One gesture.



I love how expressive thumbnails can be. If you can narrow down gestures in a few small lines, you'll know your drawing will work when you actually do it.

. . .

Ba and I have been thinking about what to do next. Mini-series, graphic novel, one-shot, mini-comics... we don't really know yet. We have until next week to come up with a good idea for a short story, and that has been the main subject on all our conversations.

We have been looking for our cheat tickets to San Diego for SDCC, but so far the tickets are not that cheap. Since we already know where we're staying, the plane ticket is the only remaining detail left.

Well, that and to get there already knowing what to do next.

before we close for the day.



Here we have the pencil art and the inked version, side by side. I have planned to paint the background black from the start, but it's good to see how it works and how it really bring the characters up on the viewer's eyes. The black background frames the characters nicely.

I ink with a brush. The Winsor & Newton series 7 number 2 brush, which is a rather expensive brush, if you ask me. But there's just no equal. I've tried, and I keep trying, different brands and types of brush, and what I can achieve with one single brush is just incredible. In the end, it pays off to buy this brush.

Ba inks with those disposable ink pens, which he's great at (and is always improving), but that's no brush. We've been talking about finally trying to do something in which he pencils and I ink, instead of just collaborating on the story. It surely will look nothing like we have made before, and we'll finally be able to say we had a third twin brother that also writes and draws, but was kept secret since his birth, just working and eating some strange tropical brazilian fruits from inside our basement (which we don;t have, but we would if we had a third twin brother) . He grew up to be quite a strange twin, pale and silent, and his art style was unique and yet similar to both his brother's works. His first work would be no longer than 10 pages long. His next story, however, would have more than a thousand pages.

Faced with such a talent, we would again hide our third twin brother on the basement and keep doing comics just the two of us, at our own rather slow pace.

To begin the day.



This was the way yesterday ended, actually. Ba was doing the colors on some Casanova pages and I was working on some storyboards. It was well past midnight and we were tired. I decided it would be better to go to sleep, but not before capturing that strange moment working side by side in the middle of the night.

I was going to ink it this morning, but I decided (just after beginning to ink that face) to show some pencil work here. My work looks so much different when it's inked - which is okay with me, I like that way - that I realized this was a good example of how many decisions I make only when I'm inking.

Later on the day, I'll post the inked version. I just have to do some more storyboards first. Before that, I must have some lunch.

Must. Have. Lunch.

I drew one of the stories on this anthology. Most of the fun was trying to draw in a more "horror comic" style, with a lot of blacks, a lot of mood and a lot of zombies. I'm not sure I did so well regarding the amount of zombies, but the ones that do show up looked great. The second page is my favorite and the last page has the best zombie I ever did.

With the undead out of the way, I can go back to love stories, fantastic realism and the fairy tales of modern life.

. . .

Out this week is the new book by Becky Cloonan, East Coas Rising. I can't wait to see it, and none of you should wait anymore either. She's a great talent and I want to read everything she does.

The middle of the road.


First, you have nothing to show. You start out just because you want to tell stories. Maybe you want to draw them, maybe you just want to write them. Maybe, just like my case, you want to do both. Either way, you start from scratch.

Notebooks are filled with drawings, characters you're so eager to create, to draw and show the world. Most of them are drawn only once, without any story behind them. They were made because you start out making everything you want to make at the same time.

We all start out of control. Control is not a very artistic thing, one may think when picture him or herself as an artist-to-be.

You then realize that you have started more stories than you'll ever be able to finish in about one week, so you probably give them all up and start from scratch once more on new stories you think you'll be able to finish. Eventually, you finish your first story.

And it sucks.

I don't care if my first story did suck, I did it from beginning to end and I was proud of it. You should be, too. But, if it really did suck, I had to do better the next time. And so should you.

That's what I did. I hope.

Many stories later, you'll find yourself in the middle of the road. And that's when you realize you're not waiting for it to happen anymore. It's already happening. Wait no more. You're waiting thing to begin, maybe you're waiting things to end, but you're never waiting things to continue. They continue if you continue. You have to carry on on your own, for yourself, or it will all be over.

The middle of the road is the place where you'll find yourself an artist. You can either be the artist you became, or you can be someone else. Those are the paths, but you have to follow those paths, and not wait for them to follow you.

Life follow the ones who walk, not the ones who keep still.

Out.

I saw this on The Engine and it made me smile.

As long as it takes.

Some times I worry I'm not telling enough stories.

Which I'm not.

Then, I think that I rather be telling good stories, even if they take a long time to come out in the open. A good story lasts forever. That's worth all the time I have.

So I wait. The time for each story will come.

Differences.


Everybody looks different, and that's the best part about drawing people. When it comes to drawing, there's no such thing as "ugly" people. They're all "interesting". Most of the times, the more "abnormal" the person, the better, which just means that these people have more personality in it's features.

