introducing the major players - part two.

As a music that keeps playing, so should we. Keep playing, that is. Well, you undestood it, right? Anyway, here's the second "band member" of our ROCK'n'ROLL comic book, the oldest one:

THE CRAZY GENIUS.


At one point of another, we all wanted to be like him. He was so good, his ideas so fresh and his style so passionate that, by the time we met Kako, we wanted to be him.

He's Bruno's older brother, so you can imagine that Bruno wanted to be Kako long before we even met any of them. But it's refreshing to know that all of you haven't met him, or haven't seen his work, so we're ahead of you on this. Believe me when I tell you, he's just that good.

He's doing this comic book with us because we simply want him with us. He makes us look good. He makes the comic book different, and in a good way instead of a "I'm a mutant feared and hated from the world" way. He's almost a character in the story, but then, aren't we all?

introducing the major players - part one.

The internet can be a wonderful window to places far away. If you like what you see, you can try to go there someday. That's what I think when I talk about comics, creators, artists and writers: if you like what they do, the worlds they create, you can try to "go there" and find out more about it. With that in mind, I'll be taking some posts to talk a little bit about the artists involved in the new comic book I just did, called ROCK'n'ROLL. Each one has a unique style, and adds something different to the project, so I'm really proud to work with them on tis book. Without any further ado, lets get this thing started:

THE SMART MOUTH


He can talk himself out of any predicament. He can convince you that you need his services, that you should pay him highly sums of money for it - nothing fairer - and that he can do miracles in broad daylight. He just knows what you want to hear, and his job is to make you believe what he makes is what you wanted to see all along.

He's very good at it, by the way.

It's not easy being Bruno D'Angelo, to say the least. He have this really talented older brother, also an artist, which have consisted for a long time a barrier for Bruno's work to improve. So, before he actually improved, he developed the capacity to make people believe he was improving. In fact, he got so good at it that he also begun believing in himself, which caused him to actually start improving. That, and really hard work - for I have never seen someone draw so much as Bruno have in the last couple of year - made him an artist to admire and to hope to work with in the future.

That's why we asked him to do this new comic book with us. Luck for us, he said yes. We're in this boat together, and the sea awaits. Let's hunt the white whale before Bruno starts telling us how he already caught it, because if he does, we might believe him.

I might even be true.

(and, as I realized I could spend days thinking of things to say about Bruno, I remember I haven't said a important thing: Bruno has a really cool just opened website called Yello Jello where you can find tons of his work and so you can see for yourself more than I could possibly say about him.)

How do you learn? And how do you know if you HAVE learned?

I spent the last month making a new comic book. I came up with the story with my brother and we called two friends to divide the artwork. In a three chapter tale of adventure, mystery and horror, one artist would draw each chapter, leaving the remaining artist the cover job to divide the chapters. We all agreed to give it our best and to do something we haven't done before. It remains to be seen if we succeeded.

After I was done with each page, I would look at it with my brother and we would decide which one was the best panel of that page. When the next page was finished, we would do that again, only to discover that every new page was better than the previous, something that one should expect of himself when producing his work but that I was pleasantly surprised for actually seeing it happening. I have never been so satisfied about my own work before, nor have I been so dazzled by the magic of being impressed by my own work, so I can't help but wonder: when did I get so much better? How could I have learned so much from one work to the next?

This I know: The best way to learn how to make comics is by making them. In doing so, you'll make the mistakes you need to make to get it right, you'll see how you deal with the reality of creating worlds, how you manage to remain the same during the entire story in order to give your story a consistent voice, your own. I can say that every story I've made was the result of all my effort, and that, if I improved over the years, it was because my world got bigger, my reach went further and I could try to always do more.

The new comic book is done. We did our part. We must now set our baby loose so he can fly.

Here it comes...

So, we have finished another story. It is all done. As we always do, we put all the pages spread over the table to have a big picture of the whole thing, to see it all working together, harmoniously as instruments in an orchestra.

