Rusty Banana Forge

After all the paintings of lizards I was doing, I decided to let loose and make something for Halloween.

It’s so B-movie!

Also check out what I did for Trese (”13″ in English) the independent comic book series by Budjette Tan and Ka-Jo Balidisimo.

The last of the story spreads! Any more time I spend on this project will be devoted solely to tightening up the artwork. But how tight do I really want it?

Spread 13 is the transformation spread. Something magical happens here. A man turns into a lizard (grovelling the floor in sorrow & repentance.) Honestly, I don’t get it! But I’m gonna MAKE you believe it’s possible!

The spread shows the sequential step-by-step morphing of our character into a lizard. When I was making the color studies, I realized that this transformation from man to lizard would be helped if I added a “tail” to the character’s initial design. Initially, the hunchback didn’t have a sash across his waist. But I added that later because it would specifically aid the visuals for the transformation.

I introduced a lot of green color into this spread and in a more graphic way. It’s a warm and welcome release from the previous spread. I think after a while of looking at all that blue in spread 12, the greens on this page will APPEAR to have a lot more orange in them. Of course it’ll also depend on the printing. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun noodling with this spread.

Spread 14 closes the story in a unique way. The illustration is in the center, separated vertically by the page gutter.

The quality of modelling for the hunchback’s face surprised me. It turned out really well. That’s how tight I want my paintings to be. I want to resonate that quality across the book, but with deadlines approaching, I will only have time to focus on the cover and maybe a few others. Achieving such quality requires smaller brushes, sharper accents (dark & light), a lot of panning around the artwork, and an eye for where the detailing should be done.

Many artists feel the need to keep on developing and detailing a particular artwork. Each artist has a different threshold as to when he or she can say of their work, “It is done.”

Approaching the end of the story spreads for Alamat ng Butiki. I was given a month to do this (but I spent the first week of October waiting for feedback on my studies.) In fact, as I’ve been updating my blog about these pages, I’ve also been sending these spreads to Lampara publishing. Yet none of these emails have returned with comments on the work - which may mean my work is great and has no problems. But frankly, I’d like to hear what the publisher thinks. As the artist I want to know where I am headed with this book. Am I making it too dark? Does the publisher believe this kind of art will sell? I don’t want to be surprised when I’m done there are major revisions to be done.

Spread 11 requires a visual of the mother’s speaking heart. Not something you see everyday in local children’s books - well not in the literal sense of it anyway.

The heart’s speech balloon does not yet have the words. Lampara has both english and tagalog languages in their books. I hesitated to put these both into the word balloon just yet. I want to get the publisher’s idea for this. I did however give the speech balloons a veiny red and purple border.

The water in this illustration is the challenging aspect. The heart wasn’t much of problem, it isn’t fully revealed anyway. The water, however, is everywhere. There is rain, puddles of water, and damp folded clothes. There isn’t much time left for this project, (which makes me frustrated to have NO publisher feedback after all the updates I keep sending,) and so I didn’t pour too much of my time into the wet clothes, but I did pursue the wet hair, puddles, and rain.

The raining is supposed to continue into spread 12. But spread 12 presents several challenges that had to be addressed first:

First, there are two plot points that need to be addressed. One is that Marina is supposed to faint from the sight of the heart, and two the hunchback is chased until struck by lightning. I could have applied a small vignette to illustrate Marina fainting and then devote the other half of the spread for the lightning strike - or vice versa. This would have been similar to spreads 08 and 09. However, I felt that this spread needed to strike the reader in some way that was different from all other spreads.

Second challenge, the perspective - especially since both people, buildings, and sky are involved. I haven’t gotten it quite finished yet.

Third, the high contrast and the almost monochromatic pallette due to the high intensity of light. Pushing the contrast to a point where characters start appearing graphic or overly simplified was something I had to be careful about as it did not match the rest of the book (which then again could be what strikes the reader the most about this spread!!!)
The lightning and the hunchback’s silhouette put together are already quite arresting. It’s a white mark that cuts right into the space for text. I could’ve gone for a vertical layout, but I felt the horizontal orientation would best tell the chase prior to the hunchback being given the shock of his life.

