At the end of today I looked at my desk

Bá and I work on many projects at the same time. Part as a result of being a freelancer and thinking we have to accept every offer we get ( dreading not having any after we finish the current book), and part just because there are projects, invitations and people who want to collaborate with us that we can't simply say no – they're too good to pass –, we end up working on many things, some big, some small, some writing for ourselves to draw, and some drawing what others have written.
So, from time to time, when we finish something and have a little time to step back and look at what we're doing... well, to look at our drawing board, then we get so see some of these many facets of the delicate crystal we work on.
Tonight, I finished the first draft of a new script and sent it over to the editor.  That's the high point of my week – the awful game on tuesday being the low – so I stepped back and tried to look at my drawing board.

My sketchbook has a figure drawing of a woman from last year's class I gave (I have something I can't show yet on another page, so I flipped it to that page to take this picture).
On the top left, I have some bookplates left for the BPRD: Vampire TPB that we did for Gosh.
I started to sort out original art to take with me to San Diego for Comic Con, and that's why the Killjoys variant cover I did is there, looking right at us.
The bottom left is what's left of color studies and preparation for coloring my story for the Magenta issue of the CMYK Vertigo Quarterly anthology.
On the right, the script and the layouts of Casanova 4.2, which I'm working on and am afraid I'm a little late.

Boom!
Pa-Zow!
Back to work. It doesn't really matter if you work on one project, or on many. If you believe in what you're doing, it's all worth it, and you should give it everything you have.

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.

Casanova cover doodle

I today ran into the script I had for the first Casanova issue I did the artwork, and on its cover page, I found this first cover doodle for the idea Bá and I were talking about.

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.

Last curtain.

If you really like something you did, you feel like you're still working on it in your mind. Every time you look at it again, you are either retouching a brush stroke, or creating an entire new image that continues where you had left off. You are discovering it as if you were the reader, and yet you recognize yourself and all the hours you spent working and creating.

It has been more than six months since I've worked from anybody else's scripts other than my own, and it's nice. At the same time, I see Bá working on Casanova - or on the Umbrella Academy, as is the case this week - and I wonder what would I do differently if I had read that script. A lot of the stuff I think Bá came up with was actually on the script, but I can't imagine myself doing it like that even if that was asked for.

All scripts I read so far in my life were hard to read. They were not prose, nor poetry, nor plays. They were comic book scripts, and they were very mechanic in format. I'm still not used to that, as I tend to only write dialogues on my scripts, like a play, but eventually I get it's rhythm and then everything is okay.