When I was looking at our Philharmonic that I realised that we had finished another story, another project was accomplished. Then I wondered if I would feel this way every time I would finish a story in the future. If this is the profession I have chosen and yet I always feel this joy when a can get the work done. Will I one day face the whole thing just as plain work, another job done, or will I always feel this happy when I create another story, have another idea, have another child?

There's only one way to know. So lets procreate!

Campos


Marcelo Campos (known in the american market as Marc Campos) is a great brazilian artist,with a very distinguish stile and outstanding notion of balance in black and white. Even-though nowadays he's not penciling anything anybody could see, his uncanny inking skills complete Ivan Reis's dynamic pencils at Action Comics every month.
Now he put up a website so more people can find out about his work. Go check it out! Now!

One look.



Isn't she lovely? I sure could not take my eyes off her, even when somebody else was talking. What could they possibly say that would be more interesting than her, there, standing in front of me, smiling with her silent eyes?

I smiled back.

It was the least I could do.

On a variety of subjects.

We got a very nice review of URSULA at the VARIETY's Bags and Boards. It may tell a little bit about the story, and it shows one of the best pages, but I found particularly gratifying to be given an A+. It's always nice to hear (or read, for that matter) good things about your work, but it can get a little awkward when there's so much of it. I don't know if I put on my proud face or if I just run and hide on a cave. Artists can get really shy sometimes, you know?

KNOCKED OUT BY THE COMPETITION.



He is just great. Every page is a explosion of action, every face is an emotion, every gesture tells the story. He is the artist we follow in whichever book he works on, and we love and hate him at the same time. We love him because he brings to life, like nobody else, the characters we love so much. We hate him because, after we see his work, how can we thing our own work is any good?

Can that great artist make us give up on becoming comic book artists ourselves?

Not if we're smart. The first thing we need to learn is a good example to follow. A bad example will do - and you see more aspiring artists from this category than you'd want to -, but a good example will make more than impress your eyes with nice pictures: it will impress your mind with new ideas. The good art is the one that makes us think, remember and makes such an impression on you that you will be forever changed.

If there's one thing I learned from having worked with my brother, it's that competition is good. Even if your competitor is miles ahead of you, it gives you a point of reference with your own work, and it makes you always remember that your work can be different, and that it can be better. I might not have started to draw if it weren't for my brother, and I might have stopped a long time ago if we weren't always competing to see who was the best. The best at what, you might ask? The best at being ourselves, for competitions are not about being equal, it's about being different. The work is the only one which wins.

Working with comic books makes me very critical of the medium, but I still fall flat on my face with a lot of artists, for they are just that good, and getting better. We should all be so lucky to have such incredible people making your profession look good. Strive for greatness, in your own time. Don't ever forget that the artists we admire, who still amaze us with every page they do, who better themselves work after work, they just remind us that comics are just great and infinite in it's array of possibilities. The poetry of a good comic book you will carry forever, even if it wasn't one of your making, and sometimes even if it was one of our own.

Set your dream to ring. a true story

In my dream, I had just arrived in San Diego with the rest of the gang from this foreign shores. We were excited, it was a beautiful day and we were unpacking in our room, discussing what were we to do in that day, one prior to the opening of the convention. And then I remembered.

We didn't pre-registered to the convention. All those months ago, when we bought the plane tickets and arranged everything else, we forgot about the pre-registration for our professional badge. Probably, I kept thinking, because it was free and we were only focusing on money issues.

Now that the convention was just before us, we would have to go there and pay for our badge, get in that giant line and wait with that "I'm stupid" sign hanging in our forehead, just because we forgot to send a fax a month and a half ago. As all that just happened in my head and I said nothing to my friends, we all left the hostel filled with pure happiness, laughing and jumping, only worried about enjoying the day. The time had passed, I gathered, I was of no use to make them worry about nothing like me. In my dream, it was all my fault, but I didn't took it too seriously on myself, for I already knew as we kept walking on fifth avenue that I was dreaming.

