Inspired by fashion

Fashion week just happened here in São Paulo and I did a sketch inspired by some of the outfits.

Super models.

Cool clothles.

I like it.
Don't you?

Daytripper gets a 5th printing!

Thanks, everyone, for all the love we've been getting for Daytripper. It's beyond our highest dreams.
And all the international editions (Spain, Italy and Brazil already; France, Poland and Denmark on the way) keep adding more excitement to this wonderful party. Once again, thank you!

We're working hard on all our other projects to keep making amazing, challenging comics.

ffff

Self Portrait

The new year is here.
Let's look ahead, and be adventurous.

FCBD Serenity story

That story I did I just wrote about on the last post? It's a Serenity story, written by Zack Whedon, and it will be one of Dark Horse Free Comic Book Day's offerings. Yes, FREE!
The interview I did about it? It here on this link so you can check it out. If you want, you can also check it out what the writer has to say about the story on this other link, and than you'll discover my book will actually be a flipbook, and the flip story is a Star Wars story with Han Solo and Chewbacca! How cool is that?
the month of May can't arrive soon enough.

1. You can see how my thumbnail sketch looks like when I'm showing it to the editors and writers. This is how I get pages aproved.
2. The final panel.

Almost time

My drawing board can almost rest for a few days at this year's end. Bá and I are working on a poster, and then all I have to do is to start planning for 2012.
I just finished a new short story. I already answered an interview about it.
Bá is kicking ass on new Casanova issues, and after that I'll take over once more for the forth arc.
We've been having new ideas, but we know ideas might take a long time till they're stories, so we preffer to wait until we have a book to talk about the book. Ideas are like a girl who smiles at you: you feel warm inside, you feel special, but then it takes a lot of work to win that girl over. Lets first do the work before we introduce anybody to our new "girl".

Still, I think 2012 will be awesome.

Life drawings

Some of the drawings Bá did this year at the live drawing class. Not one took more than 10 minutes, but these range from 1 minute to 5 minutes each.

Matt Fraction in Brazil

It was great to have Matt and Kelly Sue in Brazil, even if only for a little while, and even if we didn't see each other all that much with us having to handle our booth and Matt and Kelly Sue writing and reading and walking around the cool parts of the city.



Back to drawing comics now. These puppies don't get made all by themselves (or, how I would have said to Kelly Sue, "and that's why we have Mario").

Look for this on November 23.

I'll have a new story on the sixth issue on the Dark Horse Presents anthology, out this month. Also, I did the cover, which looks like this:

The two new stories I did this year were for traditional anthologies. One for DHP. The other story, a three pager, I did for a traditional Argentinean anthology which now has a brazilian incarnation.

X-Men in Rio

We've been busy here in Brazil, Daytripper has just been released here and we're having a blast with the "national" response, but I decided to stop by and put these two images up. We're heading for Rio de Janeiro later this week for the Rio Comicon and, since one of the internaitonal guests is long-time-all-star-X-Men-writer Chris Claremont, I took some time to pay tribute to a part of the history of the X-Men, and of comics, which deeply influenced both Bá and I, and I colored these two pieces we made in July as part of the CBLDF that took place in SDCC this year.

We'll meet up with our friends Bob Schreck and Paul Pope while there, as they're also guests of the show (the festival in Rio is amazing), and we'll try to show them a good time, brazilian style.

Floating world of original art.

Last month, the comic book store Floating World hosted, in Portland, an art exhibit of original Casanova art (which you can check out on this link of Matt's release of Casanova: Avaritia #1 on the store), and now it's time to celebrate the release of Habibi, Craig Thompson's new book, and again Floating World will have a great art exhibit of Habibi-inspired pieces of artwork from several artists, and Craig invited both Bá and I to contribute.
We felt honored and pumped up with the challenge and, if you find yourself in Portland this month, don't miss the chance to check out the results. And buy Habibi while you're at it, it's a wonderful book. Casanova: AVARITIA #2 is also out in stores today, so lucky you, Casanovonaut who is craving to know what happens next.

Lots of different stuff and a São Paulo pinup

We've been busy with new projects, lots of drawings and conventions here in Brazil. I'm working on the new CASANOVA: AVARITIA issues, we're adapting a Brazilian novel into a Graphic Novel, we're working on a illustration book and we're also trying to put new ideas together. All that while we tour around the world to spread the love for comics.
Well, this is one of the illustrations I just did for a poster of a concert, a simphony about São Paulo.

Initial sketch was made on a notebook, 3 inches tall.



I don't usually do this, but this time I have printed the sketch bigger and used it as the skeleton for the pencils, just because I liked the composition so much and it would be very hard to get it right on the bigger size artwork. I'm working on a A4 size here, not that big in fact.



Inked version, using Micron and Staedtler pens.



Since I have scanned the pencil, I noticed how nice the paper texture turned out to be and how it would dialogue well with the city. I decided to incorporate that into the final artwork.
The pattern on the sky is a tile pattern typical of São Paulo, with a very clever use of tiles forming the shape of the state.



It's kind of my homage to Katsuhiro Otomo as well. I always loved how his cities are more than just backgrounds and are treated as characters, his light and shadows and the use of zipatone and patterns in the black and white art.

Well... Back to work.

Pug loves you

Casanova, strip and stuff

I know we're already twins and we can do double the amount of work, but sometimes I could use an extra pair of hands. We've been busy.

Bá is going strong on Casanova Avaritia pages (thumbnails shown above) and I just finished our weekly strip (we publish a weekly strip in Brazil's biggest newspaper). It's weird how some of our world will take a long time to be published worldwide, and at the same time other works of ours, being done at the same time, will be puvblished in the US fast and will take a long time to be published in Brazil. It's like we can't please everybody, which sadly I think is true.

