Best CASANOVA EVER written.

"Towards the end of the book there is a real stand out tableau where two characters appear reflected by glass -- and they look like a painted blue Sin City scene. That is the image I would isolate to sell people on the power of the Moon. "

"Even if you have never read a single issue of this title, go get Casanova 14. Volume two may be better than volume one, and issue 14 is better than any Casanova issue before -- and there ARE no bad or even middling issues of Casanova out there."

From Geoff Klock's Blog, about CASANOVA 14, which may be out as early as next week.

Interview! Eisner! Voting!

There's a new interview with Bá about his work on Umbrella Academy. It has been on the Dark Horse site for over a month, but we just noticed it now. Check out for some insights on Bá's impressions on the series.



Also, the voting for the Eisner Awards have begun, so if you're a professional in the industry elligible to vote, and you might have liked Umbrella Academy as best mini series, Sugarshock as best online comic or 5 as best anthology, go ahead and place your vote at http://eisnervote.com/.

Pixu thumbnails

In an independent project like PIXU, you have to establish your own deadlines, and than break these deadlines into smaller deadlines. This way, you won't get behind on your self-imposed schedule and you'll be able to balance doing it at the same time as your other projects.

Since we did 5 last year, we have been talking about what to do next, and we seriously decided to do another ensemble comic around january.

We'll be set up at the Image big booth in San Diego, just like last year. As soon as we decided to do another book, we knew we would need a booth, because our strong independent sales were always done directly with the reader, so we needed a place to tell the reader "this is where you'll find us and buy our book".

We spent at least two months working out the script part, talking in the internet with each other, some times from three different continents. The fact that a project like this is only possible because of the internet is an understatement.

Right now, we're doing the thumbnails. Becky is always the fastest one and, since Bá is already drawing more Umbrella Academy pages, I'm second on the thumbnail count.

Here are two pages from my thumbnails:

Choosing the time.

If the day was longer, we could do so much more. The way that is is, we have to choose the projects we'll do and hope to do others later. The choosing is tricky when you have lousy options, as you have to see which one you think you can salvage or reinvent, but it's even more difficult when your options are all good.

The opposite applies then: look at the projects you can't leave for later, the ones that are exploding in your brain and need to be put on paper, look at the people you most want to work with, and really see what you want to do right now. These are the projects you must do, and you do them to keep the fire burning so you'll shine when you do every other thing.

nominations for the Eisner Awards

Today is a really special day. They've just released the list of Eisner Awards nominees and Fábio and I have been nominated for a couple of awards.

Best Limited Series - Umbrella Academy (Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá)
Best Online Comic - Sugar Shock (Joss Whedon and Fábio Moon)
Best Anthology - 5 (Becky Cloonan, Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Grampá and Vasilis Lolos)



If you haven't seen 5 yet, you can order it online from Khepri, or look for Becky and Vasilis at the upcoming NYCC.
Congratulations for all the other nominees, including Ivan Brandon and his 24seven (also running for best anthology), Dave Stewart for best coloring, Matt Fraction and the crew of The Immortal Iron Fist (best new series) and Sensational Spider-Man Annual (best single issue), Brian Wood (best writer) and Chuck BB (special recognition).

Also on the nomination news, Umbrella Academy has just been nominated for 2 Eagle Awards, as Favourite new comic and Favourite Cover (for issue #1).

Réveillon

Yesterday's work felt good, and it felt right, and soon enough it was over. Plans for different kinds of celebration were held, and the day went as any other. However, I like to believe yesterday was a special day.

It feels like the year ended, and in some ways it has, a little late, like everything here in Brazil that waits Carnaval is over for the year to really start. I feel like Carnaval is finally over. I lighted a candle during dinner as we should do in the last day of the year, and I wished for the best. I spent a year working in Casanova, helping create and shape a world, and now this year is coming to an end. A new year approaches and a very different journey is about to begin.

Happy new year.

Beautiful day

"Today is a beautiful day to finish a story", I thought as I walked to the bakery in the morning to buy some bread. Yesterday, as I went to bed, I knew today I would have only one page left to finish my last issue of Casanova, and so today was to be a special day.

Today is suit day.

The sun, the birds singing and the breeze coming from the open window of the studio only make this day a more pleasant, more peaceful and more special one.

As I turn this page, one story ends. It's time to start another.

Doesn't say much, I know. But...

That's all I can say... for now.

Another day, another page

Casanova 13 is out in the open, and I'm basically all that stands between the reader and Casanova 14, since I'm still drawing our double-sized last issue. When all is said and done, I hope people forget the issues that came out late and focus on the quality of the work, which should be the only concern.

I wonder if peole will notice the change of styles midway through the last issue, but I rather think the story will keep the reader busy enough that nobody will even pay attention to the art.

I'm on page 22, by the way, so it shouldn't be long now.

Panel 2, page 19

Panel 2

On Ruby B. and Seychelle. Ruby gesticulates, concerned. Seychelle checks the data on a floating computer.

Ruby B: Are you sure it's him? Have we found him?

Seychelle: Just give me one moment.


. . .

New style

For the past four months, I can't find the brush I use to buy anywhere in the city. It's sold out. I've been treating my brush real nice and it's lasting a lot of time, but there's just so much I can take. The time has come for DESPERATE measures!

I'm changing my style, and from now on I'll only draw like this:

Inking with a brush

Bá caught me inking one of the most recent pages in video. We were talking to a young brazilian cartoonist who was here at the studio, and he's the one dong most of the talking at the beginning of the video, then there's the silence I fall into every time I ink, and then there are the small talk Bá and I exchange when we're drawing, which can be very confusing to the outsiders in its half finished sentences and inside references.