Maybe that's why drawing girls is so hard. Their soft skin and delicate faces are so hard to do and still mold to the emotion you're trying to convey. A wrong line can turn your princess into an old witch, or even worse, into a man.

But I love drawing girls.

And, if there is just one reason why I ink with a brush, it's to ink women.

End of the day, end of the story.



It's five in the morning and I'm wide awake since yesterday. I just finished my new story and, as the tradition I started with Smoke and Guns must continue, I worked on my last day on this story wearing my best suit.

I'm not sure when this new story will be published, or in what language it will come out first, but it sure feels great to be done with all the pages.

Off we go to more and more stories.

Oh, and since Casanova will be ON THE COVER of this month's PREVIEWS for books arriving in June, I think it's okay to show it to you the way it will come out.



I answered some questions for Publishers Weekly also, but I'm starting to gat sleepy and can't trust my fingers anymore, so no more typing today.

The spy and the fat hero.

the Image Comics solicitation for comics shipping in June is up on the net. There, you will finally find the solicitation for the first issue of Casanova, along with the first cover.

Which is this:



Two articles down on the main page (for now, as the internet moves so fast), you'll also find a preview for a comic book called Planetary Brigade, written by Keith Giffen and J.M DeMatteis. It's like their own Justice League. It's published by Boom! Studios.

Oh, and I'm one of the artists in it.

It's the first time I ever drew super heroes outside of my childhood's sketchbooks, and I did it out of curiosity. What would a script from Keith Giffen look like? How would I handle super heroes, action and those strange clothes? Could I do the pages no matter what I thought about the story, about the characters, about the book?

I mostly do my own stories, which means I mostly draw stories I believe in. I tried before to be just the artist and, in most cases, my art suffered a lot just because I didn't quite liked the stories I was drawing. One of the consequences of that was my giving up on trying to do the super heroes I grew up reading. I just didn't like the stories anymore, it all went too stupid and too different from the way I read it as a kid, that I felt I wouldn't like to draw those characters in such idiotic scripts.

Things chance and people grow. I still don't think I'm the kind of artist who can draw every story and make it look awesome, and I'm still pretty sure super heroes are not for me, but I can now work on somebody else's book without a sweat. Smoke and Guns, as much as I enjoyed it, wasn't my story, but I think I did a pretty good job in it. And I did it fast. After Smoke and Guns, I did not have any more problems finishing one page a day, at least. There was a pleasure hidden in working on somebody else's story, a challenge all it's own. "How will I make this work?"

Drawing other people's stories will make you a better artist, for it will make you draw things you wouldn't draw normally, just because you tend to write your stories having in mind what you already know how to draw. When you drawing for others, you have to draw the most unimaginable things.

That's the best part of it.

Planetary Brigade was work for hire. I was paid to do the pages, I received the scripts and I did the pages. I didn't create any characters (except for the monsters with wings, but they all die) and I didn't suggest anything regarding the script. I think the pages turned out okay as well, and it was very strange to see other people coloring my pages and lettering them. I'm very used to being a one-in-all kind of guy, and that was something new (or, at least, something that had not happened since 1999 when I finished Roland).

Here's one page.



You're always learning. You should never stop, or you'll be forgotten. Time waits for no men.

Neither do women. If you're stuck, they'll move on.

Everybody gotta keep dancing.

Let's tell more stories now, shall we?

Favorite subject.



Continuing our never ending study of the woman's form, here are more studies done by my brother for an upcoming issue of Casanova. Probably, none of these poses will be in the actual book, but it's always nice to get the hand warmed up on the smoothness of the woman's body before creating your characters out of thin air.



This week, it's all about the comics. I'm finishing the new story we're doing, Ba is doing Casanova and we have to start thinking of a new short story for an anthology. And we're already making plans for San Diego, or at least trying to find cheap plane tickets.

Day of the woman.


Every day, the woman is queen. Even if she doesn't know it.
Today is the day to remind her she's beautiful.

Raw words.
Read yourself RAW, which seems to be a virtual magazine, has some small words for our De:Tales book. After you're done with the small words, then you can go and read all the Alan Moore related articles in there as well.

Sketch.

I'm doing a new story, and I've made some sketches before I started. This is one. I'm pretty much doing two pages every day, and the story should soon be done.

Things would be much simpler if we didn't have to make money all the time and could just create stories for the joy of creation, and for others to read.

They won't understand.


It feels great to finish a comic book and start the next.
It's like nobody can touch you.
You're in the zone.
You hear the music.
You live the life.

And the work begins once more.


Ba started working on Casanova 2 today.

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.

Corto.



Pin up by Gabriel Ba for an exhibition about Hugo Pratt's most famous character, Corto Maltese. If you don't know the artist or the character, than you simply don't know good comics.

Vive le mode.


sketch by Gabriel Ba.

Yesterday we did something a little different from usual. We were invited to cover a fashion show. To document the backstage, to draw the girls, the clothes and the beautiful park the show took place.


sketch by Gabriel Ba.

