kidnapped by the workload.

illustration for brazilian newspaper.


illustration for brazilian newspaper.

Rod Reis.

Rod Reis is a brazilian colorist, currently coloring Supergirl for DC. I did this sketch friday while listening to him talk at a comics school here in Sao Paulo.

Fast.

illustration for a brazilian newspaper.

I had an hour to do this illustration and five others for a piece about the latest corruption news in Brazil for a brazilian newspaper. This kind of work is good because it makes you learn how to think fast, it sure makes you draw faster and it puts into perspective how much detail is necessary to convey what you want with your art.

Back to making comics look better.

Two from 1997

Old cover images from our fanzine in 1997. This is what it was like in 1997 and the entire reason we started telling our own stories.

We were lost on the road, no entirely sure what we would do.

Things didn't look good.

But they sure looked pretty.

fragile things.

Jen Wang's Home Portrait was the beautiful find of the day.

Also, I've been drooling over Bengal's work. Such a delicate line work, specially on his girls.

here, an old sketch:

this week's numbers.

According to this site, Casanova 2 held the 196th spot at the top 300 comics of July. Now, according to this other site, we can see Casanova 3 at the 200th spot.

If steady wins the race, until when we get to issue 4 and 5 and the numbers start increasing (because they are increasing).

A monthly book is a completely different beast from all our previous work on graphic novels. The good side is the constant feedback, and the downside is this uncertainty about the numbers.

So far, the numbers have been good, but should we really be that obsessed by them? we should know they're there and hope for the best, but sometimes I think knowing all that about "who sold what" and "that's selling more than this" is not good for the creative mind.

The ideas should come to tell the story, and sometimes they don't come if you're just thinking about something else, like numbers and money.

Numbers.

I'm on page 12 of the Graphic Novel. If all goes well, I should hit page 20 before next week.

Ba's on page 10 of the current issue of Casanova he's doing.

I did 2 submission pages.

Those are the numbers I rather talk about.

Casanova 4

Nice words about Casanova 4 on the Factual Opinion.

Bullies.

One of the several illustrations I'm doing for a book this month.

Nobody shoots my shoes.

It was around this time of year in 2004 when I started drawing Smoke and Guns. At the same time, I was doing some work at Lobo, and this job, which was an animation for an tv show, was done together with another motion design company called MK12. The guy at MK12 who was creating the scripts used in the animations was a guy we had just heard of when we read his comic book two months before: Matt Fraction.

I guess everything happens for a reason.

the AiT way of life.

I guess this ad comes to remind people there's always time to catch up with the good stuff we've done (and other good stuff in general).

Click HERE for Smoke and Guns.
Click HERE for Ursula.

Click HERE if you want to buy it online.

Trouble.

"I wonder what is he doing", she said. "Do you think he's safe?"

The old man stood quiet, just holding his bell. The sound that came out of it sounded like the answer she was afraid to get.

"You know him better than anyone else."



"Is he ever safe?"

"Is he ever not in trouble?"

Coming this week.

Has the world gone mad, or is it just me?

Something happened while I was doing these pages in the forest. I wanted to know what those characters were saying.

That's always a good sign.

I have 20 pages thumbnailed. Today I start drawing. If all goes well, I'll be able to keep doing one or two pages a day. If all goes more than well, this new technique I'm using will look nice and will actually be faster than the way I'm currently doing comics.

And, after a month's work, I'll have a lot of pages of nineteenth century people discussing if the world has gone mad.
(They won't look like the ones Becky's doing, but I'll try to entertain you just as well.)

New ones. One from each.

Not too much to say about this image, aside the fact that I'm pretty happy with it. Best forest I've ever done.



These are studies for characters for a book Ba's illustrating.

We have been working so much that, instead of getting tired of it, we're getting more and more excited.

"This", we think, "is really what's like to wake up and draw comics until you finish your day."

"This is our life now."

"This is good."

More pictures and less words.

We're just drawing too much. Working too much.

We are creating some amazing cool stuff, but it takes a lot of our time. Because of that, we have been far from the computer. If this can be a bad thing, I'm not really sure, but the pay-up is coming, and it's awesome.

I might try to update with more pictures and less words, just to keep thing rolling.

This is the cover for Casanova 7.

A beginning.

When you start a new story, what's the first image you put?

You may start with a wide shot to establish what's going on, where are the characters and things like that, to keep the reader from getting lost right in the beginning.

However, aren't some stories just like that?

There you are, lost in all these sea of images, none really grabbing your eye, and probably you're wondering off into your own head, when suddenly one detail catches you, steer you into the right direction, and that's when the story starts.

Right there, lost, you hold tight to that little image that comforts you.

When you realize, the detail is part of a much bigger story, a more interesting and beautiful one.

And that's when she turns and looks at you.

Covering the past.

Old stuff, from 1997, when we were doing fanzines (or mini comics) in college. One of the funniest things was playing "cover artist". As far as interior art goes, we have been fairly traditional. Black and white, traditional inking, all that. Most covers were like that, but from time to time, we tried different approaches.



Differently from comic book pages, a cover can be a nice single image, can have no background and still look awesome, and can have all kinds of techniques without getting too distracted. It was all a matter of playing with the design of this single image, and playing was fun.



Changing angles, choosing if the image of the cover would or would not have something to do with the pages within, varying black and white with pencil tones or washes, all that made the process of the covers a great way to think about what you can achieve with your images.



It was on those covers that I really discovered I liked to draw girls so much.

Funny monkeys.

Vasilis Lolos is a funny monkey. If you check out his preview for PIRATES OF CONEY ISLAND, you'll see just how talented he is. Aside from that, he's greek, and he's funny.

I keep expecting his hair to turn into snakes, or fire bursting from his eyes, but so far ha just make silent jokes.

It's a strange feeling, being a funny monkey. I have my share of it, just by the way people ask me questions as if they were expecting some different answer than the ones they would give me.

I'm not really funny, just occasionally.

I'm just happy.

Characters from life.

I love drawing from life. You can have the wildest imagination, but rarely you'll get as much diversity in terms of body language as by just looking and studies from real people.

Everybody moves differently.

In their own way, they move their hair, look to the side, smile. To take the "language" part of body language, you'll always learn new words when you study new people.

. . .

Ba finished the cover for Casanova 7, which is the last cover of the first "season". It's really good, and it shows how much Ba has evolved during this past eight months of work. It will also bring back some elements from previous covers in order to convey this sense of closure of the first arc.

. . .

I'm almost done with the script for the next graphic novel. I have a deadline, which can help a lot in terms of getting stuff done, and I have to start thumbnailing if I want to finish all of it by November. The next months will certainly be busy, which just make them much more fun.

. . .

The character I did the previous drawing is the same one I'm doing the studies for, and it's for a new short story. I often think that short stories, if not only good to tell moments of life, area good way to put your characters to some good use until their bigger stories are ready. This certainly seems the case, and hopefully the short story in question will make it easier to create the world and the mood for what I have planned for the characters I'm creating.

Characters that you love.

It's wonderful to create new characters, just like meeting new people, and yet with the same sense of silent recognition that we have when we meet old friends.

Some characters are visual and the most important thing is the way they look. Others are defined by the way they talk and by what they say. There are characters that look like many others, don't say anything special, but they are there for what they do, even if they only do one thing, and just once. If it's only one time, that was their time.

This year, I asked Terry Moore how he managed to do the same book for more than ten years, and he said:

"Create characters you love, and live with them."