And then I woke up.

I woke up and I started laughing. I still had time to get my free professional badge. I went and told my dream to my brother and he started laughing too. But the finishing touch came when we went to the convention site to get our forms:

It was THE LAST DAY. If I hadn't had that dream, it would have become my reality.

Now, we're set to go. The only thing that keeps worrying me is this other dreams I'm having, about talking monkeys driving cars. It sure makes me look twice before crossing the streets.

The artist.


This is an excerpt (via Newsarama) of the upcoming Dark Horse book, EISNER/MILLER, coming out in July.

MILLER: What are some of the things you love most about cartooning?

EISNER: To me, inking is sexy.

MILLER: Inking is very sexy!

EISNER: It's like downhill skiing.

MILLER: Especially brush.

EISNER: I've always used a brush.

MILLER: The brush is the most erotic tool you could work with.

Inking was, for some time, a lost art. First, the disposable pens came and replaced technical pens (those nightmares to get a grip of), who also came to try and replace the brush and the quill. After that battle, came the computer and the digital inking (which still is basically leveling the pencil to black and filling the black areas), which seemed practical in terms of time but lost a lot in which inking is most important: clear storytelling. More than applying black, it's finishing the look of the page for the images to be "read". If you think of everything the page needs and put it on the page while you're doing you pencil, your pencilled paged may already be "inked", but that is rarely the case.

Inking with a brush IS very sexy, indeed. It's not the easiest inking method to learn, but it gives a "hand made" look to the page that has no equal. Somebody was there, on that page, and left his mark.

We are storytellers when the draw the page. We are professionals when we deliver it in time.

And we feel like artists when we're inking with brush.

Doing a comic book the brazilian way

PART FOUR: The late meeting.

I've been doing comics for some time now. all theses years, I've worked with my twin brother, so we pretty much understand each other without having to say much about what we want. We just exchange looks and already know what needs to be changed, what's great and that little panel he just did that will blow everybody's mind off. Working with my brother is the best work relation I could have, but now, for the first time, we're facing this different scenario to our stories: the guest artist.

Yesterday, after eight at night, when he could leave his art director job and come to join us, our artist friend came to our studio to show how his pages were going. The script we gave him was pretty visual, being a practical explanation from one artist to the other, and it left no doubt on what was happening on the story and what we wanted to show. However, when he showed his rough thumbnails - and his were giant thumbnails, almost the actual size of the magazine - we were amazed on how different and fresh his take was on what we gave him. It was the first time I wrote something, imagining how it would look like, and it looked completely different.

And it looked great.

When you write the script, have in mind that the artist is no idiot. He wants to make the story looks good. Your script must tell the artist everything that you need for the story to work, but must not impose on him how you want the pages to be drawn. I haven't realized the difference on that before, but now I'm getting closer.

My brother and I work by ourselves mainly to guarantee the quality of our comics, something that we feared would not be as safe with a guest artist. But all that's too safe has no surprises, and the surprises we face along the way are the ones that make life worth living.

Life is good when you're doing comics.

The talk of the week

I see all around that people are talking about the just arrived first issue of Astonishing X-Men. It is, after all, the only X-book that could matter after Grant Morrison's run on the title. I haven't seen it, of course, being in Brazil and all, but I will talk about it a bit anyway.

To start, let's talk about Morrison. I read most of that already and I can say this: it was fun! You didn't need to know all about the X-Men, and yet you were not displeased with the way they were portrayed. They went to their core, almost iconic selves, and they kicked ass. Simple as that. Fun.

As an artist, I shall also talk about the pictures, and most of it was nice. I really like Frank Quitely's work, I enjoyed Igor Kordey's run, bizarre as it was, and I always like what Bachallo is capable of. The rest of the lot didn't quite cause any impression in me. Maybe that was the biggest turn off on the book for me: the constantly changing art team.