By the way, no Photoshop LEVELS or CURVES adjustments have yet been made to this spread’s illustration. I also did NOT use Hue/Saturation to give this spread (or any other spread for that matter) are overall color glaze. Just painting techniques with the trusty Wacom graphic tablet and Photoshop brushes..

Did you notice the lizard-like shadow form just below the huncback?

Negosyong Pinoy 2006 is currently being held at the Megamall from October 27 to 29. It is the 1st ever micro entrepreneur trade fair that not only showcases products for sale, but also various business opportunities and organizations offering entrepreneurial education.

I went in seeking businesses that would appeal to me as an artist, as well as education on setting up a business. My interests were primarily for information technology, exhibition, design, and basically the creative industries. I’m not exactly a crafts person… so I kinda bypassed those ones, but I do like to be able to get creative with the business itself.

The recent success of the Komikon 2006 is just another factor in me seeking out possible opportunities for my work to get distributed, as well as opportunities to benefit artists like myself to do the same. But even before that, I’ve been inspired to look into business because of experiences with friends, books on wealth published in America, Business World newspaper, and Entrepreneur magazines. This is also coincides with my look into financial instruments offered by banks and insurance companies.

After going the entire venue of the trade fair several times - here were some booths of interest to me:

• The Department of Trade and Industry had their own booth naturally. By far my expectations for education were met here. They were selling this JAMPACKED kit all about starting a business:

  

  150Php ONLY for all that material!!! The kit was a super bargain. The kit itself had a pretty functional design, which gave me ideas on how I could make a kit of my own for Pixel Pintura.

• E-load companies. There were at least 3 of them. With less than 500Php or even for free you can become a retailer for Globe, Smart, Sun telecom pre-paid load. You can even retail load for online games, pre-paid internet usage, LBC flowers, and stuff I haven’t heard of!! Easy to setup, easy to maintain, you can even get your own mobile phone reloaded at a discount using this service. Those are the reasons why I found this type of business interesting. It did cross my mind however that the profit margins were pretty meager, the retailer best have a brick & mortar store where people come & go. It made me wish I owned an internet cafe.
• The Center for Small Enterpreneurs is an organization with the goal of building entrepreneurs for others. Lovely lovely people. You can really feel the camaraderie they share as they pursue financial success together. The have the Ka-Entrep program wherein they train would-be entrepreneurs. In fact they had various Ka-Entrep graduate batches set up at the trade fair.
  While I wasn’t looking to start anything similar to what the different batches were doing, I couldn’t help feel the passion they had for their products. Passion is number one in my book.
• Three words - continuous ink systems. There were at least 3 different booths showcasing them, each with different inks and ink capacities. It’s a convincing investment for me as a digital artist. I will likely buy a new EPSON printer as a result..
• Heatpress shirt & mug printing machines were being displayed at one booth. I’ve seen these before and I’m sure artists are familiar that the technology exists. For short and frequent orders for custom shirts, this technology would be quite suitable, I think. But for large volume orders and orders that are few & far between - take caution.
• Another booth had a franchise opportunity for a desktop printing place. A small service bureau, if you’re familiar with those. Includes ID photo, print, and lamination, as well as other fairly creative (though not very sophisticated) items. They were also selling a machine to make button pins. Which would have been cooler if they had the actual machine being demonstrated there.
• You can’t go through that trade fair without seeing all the food cart & kiosk franchises. I expected to find the EDGE food franchisor from the Komikon to be there, but instead I found a whole lot of others with similar selling points - no royalty, no renewal fees. Let’s face it, the packages each franchise were offering are similar. Training, initial stocks, uniforms, installations, these were standard. In the end you have to consider the image, the brand, the cost, and the kind of people who own the business. Can you stand the site of all those things?

  After making your choice, it’s up to you, the franchisee, to find employees and location. (Imagine I just learned that this year.) The artist in me just wants to sit home all day and work my craft. Whether or not a franchise is feasible for who makes his career an artist remains a questionable as I have no role models to draw from.

