Brazilian coffee

Drink it black.
Starting out a new sketchbook.

CASANOVA: AVARITIA #3 GO'DAMMIT!

God, damn! I'm finally done with Casanova: AVARITIA #3! If any of you hadn't seen the cover last year, here it goes again.

First of all, I'd like to apologize for all this delay. I used to hate those indy books done by superstar authors that would come out late because, well, they are superstars and really busy and all. Well, that should teach me to respect the big league and what it brings to the table.
Lot has happened last year, both Matt and I didn't expect it to be so crazy and we all hoped we would be able to work normally on Casanova through any sort of storm. We were wrong, but what ended up happening is what always ends up happening. THE BOOK IS AWESOME!!! I can honestly say it has the best pages I've ever done and some of the craziest scenes Matt's ever written. In the end, that's what really matters.

So, the solicitation number for it is 5960607229-00311 and it shall come out in March, finally! If you haven't already ordered it, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING???

And I'm hands deep into issue #4 already! Good times! 

Straight to inking

I guess Bá and I weren't the only ones impressed by the link to a 26 page story done in ONE day by this incredible french artist called Boulet. You can check out the story clicking here. It's a funny and nice story on its own, but to think it was done in 26 hours is insane. It's one page per hour.
Poking around the web, I found some videos of the guy drawing, and discovered that he doesn't pencil his pages, going straight to inking. Check it out.
Bá and I got all kinds of excited about this and, during some coffee breaks, we tried out hand at drawing straight with pens. Bá's version in the one with blue pen, mine is the other one, in black.

"Drawing straight with a pen is EASY" is what Bá is saying to me on his drawing.
I don't know if it's easy.
But it sure is fun.

TCAF in May

We've been invited as special guests to TCAF, Toronto Comic Arts Festival, that will take place on May 5th and 6th, at the Toronto Reference Library. Other guests include Jeff Smith (Bone), Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet) and Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim), among many others (full guest list here).
And they've asked us to do the art fot this year's poster, so we were extremely happy and honored. I hope you've liked it and also hope to see a bunch of people there and have lots of fun.
And let's hope it's not too cold in May.

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?