But the inking is nice, I guess, and maybe we could do these video things more often. Maybe when I'm not drawing the last issue with a lot of surprises, we could show me inking a more interesting portion of a page.

Page 16 today.

Matt has some preview art of Casanova 14 on his Flickr. Check it out if your into the whole teaser thing.


I just finished a page. If issue 14 of Casanova was a regular issue, with 16 pages, I would have finished it today. It's not, so I barely passed halfway point. Bá is loving the pages, so I guess this is a good sign. Matt seems to like it too, but he says little praise. He saves the praise for little Henry, who I'm yet to meet. I wonder if he will visit San Diego for the first time in July, or if Kelly Sue will skip this year, or if Matt will stay at home during the summer.

Today was a beautiful day, and I spent most of it working in the shade, in the studio. I also got my Sugarshock/MySpace poster framed after all these months, and I already hung it on my wall.

Putting art in general on the wall makes you want to do more art.

And so I did.

Drinking it strong.

I'm currently listening to a 14 track album while I draw the 14th Casanova issue. I'm making an effort to keep listening to this album repeatedly as long as this issue lasts, it only seems fitting that I do that since Matt sent me this album, which is actually a "mix-tape".

I refill my coffee mug and notice that there's actually an extra song in the mix. I'd call it a bonus track since I grew so found of the "14 issues and 14 songs" connection.

The bonus track is called "Casanova".

I drink my coffee, which is very good.

Improving

A doctor has to always be studying, updating his technique, his knowledge. He's gotta be at the top of is game. On that same basis, an artist has to look to other techniques that might enrich hi work somehow.

I'm taking watercolor classes. Not that I see myself making painted albums like the Europeans do (those crazy bastards), nor even do I want to change my "I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE" style. I just always loved watercolors and I think it's the technique I'd like to use if I were to do something hand painted.

After lots of exercises and getting to know the colors a little bit, I decided to dare making a real drawing.



I didn't really like the results, but it showed me all the things I still get to improve and that it's not as simple as it looks. But I'm not in a hurry. One thing I learned already, watercolor is for those who can wait till it's time to do it right.

Yes, she does.

Becky went on a trip for two weeks. Not, however, without spilling something about the future. If you wonder what the future holds, Becky knows.

Figure drawing - Ugo

I love figure drawing. Keeps me relaxed and widen my horizons creatively. There's something into drawing one minute poses that I don't get drawing comics.

I did this last night. The guy was an actor and a puppeteer, a mimic, and even holding still, it felt like he was moving.

In two weeks, there will be a pregnant women posing. That should be interesting.

Music and Comics.

Gerard came to Brazil with My Chemical Romance as part of their tour. When he was in town, we hung out a whole day talking about music, comics and what the future awaits for us. And that's a bright future, I might say.

Our encounter did wonders for both of us and we learned a lot with one another. He took me to one of his shows and it was really thrilling when he dedicated Teenagers to me in front of five thousand people. They have all treated me really nice and I had to do something in return. And I did what I know best.

Talking about style back in the day.

I've done these series of drawings to use on a class about inking and style. They were all done based on a photograph, so none of them show what my style really is, but they show 4 different ways to draw the same scene.



Your style is the way you chose to show things or to say things. It's all you've chosen to put in and all you left out.



If you're looking at a photograph, you see all that's there to see, all that was captured by the lenses and when you want to draw that, you have to chose what is important for the drawing and what is useless information. All those things you find important, all the details that make it into the picture, they are defined by your style.



When you're not looking at a picture to draw something, you'll have to make all the decisions of what goes in and what stays out in your mind. For something like that to really work, you must know very well the subject you're gonna draw. And that's when live drawing comes very handy. The more live drawing sketches you make, the more studies you do, more "visual vocabulary" you get to enable you to draw anything you want in your own style.



There's no right or wrong, better or worse. I can't say a clean sharp style like Mignola's is better than a very scratchy dirty "detailed" art like McFarlane's, a cartoony style like Jeff Smith's or the very photo-realistic cinematic style of Bryan Hitch. You all know I'm teasing you and all I could say would be a matter of personal taste, but what really matters in the end is that all the choices you make work in favor of the story. Your art should help you tell the story and not distract the eyes of the reader.

There are endless bits of information in every single panel you make and it's up to you to chose what will help you tell your story and what's useless lines in a piece of paper.

Wonder Twins, ACTIVATE!

Our story at the February edition of the My Space Dark Horse Presents anthology was conceived as an outlet to discover the fun behind the process of making comics.

As we were starting out and were trying to find some job at the american market, we have tried to get something going with Marvel and DC just like many other artists. We grew up reading super heroes and we thought the natural step as we became artists would be to draw them. In order to do that, we made what people call "submission pages", those sequences without a script or a story in which the artist would show what he can do with the characters he wants to draw. We made Batman pages, X-Men pages, Green Arrow pages, Authority pages, Planetary pages and so on. As much as we enjoyed those characters, the "working without a story" bit didn't quite work for us. We didn't feel like we were telling any story and the artwork was very uninspired because of that. We were discovering at the same time that we worked best with our own stories mostly because the story was the starting point, and not the art or the attempt at a job. If we wanted to do our best work, we needed to tell a story through pictures, and not just draw pretty pictures. That's where the idea behind Wonder Twins came from, and once we came up with a story interesting enough for us to tell using the super hero genre, it was easy. Bá sat and drew the story really fast, and we loved every page, and the story expanded from the original idea because we were having fun and we really believed that story also told the reader about the authors and not just about the characters, which I believe is what we get to know as the author's style. If we were to draw a story, we needed to make it our own, and have it be seen through our eyes, and through our style. Once we did this with this story, it was easy, and it was great.

And then Scott told us we needed an extra page.