• Now this isn’t a booth, but celebrities Robert Seña and his wife Isay Alvarez were there to give a performance and promote their latest album “Dueto” as well as an upcoming concert. Their business is show businesses. They had made a company to focus on that and to open doors into that direction.

  

  This is much like what Gerry Alanguilan and Gilbert Monsanto have done with Komikero Publishing and Sacred Mountain Publishing, respectively. It is artists creating companies with the intention of expanding the reach of their work. A large part of it involves the exposure and the satisfaction of being able to leverage yourself as an artist through your own business. The difference lies whether you work for your business or your business works for you. It is whether or not your business can continue to profit even if you, the artist, stop working.

All in all, the Negosyong Pinoy trade fair was both educational and practical for me. But more Spirit-searching is necessary for me to ascertain both my passion for and potential in business.

Well WELL! The Paypal site now has the Philippines listed as a country that can SEND money via Paypal.Thanks to Char for bringing this to my attention. Now I can shop like crazy like she does.

Hopefully Paypal will allow us to receive payments in the near future. Do sign up at Paypal4PH and show you want Paypal for the Philippines!

But in the meantime, Xoom will have our market share.

Darker and darker. Our huncback, locked in prison descends into depression. Marina has given him her ultimatum - his mother’s heart in exchange for her love. (Of course she’s just pissed - you don’t really expect Marina to hook up with the hunchback, do you?)

Spread 09 shows two story points yet again. The biggest challenge here was the light source streaming through the cell window. The visible light rays are caused by both dust and the rain breaking into the cell. It’s not convincing yet, but it isn’t done. As it is, all the images from Alamat ng Butiki posted so far are not final. In a later update to this spread I added more ambient light in the cell - thereby giving it a stronger sense of space. I also adjusted the perspective of the window to make it logical to show the corners of the cell.

Across the illustration of the cell is a smaller one describing how the hunchback is able to escape. In the thumbnails, this illustration is simply boxed in like a comic book panel. But in this update I added a pacing device by having the hunchback tiptoe out of the panel. Interestingly, it serves as a bit of comic relief. KIDS are gonna be reading this, comic relief is necessary!!
For now the images I’ve been posting from Alamat ng Butiki offer the foundation by which the final illustration will be built. Any storytelling devices that enter my mind are applied - something the digital medium allows quite easily. The goal is that we learn these lessons and techniques as we work so that we can apply them at the thumbnail stage. But if you force yourself to follow your approved studies, you will shun applying ideas that come to you while you work!

Spread 10 shows two plot points. The hunchback heads home to embrace mother, and the hunchback guts her heart out. You don’t see the latter happening, it’s R-rated! But the knife in the chopping board gives you an idea. Literally it shows a reflection of the dastardly deed, figuratively it shows a moment frozen in time that we aren’t supposed to have the kiddies see. Perhaps the most gruesome spread, so you can see the dripping purple guck around the top.

Now I’m not sure if it’s just my paranoia, but some people may get the impression that there’s something incestuous going on in the first illustration. After all there is a big heart form, and the colors are all steamy. I wanted to bring in the idea that man’s love can been perverted and twisted - the underlying premise in this story (aside from the obvious point that a lizard has to be result of all this.). Love for mother been twisted to hate, a love that murders, romantic love for a woman who belongs to someone else. No incest intended.

The study for this controversial illustration included a headless chicken along with the knife. According to the story ,the mother was about to cook her son’s favorite meal before she had her life snuffed out. I thought the headless hen and a knife stuck in it would be the perfect metaphor for the mother’s murder. (Won’t be the same if it were a fish.) But it didn’t sit well with Lampara, the publisher. Oh well, at least I don’t have to illustrate dead chicken.

Probably the most challenging concern in spread 10 is the fabric. Upon researching the fashion of the day, I decided to add a little more textural interest to the mother;s clothes and give it a more Filipino look as well.

