Should we love comics?

Should we love comics?

Yes, we should. We can read all the comics we'd like, and there'll always be more, such is the energy behind every creator working (or willing to work) on comics. More than movies or books, comics can reach all corners of the imagination, mixing visual experimentation, creativity control (and decontrol) and artistic freedom.

Should we love comics?

Yes, we should. Comics makes us laugh, Comics makes us cry. We fall in love with characters we want to meet and introduce to our parents. If we create comics, we create experiences that will reach other people and those experiences will become a part of those people's life FOREVER. Even if your story suck, and specially if it doesn't. We're all sharing a world in which we create the rules, we break them, we make people believe they can trust us their hopes.

We're trusting them our dreams.

Should we love comics?

Yes, we should. The stories told are stories lived in everybody's minds. Now we're all friends, we all belong to the same community. Now we only care about the stories we read on comic books, and we forget that the world has such bad writer to come up with so much tragedy, disgrace and greed. Those people never read enough books, enough comic books, to know that all material things will become dirt and vanish after you're gone, and those things won't remember you if they are the things you care about. The only thing worth caring about are our friends and our loved ones and our family. They're the ones worth remembering. They'll remember you. Write for them. Write for yourself. Write for someone to read, instead of writing for someone to buy.

Should we love comics?

Yes, we should.

shout out for the brazilian illustrator!

I inked this drawing from a published piece by my friend Gustavo Duarte, who's a great brazilian illustrator I'm trying to convert to inking with a brush.

Casanova previewed!

CLICK HERE to see the first seven pages of the first awesome issue of Casanova, the new (hell, the FIRST) monthly book drawn by Gabriel Ba.

Lots of action! Lots of girls! Lots of fun!

If you haven't ordered this book yet, go to your comic book store and give them the order code: APR06 1763

While you're at it, give them the order code for De:TALES as well: MAR06 0038

Beginning in June, the comic book world will be pure brazilian twins paradise, so don't miss out on this bus!

More Comics

I'm not drawing enough comics. That's the truth. It's kind of sad, actually, but it's how things are right now.

The positive side of this harsh reality is the fact that I'm not drawing shitty comics for money. After the pages were ready and the money got paid (and spent), I would be left with nothing but shitty comics, so I'm glad I'm not doing those right now.

A friend of mine did this character's design and I decided to that a crack at it and do my version of his design. As much as the final drawing was still miles away from good, it was really fun to draw something that was not so "real" and ordinary. I really like to draw strange fantastic stuff, even if it's not what I like to write about.

What do I like to write about?

That's a question I ask myself every time I have to start a story, and since my last efforts at that have been short stories, I tend to get to this starting point more often than not. I guess I'll always ask this question.

And I'll probably spent the rest of my life creating stories to figure out the answer.

first CASANOVA review.

Ian Brill wrote the first review of CASANOVA #1 on his blog, with no big spoiler.
Click here to read it.

Cover up.

At a certain point, at the beginning of the year, I was going to be the Casanova cover artist, for no other reason than to work with my brother in some way on this project. I love doing covers, if they don't quite turn out the way I wanted. I'm always learning and, sometimes, I have an idea for a cover and don't have the skills to pull it off.

I think the first problem I faced trying to do the cover was the fact that I haven't read the script and, as much as I know most cover artist do not read the actual script, I felt I wasn't really familiar with the story. I had a notion of what the story was about, but had no idea how complex it was, and I chose cool elements from the story for the cover, but they didn't actually had a real importance to the story.

Another problem was a choice of style. Cover art is not internal art, and I really wanted to try something different. I wanted the picture to look like an art poster, like a painting, like a sketchbook drawing, like a movie poster, I don't know, but it shouldn't look to me like a sample from the inside art. That's where I failed completely, as my lack of technique created a hybrid drawing, neither artistic or comic-book like, and certainly not worth of a cover.

The positive note of my tale is, of course, the decision my brother made to do the covers. Seeing how I was not really going anywhere decent with my cover, he decided to do it himself, and do it better - much better. Not trying to be some kind of artist he's not, but still reinventing his art for the covers, he created already three Casanova covers, and they totally rock!

My brother used to say he didn't liked to do covers, and that he didn't know how to make a good cover.

It took me a very bad cover for him to see how wrong he was.

Forse e perche siamo gemeli...

Our stories are told to the world. As much as we think about our life when we create our tales, our life isn't that much different from the life of others, no matter where they live and what language they speak, so we know that, as long as we deal with people, feelings, emotions and relationships, our stories will travel far and find someone who likes them in every corner of the world.



This week, we received our italian copy of Autobiographix. Slightly bigger in shape than the american edition, the book of real stories from this great team of cartoonists has now a new language, and the same characters have now learned new words.

24seven.