Now, Morrison went on to bigger and better things, and we're left with the left-overs of the X-Men line: the same creators who just switched books and characters, and a brand new book for the Buffy writer. He's the only one we don't know what to expect, really, and that's probably the only interesting thing about his X-Men book. Cassaday's art is great, I love the guy, but it's just another X-Men book where we know people will talk a lot and make jokes and sarcastic remarks about everything.

One last word, about the coloring. Here we have Laura Martin again coloring Cassaday's work. When they worked together on Planetary, I thought comics were fun again, and great to look at. I'm just a little afraid now that, after her "vacation-time" in Florida working for CrossGen, her coloring style went too cute and overdone and might get in the way of the artwork.

I'll get back to it once I see it. But you already saw it, feel free to give your opinion.

( and don't forget to check out our interview at newsarama! )

Hi, this is Gabriel speaking and I am alive and well and, some times, I will be putting stuff here too.
So, there is an interview with us about URSULA at Newsarama.com.

There are some interesting questions there to which interesting answers were given.

Our working routine

The Challenge

The first time we went to an Eisner Award, Frank Miller was the keynote speaker. He opened the ceremony saying that we, the artists, should be always facing the challenge that is doing comics in a time when it's much easier doing anything else.

I can say I only draw for a living. I do a lot of illustration work for magazines and newspapers, I do story-boards for films, advertising and music videos, I even did caricatures for a while (but that time is long gone now). I know it's possible for anybody to earn decent money as an illustrator. In time, if you're good enough, you don't even have to work yourself to death, choosing only the better jobs (or being chosen by better people).

So why comics? Independent comics, to be accurate, where it will take a while for you to make money (money? what money?)

Let's go back to the challenge. You do comics because of this chalenge you must face, because you just can't take the easy road. There's only one road for you, and it's the road of a thousand comic book pages. For you, comics is not what you do, it's what you are.

Let me tell you now, you are in trouble.

Aren't we all?

And isn't it great?

The guy, the thing and the place.

In Brazil, we have awards for comics as well. Our equivalent to the Eisner Awards is called HQ Mix, and last week they announced the nominees. We're running in three categories this year:

-best artist (F‡bio Moon and Gabriel B‡): We always sign everything together, so we probably will never compete against each other.

-best independent publication (Feliz Anivers‡rio, Meu Amigo): This is a comic book we self published last year and got a lot of attention, a lot of praise and is almost sold out by now. It's a great story about friendship and this is the one I think should really win in this category.

-best artist's blog (Os Loucos): This blog's Brazilian brother, the blog we write in portuguese to tell our brazilian fans what we think, what we're doing and how to do comic books (yes, we spill the goods in that one) is a strong nominee. And this is a recently created category, but I think it's a good one, because in Brazil the market is not big and it's of great help if you have a blog for people from all over the country to see what you're up to. We don't put stories on-line, but people get interested in our work just by reading what we have to say (write, actually), which is something I hope happens around here as well.

The ceremony will happen sometime in June, I think, and I'll let you know if my brother and I won anything.

Doing a comic book the brazilian way

PART THREE: No excuses.

Deadlines are for super heroes. Those magazines survive mainly on the addiction of fans who need their fix every month. If you need to have your book out every month, you need deadlines, and if you have to draw five to ten pages a week, your main concern in that the pages get done, but if you are an independent creator, you can take advantage of the more flexible schedule and make sure your work is the best you can do.

If you're doing your own thing, you'll publish and you'll sell it, you don't have to hurry, but you can't take forever either. You have to tell yourself that the work needs to be done, and that no one else will do it for you (or even pressure you about when it will be ready).

This week was crazy and a lot of work landed on us. Illustration work, the one we do so we get money to pay our bills, and the one we do so we only worry about doing the best comics we can, even if we still aren't getting paid. My point is, I didn't draw as many pages as I wanted. And I know next week will be even crazier, so I don't know how much work on our story we'll do then as well.

So what do I do?

I keep writing down that I'm doing this magazine for the San Diego Comicon, I say in interviews that I will have a new comic for the San Diego Comicon and I let everybody know what I'm doing, so I have no excuse but to do the damn thing.

