Rusty Banana Forge

Did you know that Pinoy Komiks died? I didn’t. Frankly I didn’t care any less when and if it did. But it’s alive now, whatever that’s worth. So now what? Business as usual for me. I think I’ll see what’s up in Pinoy Animation…

Let each artist do their best and may we have no regrets. Be at the Komikon this year, bring a camera, shoot yourself and your achievements. Tickle a few toes, step on others. At the end of the day, kings and pawns go in the same box.

This is a page from my current book project: Hold on Tight. It’s cute but this page was rejected, because the girl looked Chinese and over the required age of three. I can always use it for something else though. The project is due on September 10, 2007 - but there seems to be no end to the revisions.

While working on this project, I realized just how much of drawing anime/manga had penetrated my head. There were moments that I would use facial proportions and conventions thinking they’d be applicable to a range of races & faces, only to find out these were only suitable for Japanese & Chinese faces.

I’ve been trying other Photoshop watercolor possibilities - without any Photoshop filters. The following painting was done with a single color/render layer, a customized smudge tool, and brushes customized for watercolor (they were set to multiply mode):

That’s a lady I saw in Megamall June 24. I believe I was eating chicken at the time.

I just realized that my sketches would be a great way to test Photoshop watercolor techniques. I use a black ballpen for my sketchbook, and the sketches are otherwise colorless.

I think I need to saturate the pallette a bit more, the colors are not vibrant enough - especially in JPG. Hopefully I can develop a more spontaneous style from all this. My digital opaque paintings don’t help me practice my pen&ink illustration all too much.

For those of you who still don’t know… I have a Deviant Art account. I posted an illustration that tells the previous setup and process of my digital watercolor. I say “previous” because the setup and process have been updated and are still being updated.

It’s been a pressure cooker of a week what with the deadline for the indie children’s book Hold on Tight approaching and with its revisions that never ever seem to properly revise. Note to self: if someone wants you to illustrate a book that features themselves, give them simpler faces so you can easily illustrate these over and over and over again. Of course, I DID start with simple faces… I don’t know where I went wrong… maybe I showered too much effort into it.

Speaking of book projects, on the 29th of August I will be book-signing Dalawang Bayani ng Bansa at Adarna House’s booth at the upcoming Manila International Book Fair. It’s my first book with Adarna, (don’t mind the colors, the reproduction isn’t all that good):

The INK Exhibit ended its run at the Power Plant mall. If not for the mall venue, we wouldn’t get any decent exposure as the posters we had were never actually posted - and were simply very large flyers. Is distribution getting worse every year or is it just me?

Ang-INK’s first Illustration Clinic did fairly well. We had around 15 to 20 “patients”, even a walk-in! Thanks to Liza Flores, Don Arado, Wilson Tortosa, and Jordan Santos for signing up as participating artists. We thank all the patients who had the courage to brave the rain and engage.

During my rest and recreation time, I’ve been watching Heroes season one, Naruto Shippuuden episodes & its previous movies. But when I want to get a bit more productive, I experiment with digital watercolor on Photoshop. The above illustration is a quick piece I did with the techniques I’ve been developing. No filters were used. I takes a bit more thinking than opaque medium. I’m very excited to produce more work this way, but quite frankly I need more social forms of recreation…

KOMIKON 2007 is coming this November and we know what that means — Independent Komiks! We want them to be seen, we want them to be bought, we want them to be good! But if you’re the independent creator who likes to keep his/her work sucky for the KOMIKON… here are some tips!

The Art

1. Risograph or mimeograph your pencils.
   No one has time to ink anything these days. A little pencil here, a little Photoshop there and you can pretty much tell your story anyway. Don’t forget to shade and crosshatch while you’re at it. Inking only slows down production.
2. Patronize a photocopier that produces nice accidental dots, patterns and lines on the art.
   It adds some design.
3. Have a bunch of poorly drawn talking heads for your entire comic.
   Keep them in the same familiar angles all the time. Throw in some angel wings for that shojou anime feel.
4. Have mindless gun-shooting or ass-whoopin for half of the comic.
   If you’re not making a sequel, just charm your reader with some really stiff action poses. Have showers of comic book blood across the pages.
5. Never draw a background.
   Characters and words are all you need. But if you feel the need for some setting, you are always free to draw a brick wall as background, just make sure it’s parallel to your comic book panels.
6. Use the Comic Sans font.
   The font is lovable and it has the word “comic” in it. What other reason do you need? Use it whenever you make comics. Be careful not to adjust it to make it look any better, because it can happen. Just leave it the way it is. The world will love you to death.