First the mother’s gown was painted. Then the fabrics she wore on top of that gown were placed on separate layers set to Normal. I used a textured brush to paint down the semi-transparent shawl that she wears around her neck and used a mask to tailor how the lights stikes it. Additional painting was required to render the color accurately and to place the patterns.

The color pallette for these spreads is slowly turning cold - making you flip the pages hoping for a warm ending!

Here’s a site that’s just full of the good ol’ days. The Nostalgia Manila blog features popular culture from 1960 - 1980s Manila. I wouldn’t be able to tell whether it goes beyond that to the 1950s Manila… because that’s already alien to me. Baka puwede pa ang 60s…

You don’t have to be in your 30s to take this nostalgia trip. Nostalgia Manila is great resource material (check out those mint condition items!). It’s got those pop culture oddities that writers today can make use of - kaya biyahe na!

Courtesy to Gerry Alanguilan for posting this up.

Globe DSL recently had a promo allowing you to basically write off 1 year’s worth of phone bills if you subscribed to their DSL service..

I applied as soon as possible given the savings that would be generated (as well as the touted 512Kbps). I had previously used PT&T’s service : Greendot. Now for those of you considering Greendot vs. Globe. Here is my experience:

1. Greendot costs twice as much as Globe. (Around 1995Php vs 995Php).
2. Greendot has fewer subscribers allowing you quicker access to their technical support - as long as their tech support line isn’t busted.
3. Greendot has no time limit as to how long you can berate their technical support, Globe apparently does.
4. Greendot requires no phoneline and heads straight for your computer. But the cables will have to come from the poles outside your home.
5. Greendot has a more stable connection in terms of speed and connectivity, but unfortunately it only gives 256Kbps for the price of Globe’s 512. Globe’s DSL speeds can either jump really high or hit zero for no apparent reason. (And to think I’m near their Shaw Blvd. relay station too!) Let’s just say if you play an online RPG while on Globe - your partymates may end up fuming at your disconnections.
6. You pay Greendot at LBC or by ATM, Globe conveniently charges you from your phone bill .
7. Where I live Greendot uses PPPoE - a more up-to-date networking standard than Globe’s PPPoA.

Now regarding PPPoE and PPPoA: If you use a Linksys router like I do to network PCs at home… PPPoA just won’t work on it!! My new Globe connection only worked when directly plugged into the PC - bypassing the router. So imagine my frustration when I find out from Globe tech support (after waiting several painful minutes over the phone) that I need to have them switch the modem to use a static IP.

I’m not going to confuse you with all the terms, but let’s just say I had to shell out an additional 700PHP A MONTH for a static IP just so that my Linksys router can connect to the internet and network at the same time!!!!

I surfed to find an alternative solution to this problem. I discovered that I didn’t really need a static IP!!! I found this link. There is a post by bgorgees that worked for me. I am listing it here if anyone here in the Philippines ever needs help on that same problem… DON’T let Globe tell you that a static IP is the only way for their modem or your Linksys router to get through to the internet:

Step 1 - Physical setup

1. Turn off modem, router and computer.
2. Connect a computer in port 2 of the router.
3. Turn on the router but leave the modem off.
4. Turn on the computer.

Step 2 - Accessing the Setup Page

1. Using a computer hardwired in the router, launch Internet Explorer.
2. In the address bar, type “http://192.168.1.1″.
3. A login prompt will appear, leave the username blank and use “admin” for the password.

Step 3 - Setup MAC address clone by doing the following:

1. In the setup page, click the Mac Address Clone blue tab.
2. Enable the service.
3. Click Clone button.
4. Click Save settings.

Step 4 - Changing the LAN/Local IP address

1. In the “Setup” page, please look for a LAN or Local IP address and change its value to ” 10.10.10.1″
2. Click “Save settings” or “Apply” button.
3. Do not wait for the page to come back instead turn off router and computer.

Step 5 - Power cycle

1. Make sure that the modem, router and the computer is turned off.
2. Turn on the modem and wait 1 minute.
3. Turn on the router and wait 1 minute.
4. Turn on the computer and test for Internet connectivity.