making comics in Brazil a little longer than in the U.S. We have almost 10 books published and lots of independent work, some awards and some recognition, but the market in Brazil is much different from the american one, much smaller, so I feel the need to speak to the audience at large and tell them why comics are so great, why we must be taken seriously and what is possible with comicbooks. It's a never ending struggle to pass it along to the newcomers, readers and the majority who doesn't even read comics thinking it's silly things just for kids.



Four years ago, we have created this blog (in english) in order to do the same thing with our american readers (or anyone in the world who could read in english actually), because no one knew us then. But we have been working so much, specially on monthly series, that this audience can see our work on a regular basis and get acquaintanced with it a lot easier than our brazilian audience, who gets a new book year year or so. Books that are kinda hard to find, also, as in the U.S. the public already know where to get his favorite comic every month.

So I really whish i could have a mix of the two markets, produce as much as I do for the U.S., with big print runs, and still be able to write in portuguese, the most beautiful language in the world. Well, that's what I have to aim for and keep reaching, right?

All my friends say I work too much, I don't have time to go out. They ask me if I wanna change the world. Well, I do. And I believe it can be done with comicbooks and that's what I'm gonna keep doing: telling stories that can change the world of someone who's lucky enough to read it.

Under a tree.

Sitting under two trees that cast a welcome shadow in a sunny day, I remember that much more than a job, to draw is a pleasure, and a very personal one, one you share only with the paper, with the brush, a movement that takes you anywhere without you ever leaving.

January started as an eclipse, when the sun and the moon meet only to part again from each other. Bá was here yesterday on his last day before he took off to a desert beach, and I returned from a beach to now resume working. We sat together, we ate and we talked, making plans a month ahead. January is solely on each one's shoulder, and we only talk about what we'll do when we're together again. We have a lot of plans, we want to tell a lot of stories. This year can be better than the last, which was already very good, and we have to make it a better year if we want it to happen. We are in the making business, nothing suddenly appears, except for birds and bees, and nothing gets done by itself, except maybe the duration of a day (and not even that, to some, as we can have days to end days, and days to end weeks).

Let's make comics, even if under the shadow of a tree.

rainy sunday.

Summer rain falls all the time since yesterday. It's a shitty weather, today, and working seems inadequate. I still need some sort of work done, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't fit the way the world looks from my window. Right now, I wished it wasn't such a big window, which accounts to such a big shitty weather.

But, hey, it's summer. When it's not raining, the days are very hot. It's hot while it's raining, even.

That's summer. That's nice.

But I'm working. Still working. Always working.

I wish I didn't love work so much on sundays. I wish sundays looked like sundays to me, but they don't. They look like mondays, or tuesdays, and I work on mondays and tuesdays.

I love doing comics, and it's hard to do comics all the time in the summer.

The rain makes it easier, even with the shitty weather.

5, the rhino, and a bunch of our comics online.

When we started talking about 5, one of the early ideas was that of drawing animals with our characters. We never ended up using the rhino, but I just wanted to draw it anyway because it's cool as hell to draw.

Khepri.com is doing a great job at making sure you can get our book anywhere you are. From September 16th to September 22nd, not only 5 was the best selling item, but Casanova 2 was number three and Casanova 6 was number five. De:TALES was there too, on the best seller graphic novels, at number four. If you look at it, I think it might be the first time during this entire year that there isn't a Brian Wood book or comic on the top five best selling items at Khepri. A clear sign of the apocalypse, or a good start for the rest of us, comic book creators?

Becky seems to be well represented as well, with Nebuli, MINIS and American Virgin popping up on the list. This was a good week for the 5 crew.



click on the images above to get any of these AWESOME comics and get your fix on all things "twins". (well, maybe not all, but it's a good start)

Thinking, drawing, choosing.

I'm always thinking about the stories I've told and the ones I'm yet to tell. I'm always thinking about how much time I spend on the drawing board, and how much time must I spend outside, talking, interacting, living, in order to fuel my next stories. I think a lot about which stories I'm willing to draw, and that counts most when I'm drawing something I'm not writing. The answer isn't always the same. It shouldn't be, really. There're a million reasons to choose one story, to choose one character, to choose one writer. We're always choosing how we're going to spend the next year's worth of work, so we better think a lot before choosing.

This weekend, besides drawing Casanova pages, I came up with my pages for the super comic book we're doing for San Diego. Bá already thought of his story two weeks ago, so I had this feeling I was dragging my feet for the last two weeks. I did the thumbnails and I'm happy about them. They make me want to draw this story, so they did their job well. Now it's time to do mine.

What lies ahead?

This is a detail of an illustration I did last week for a brazilian magazine. And that's pretty much all I drew last week, as most of the other projects included thinking, and I'm always finding myself guilty for spending the entire day thinking. A little writing, to put thoughts to paper, but mostly thinking. Mostly in my head.

The good side of only thinking is that, if you need to have ideas, they'll come. You can have ideas all the time, when you're having fun at night, in the middle of a cold shower, any where, any time. But sometimes you NEED to think of something. If you haven't a drawer with ideas stashed for emergencies, there's nothing better than simply stop everything and think.

And think.

And think.

You'll either have an aneurism, or an idea.

This weekend, I had the idea I spent the entire week after. I had it on the beach, while looking in the distance while floating peacefully in the sea. I had it after an entire week talking with Bá every chance we got about it, throwing ideas back and forth, discussing what was exciting about what we wanted to say, and what did I wanted to draw on that story. We would talk on the car, during lunch, in front of the tv and at the studio. We had several good ideas, but not that one I was looking for.

I had to go swimming to find that one.

At the bottom of the ocean, I found out what do robots look forward when they get old.