My brother and I love New York. It is, by far, the closest we found that feel like Sao Paulo, our hometown. A city that never sleeps, where you can find the most different people, from the most unusual places, and where people work hard and meet and make things happen. Our kind of place, that's for sure.

When we were asked to be a part of an anthology of stories set in NY, we were really excited, and then we heard there was a bonus: NY with ROBOTS. How could we say no to that? Even if we could find some impossible reason to decline the kind offer, there was still the company in which we would be in case we were to be in fact part of this work. And, as much as it was an honor to be in the same book with Frank Miller and Will Eisner in Autobiographix, so it is now to be in the same book with Becky Cloonan and Eduardo Risso, the most talented artists working today, and also our friends. There's no saying no to that.



Today, the first official press release went out at Newsarama, offering as an preview one of the short stories from the book, and what was my surprise as I discovered which story it is there for the world to see. Click here for the Newsarama preview of the book, which features none other than our robot story.

This sweet baby will be out in July, in time for the San Diego COMICON, so grab your copy and go to San Diego to get it signed by us.

Together.

The best thing about working with my my brother is exchanging ideas all the time. The excitement we're always getting when we have a good idea is doubled as the other also likes the idea one has.

We have been coming up with a lot of new stories and it feels great to create.

I now remember why I want to do this for the rest of my life. Sometimes, I forget.

But I remember now.

Women on the cover sell more books.

So...

Fabio tells me I'm not contributing a lot with this blog. He tells me I gotta say more things, write more texts, show more images. Fabio tells me I'm gonna be a star and people will come here to see what I have to show. Well, I don't know about that, but lets try to show some stuff, then.

As you might have seen all over the web now, the cover for the second issue of Casanova is out there. So I decided to show 3 steps of its production.

1. The layout - I did a small sketch and scanned it to try on the colors and the logo. Note the resemblance with the first cover: purple figure, with orange elements over a white background.



2. The B&W art - I just love black and white. Don't you?



3. The final version - so, those "feathers" on her back were not working and the white cover has already been done on issue #1, so I tried the black background and it actually worked a lot better, making the main character pop up. Black is your friend, it is what I always say.



I am keeping my palette restricted to the oranges and purples for now, because I want all these covers to have this unity. Although the covers have to work for every single issue, I want people to realize it is all part of a bigger story.

So, I hope you like these images, 'cause I don't know when I'll be back here again.

Who's reading?


I often think about who reads what is in here. Chances are that, after the first issue of Casanova comes out, more and more people will end up here, but still we already have some visitors and they - you - are quite shy.

Don't be.

Here's a question: From what you already heard, saw and read, what do you think of Casanova?

A present for a friend.

A just made this drawing for a friend, and since I did the water-colour version on a different sheet of paper, I had various stages (three, actually) of the same image to show. So I'm going to show them here.

First, there's the thumbnail, where the idea just born in put down on paper so it won't get lost.

After that's done, and after the idea is approved by my brother (just because we were going to share the present), I went to pencil it. I usually do very loose pencils, but not completely messy. If I were going for just a black and white piece, I would ink it on top of the pencil, using the same paper, and then later I would just erase the pencils that were still visible.

This being a coloured piece made me use my light-box to "clean" the pencil on a different piece of paper.

I coloured the drawing first, then I went over the colours with my brush and inked it. I something ink before colouring, but I find it that, this way, the colours end up leaving the black "less" black. Dirty black, so to speak.


We (my brother and I) are huge fans of black and white comics. However, I have to admit that sometimes it's very nice to play with colours. Specially if your making a drawing to give as a gift to a child.

Small fiction.

"Do you know what day is today already?" , the brother asked his twin.

"I know. we're taking too long", replied the twin.

"We're probably gonna blow our chance", they both thought at the same time, in silence, afraid that, if they said it out loud to one another, they would be done with and all would be over.

"It was a nice day", one of the twins thought. They were both looking at the sky, and they were walking close to one another, so it was really hard to tell their thoughts apart. "Today's a good day for new stories" was something that came out from one of the twins heads. "That girl coming our way is kinda cute" was another. Many other ideas were thought that afternoon, and for a moment they were good ideas, but somehow, by the end of the day they all seemed silly. The twins called it a day when a dog barked at them from a fence. It was such a small dog which considered so little of the two brothers that they realized they weren't in very good shape to impress anyone.

"We'll think of something tomorrow", said the brother to his twin.

"But... Do you know what day's tomorrow already?", replied the twin.

Working.


Sketchbook drawing to leave this place alive while I'm still working on some boring storyboards.

LET'S ROCK THIS PLACE!

Over at the ENGINE, I've started this discussion about how much do artists leave on their pencils to be completed on their inks. I do that a lot, and some others seem to do it also. It's very interesting to see different pencils and even more different inks.

The picture above is a great page from Smoke and Guns and, as you can see, a lot of the light and shadow work on the background was done straight with the brush. There was no reason to do all that twice, now was there?

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.