The Story

1. Introduce all your characters by putting their faces and one-paragraph bio all in one page.
   Given the possible (untimely) demise of the comic, it’s best you introduce everyone all at once. If the readers don’t form a bond with the cast by the first page, all is lost.
2. For your prologue use paragraphs. Lots of them.
   You need to tell everyone your story idea and the spectacular world where it happens on the very first page. If you let the readers wait until the storytelling, they might get bored.
3. Have your comics be forever “TO BE CONTINUED”.
   Why bother making a second or third issue? Leave everyone begging for more and googling your name. Besides, your day job keeps you too occupied anyway.
4. Just have NO story.
   Focus on surreal and abstract visual gratification.

The Marketing

1. Put together an anthology that makes your art & story look better than it is
   No need to practice your hands off or wrack your brain, just find creators for your anthology that aren’t as good as you are.
2. Have an emo or brooding person sell your comic.
   Look for someone who doesn’t talk much, if at all. If you can be so yourself, well then even better! Many artists adore the whole forsaken artist aura, it gives starving artists a feeling of camaraderie.
3. Keep drawing, the whole day.
   That’s what independent artists do best after all. Why use your voice when your hands can do all the talking? Booth visitors just block your light and you can barely hear them over the noise anyway .
4. If you have them, keep your website or contact info a secret.
   You don’t need people getting in touch with you about your comics… you can always get feedback from your mom. Don’t bring a calling card. Keep everyone guessing just who you are and what you do. You don’t want people to think you were actually serious about comics!
5. Reveal nothing about your comic book story.
   Watch out for people who ask you what your story is about! They only want to steal your ideas! Tell them to buy it if they want to know why they should.

It’s been a while since my last Illustration Friday. But seeing as that I had time for leisure, I splatter some digital paint onto Photoshop and formed this image for Illustration Friday’s Moon theme.

The Moon theme is actually very closely related to my very first Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan (The Philippine’s premiere children’s book illustrators organization) exhibit piece (2005). So this new illustration draws from that.

I enjoyed growing this illustration from a chaotic blob of paint.

Miles undersea, a captain seeks his own justice for the tragic death of his beloved, instead God gives him a chance to experience mercy from the deep.

I wanted the captain in my story to be a father. Old enough to command a crew of younger men, but still young enough to be flexible to change and also to get worked up. Thoughts of Gene Hackman’s character from the Red October movie came to mind. But Gene’s character was a bit old for me. So also making the crew younger would help make the captain appear older.

Afterwards I needed someone for the captain to share words with, in order to immediately dispense the message of the 4-page story quickly within a page or two. So his daughter’s onboard the sub as well. A girl would stand out more onboard an all male 20-something crew.

The Japanese manga 漫画 version of Koji Suzuki’s Spiral (part of The Ring trilogy, illustrated by Sakura Mizuki), helped me peg a clearer vision of how I could get the story rolling. It begins with someone sinking into the depths, someone important to the lead character. So that became another character in the story. It’s more of a plot device really, it is to explain why the captain is hunting leviathans in the first place. This victim is the captain’s wife.

This story is a metaphor of how a Christian may react to tragic circumstances. In fact, as I was writing and illustrating the comic, I couldn’t help thinking about the Holocaust, the tragedy of 9-11, Christian soldiers losing their lives in Iraq, terrible deaths of Christian friends of mine, and of course the families left behind.

It’s very heavy for a person to carry the weight of such loss. This is a weight that can drag people down into the abyss of doubt & despair. But this doesn’t have to be the case, as the story goes.

I only have 4 comic book pages to work with. It’s therefore a challenge to have a story where the drama doesn’t jump. An example of this “jumping” is when a character goes from love to hate without passing through steps. For example: from love, to concern, to doubt, to irritation, to suspicion, to fear, then to accusation, mistrust, then to unforgiveness, to spite, to raging hate! A logical progression.

If repentance is involved the story, you can imagine how difficult it is for that to happen naturally and logically in only 4 comic book pages! Because there is something supernatural about repentance!

Besides the jumping… there’s a matter of how to make the readers connect to character in the story. I must say there are writers who are able to pull that off in 4 pages, but considering that I work in a fantasy setting (I love doing so) - it takes a little more effort. (I just add more talk balloons, unfortunately…)

My comic book story for the International Christian Comic Book Contest is done, but I need YOUR help! I need feedback on the story!!! You can find the 4 pages here:

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4

Did it make sense? Does it flow naturally? Why or why not?
Thanks so much!