We were there for hours, and it certainly was a different experience from the previous times we saw a fashion show, sitting on a chair inside a room with heavy air-conditioner.


sketch by Fabio Moon.

It's good to have to draw very fast. You have to make a lot of choices regarding which lines you'll include and which ones you'll leave out. You have to learn how to watch and how to translate what you see into simple figures.

Here, there's no time for the drawing made of shapes. No balls, squares, triangles. Here, we're following lines. We're following walking lines, actually.

They're pretty to look at.

Too young and too thin, tho.


sketch by Fabio Moon.

today's girl.


The same, yet different.

Every day, there's something to do.

Back in 2004, we were thinking about doing some animation. But we had to worry about the comics, so we just dropped it.

We made this test.

It looks awful.

Numbers.


The top 300 comics sold in December of 2005 are here, according to Diamond, and ROCK'nROLL is there at # 270.

I guess this is the second time my brother and I make this list. Since the first was when we worked on Autobiographix, I guess the fact that the book had a Frank Miller story, a Will Eisner story and a bunch of other stories from famous creators was the major factor for the sales that time around. This time, I'm pretty sure at least some three or four people ordered the book because it had my name in it. And then another couple of people ordered it because my brother was in it.

And the other three thousand people just love rock and roll.

Talking about the first new book for 2006


Matt Fraction talks about Casanova a little bit more in this Publishers Weekly article.

As the first issue proceeds at Ba's drawing board, jaws drop here at the studio. Unlike anything he has done before, this stuff is gorgeous.

For some time, the twins that write you these lines were worried that every comic book we worked on where the script was done by somebody else would lose some of the energy we put in it, just because it would be a story we didn't create, a subject not close to our own hearts.

Smoke and Guns was my test regarding this matter. The story of our beloved cigarette girl would never have come from my mind, and yet I enjoyed doing it immensely, and I think it shows on the page. And I never lost the enthusiasm, averaging two pages a day on the last leg of the work.

Now it's Ba's turn. More challenging than my choice of material, Ba is doing it monthly. Only time will tell how it will look after three or four months, but by the look of it right now, this is going to be great.

And also...

Smoke and Guns made the top five list of comics of 2005 acording to the Comic Treadmill blog. It's nice to be remembered, even if by a blog (or a guy writing one, anyway).

GUNNED DOWN in this month's PREVIEWS.


When you're doing an anthology, you feel like you're not working alone, even if you are. Your story becomes part of a bigger whole, just like you're entering a train with a bunch of other artists and you can't control exactly where this train is going.

Weird things can happen when you work with a lot of people at the same time.



In case you missed the first time around, and I'm sure a lot of people did miss it, Terra Major solicited Gunned Down in this month's PREVIEWS (to be available at your comic book store in March). This is a western anthology with a lot of artists and a lot of stories. Ten stories, to be exact. And did I mention that all the artists are brazilians?

Well, they are.

This is the book Ba worked on last year. While I was doing Smoke and Guns, he was doing a indian story 41 pages long in this anthology. And I already said a lot about how great it looks, so you'll have to order the book to check it out. I also have a short story in it. With pistol duel and everything.

For the curious, here's one image.


And here is another.


Terra Major is not a big publisher. In fact, it's very small, very independent, and it really needs the support of the readers who basically don't read the books because they don't know the books exist.


Gunned Down
order code for comic shops:
[ JAN063250 ]
(it's on page 316 of the catalog, if you're going to look for it.)

One year Later.



Yesterday marked the first year without Will Eisner.

How have we behaved in our field to honor his absence? What have we done to distinguish ourselves the same way he always did, the same way he expected his peers to behave? How did we survive the loss of the first and greatest life master of our profession?



We kept working. Creating, writing and drawing. If we never stop telling stories, if we never stop trying to touch others with our worlds, our characters and the emotions we put in everything we do, then his legacy will continue and we will do him justice.

Take your job seriously.

Love what you do.

Be the best you can, and expect nothing less from yourself and others.

Try to make this world a better one.

Keep working.

Keep living.

And find love.

The future of comics.



My brother and I were born in 1976, so 2006 was one of these years we would always look upon with wonder, being the year we would turn 30. What would we have accomplished? What would we still have to do, to discover, to create? Who would we be?

I know now that, to be a comic book creator, you have to create. Above all, you must have this urge to create, to tell stories and to create worlds. To make people see what you're thinking, and to make them think as you do it.

This year, I want to create more than I ever created before.

I want to reach as many people as I can, but if I can make one person think about life, about love, about being in the now, than all the work I have is working.

Even if I'm not getting rich doing it.

Why get rich, anyway? All rich people I know work less and less, and all I want to do is work more and more.

I want to do comics. My brother wants to do comics.

That's what we're doing in 2006.

It all about the attitude.

Good year for all of you, a year that will be about doing and being all the things we were always saying.