33

They say 33 is a special age. I feel pretty special today, and I hope my brother knows how special he is too.

We feel like celebrating, and we will, but we also feel more like making awesome comics, which is what we've been doing most of the time instead of talking about our love for comics on the internet. I wish I had more time to scan and show sketches, talk about creation, fun stuff, but I rather make comics. They can tell you how awesome they are, and how fun, and how creative.

I can't stand not sharing something, so here is the step-by-step of our Buffy- Tales of the Vampires cover, which came out this week and has an amazing story by our best buddies Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos.

1-The initial sketch: we considered doing one single image, but we ended up deciding the split image was cooler, moodier and easier to divide the chores between the both of us.



2- Bá studies his part of the cover: Both of us could do this part of the cover, or even the other one. But we felt the other one was simpler and it would gain some personality with my brush inking, so Bá went after the characters in the love-triangle (it's all about love for us here). It looks awesome as it is, right?


3-Black and white ink is GOD: We love inking, period. We love black and white.

4-Colors. Ta-DAM! We have been watching our pal Dave Stewart do his magic on our books and we've been dying to get a chance to do some color work to see what can we do with colors in our post-Dave period. I have to say I'm pretty happy with the results.


Well, that's it, back to work, see you some day, thanks for reading.

Happy 33rd birthday, brother.

PIXU, Buffy, and the fight.

We love comics, but they can be brutal. Working against the clock, racing deadlines, juggling everything we're currently doing, nothing is easy separately and together they're particularly difficult.

But that's the fight. That's the life. You can't expect everything to be easy, specially when you won't settle for the ordinary, for the most common road. You can't expect the bumpy road to come without bumps.

Our dear friend Becky Cloonan was interviewed at CBR during the NYCC weekend, and she talks about two very exciting news regarding Buffy and, most importantly, our PIXU story being collected in hardcover by Dark Horse. We do our independents projects because our love for the comics world not always fits with what the publishers might want or need at the time, and we believe every good story can become a good comic. It's nice to see that sometimes our love projects can be appreciated and understood by bigger publishers, and it's great that these projects get the support and the chance to be found by a much bigger audience.

Like the entire comics, the new PIXU cover was a collaboration, this time between Becky, Vasilis and me.



The two individual issues of our independent limited run are still available through Khepri.com, and they contain material that won't be collected (plus they are rare, limited and the first issue is signed), and Becky will be around during the convention season selling it as well, so for those who like the specialness of our original PIXUs, you're not too late to catch on the PIXU train.

Now, let's go back for another round. Our comics are looking at us fiercely.

I think they want blood.