The Scream Awards! You can vote for us until October 18th, but why wait? VOTE NOW!
(Our comic doesn't have vampires or zombies, but it's ver cool anyway.)

Habibi, which is Craig Thompson's new book, is awesome and it comes out next week. Check out the book's website to see if Craig is doing a signing near you and go get his great book. Bá and I will have some Craig-related news soon.

Back to work.

Daytripper nominated for SCREAM AWARDS!

Our beloved Daytripper has been nominated to the Scream Awards on the "best Comic Book or Graphic Novel" cathegory. Please give it a shout and vote here.

CASANOVA is back... AGAIN... FINALLY!

On September 7th, the wait is over. Even people who have not been waiting will have not to wait any longer, because that which they did not know will be known at last. Yes, confusing. But yes, amazing.
The new CASANOVA : AVARITIA series starts this wednesday, a four issues series, each chapter with 32 pages filled with crazy, sexy, complicated and fun sci-fi stuff for people who really give a shit about comics. Written by super-star Matt Fraction, art by humble me (yet, awesome art by humble me), hand lettered by Dustin Harbin and colors Cris Peter. Published by ICON!
And if you're one of them, you might like to know that Floating World in Portland has an exposition of original Casanova pages during September, pages ranging from Luxuria, to Gula and the freshly started AVARITIA. Go check out the amazing black and white artwork, just to compare to the great color work Cris Peter is doing on the series.


Well, what are you waiting for?

Dark Horse Presents 6

September is right across the corner and, while we're really producing several new stories, most of them are still very far away from any clear publication date, except for Casanova-AVARITIA, the new arc which starts coming out NEXT WEEK, but Bá is drawing this arc, not me. So, with that in mind, I'm doing a story for issue 6 of the new Dark Horse Presents anthology. This is the only new story I'm writing and drawing which will be published this year in the US, and it's only 8 pages long. I gave my best to make each page count.

I received the invitation to create a new story shortly after I did the variant cover for issue 2, so I can say the original inspiration for the story came from that cover - or from the idea which inspired that cover - but it went on a completely different direction. A better one, if you ask me.

I thought it was very nice of my editor to invite me to do another cover, this time for the issue my story will be in, and what I came up with is the image below:

I never forget how important Dark Horse Presents was for my brother and I, how in it we discovered Sin City and Hellboy, how in its digital rebirth a few years back I did Sugarshock with Joss Whedon (for which I got an Eisner Award) and how it still publishes and celebrates creators with a personal voice. I'm thrilled to think that in this issue my story is in there's also a new Jill Thompson story.

This issue only comes out in November, but it never hurts to give people the heads up.

A new face

We've been meaning to change the visuals of our blog for quite some time, and today we decided it was time to skip working on what we were supposed to be working on - a three page story for a brazilian anthology, the script for one of the new things we're now writing, new Casanova pages from this new script Matt sent and some other things - to write a little code, choose some images and give our site, its blogs and our web presence a face lift.
This is the forth time, in more than 8 years, that we changed how this blog looks, and I hope we can keep it the way it is now for another good chunk of our lives, as we're getting further and further away from the modern and current web-design technology, and it's getting harder and harder to do this all by ourselves.
In the past few years, we ended up dividing our web presence in all these several social medias, from Flickr to Youtube to twitter and facebook, leaving around images, videos, other links and several words and thoughts born on the heat of the moment (and only written in these other virtual places), so I hope the links on the side bar are helpful for those trying to keep track. I'll be happy if it makes it easier for me.

I fished these images from 2004, when we redesigned the blog for the first time. I still like how simple and effective these animated gifs are, and maybe I'll put some new ones on here from time to time.

Just before I go, I like to leave here an update I think we already said in all those other social medias: since they cancelled the Wizard World Los Angeles, we won't be traveling to the US this year anymore. We, like many, had made plans for that convention, for another chance to get to know L.A a little more and maybe see some of our friends who live there, but I guess this will have to wait. The positive side of this is "more time to write and draw new stories", which I think it's what we all should focus on.

Harvey Awards winner

Thanks once again for another moment of unforgettable joy. This has indeed been an amazing trip.

Happy together around the world.

After our great time in San Diego this year, crowned by the Eisner Award we received for Daytripper, we returned filled with the creative energy contained in all works of love, and it was great to come back home with that feeling that the stories we tell are being read. We had a great time inside the convention on our super booth with the always great company of our talented booth babes - Becky Cloonan and Jill Thompson - and our faithful and hilarious brazilian companions Rafael Albuquerque, Gustavo Duarte and Marcelo Braga.

Outside the convention, the great hang out place and creative outlet was of course the Tr!ckster store and bar, where the new generations met the old, where comics were praised, studied and respected, and where we created art in all its forms. In all our 15 years of SDCC, it's always this kind of energy that keeps us coming back, and this time the Tr!ckster was the place to find that energy - and to pass it around.

Back in Brazil, there's always a lot to do, and right now the final preparations for the release of the brazilian edition of Daytripper are being made, but already we are on a new trip - to AFRICA. We're in Luanda right now, capital of Angola, as guests of Luanda Cartoon, an international comics, animation and cartoon festival, and it's great to see how our work is understood in other portuguese-speaking countries. We crossed the Atlantic and yet, here we feel somewhat at home, sharing the same dreams, the same inspiration and the same difficulties. We still have some days here in Angola, let's see what else we can discover as every day here is an adventure.

In the end, every day can be an adventure, no matter where you are, if you have the spirit and the heart for it.