Because that's what making comics is about: realizing you're the only one who can stop yourself from telling your story.

adding to the above

So far, I've been doing these drawings to start getting into the story's mood. This last one was a more serious one, to be used as a reference for all four artists to follow. Next week, I'll try to post drawings from the others.

how should I begin?

Beginnings are tricky, if you ask me. How are you going to begin your story? Not every beginning is the first thing that happens, sometimes it's not even the first thing you remember. You can start your story at any point, and thus comes the importance of the first thing you'll say: in a way, your point of view is there in the beginning, your choice of the importance of events tell us about the author more than it does about the story. It's a personal information that we only get at the beginning, it's the most important choice an author must make with the story he wants to tell, because it's not about the story, it's always about the way you'll tell it that will make a difference in the end.

Shame on the Heart Gone Coward in the Chest

"Shame on the heart gone coward in the chest!" cried out Roland, the once lost nephew of Charlemagne and now his left arm in battle, in the face of battle against the raging hordes of pagans that approached. He was outnumbered, his odds were poor, but his motives were right and he couldn't do wrong with his god. Even if it meant his death, he wouldn't run from his fate.

Neither should we.

We are outnumbered as well, and the odds are always against us. It's never an easy task to create from the ground up worlds people should believe in, characters to care for, stories to follow. We already have busy lives to live, and yet we search in our minds to find the lives of many imaginary characters, perhaps not even much different from ourselves, to see how this others lives are lived as well. We do more than just live our lives and we care for more than ourselves: We care for the way life is told.

We care for the way life is remembered.

For the lives we tell - and the lives we live - should be worth living.

Where great men go to die


It's just amazing how good can an unknown comic book be. We expect nothing less from comics made by the big companies, mainly because there's a lot of money involved in making them, so they better be good, but when you have a comic book that is made by a small independent publishing company (so small it's practically a one man show) that has a cover that looks this good, you should really check this out, even if you never heard anything from the creators involved.

And so you can read something about the creators, here's the press release for this book:

###

HORNS OF HATTIN

"O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind!"

So cries Everyman, the carefree protagonist of medieval literature's classic morality play, The Summoning of Everyman, when commanded by God to judgment. In a graphic adaptation, writer Shane L. Amaya
(Roland: Days of Wrath; Lord Takeyama) and artist Bruno D'Angelo (Prey; Lord Takeyama), set Everyman's tale in Jerusalem, in the late 12th century between the Second and Third Crusades, on the eve of a historical battle known as the Horns of Hattin. The armies of the King of Jerusalem stand arrayed against Saladin, medieval Islam's most famous Sultan, at whose hands the Latin army suffers a defeat that stuns Christendom.

In Horns of Hattin, Everyman is transformed from an allegory for the stage into a faithless Crusader who must reconcile his sins against his good deeds; prove the faith he has in friends, strength, kinsmen, and material things; and find salvation before his life's end, speared on the field of battle. The political intrigue, Everyman's role as a Crusader knight, his spiritual quest, and the disaster at Hattin combine to make a story that is at once medieval and contemporary.

Horns of Hattin is the third collaboration between Amaya and D'Angelo, and Amaya's second adaptation of a medieval classic. The action of the first, Roland: Days of Wrath, a retelling of the French epic poem,The Song of Roland, also centers on a historical defeat for Christians: the 778 A.D. battle in which Charlemagne's rear-guard was ambushed by Saracen brigands in the Pyrenees.

Horns of Hattin is published by Terra Major, established in 1999 as an independent publisher of historical fiction, and is the publisher's first original graphic novel (OGN). Horns of Hattin will debut in July, at San Diego Comic-Con International.

Horns of Hattin is a softcover OGN, 120 black-and-white pages in length, and will retail for $15 US. Intended for mature readers, it is currently listed in Diamond's Previews catalog (MAY04 2901; ISBN 0-9704149-1-9) for products shipping in July.