Iron Man

Well, Iron Man 2 is coming to theaters this week, and even though it's not getting the best reviews so far, I'm still curious to go see it. The first one was a very solid piece of entertainment and actually spiked my interest for a character I never cared much about before. I thought the sequel gave me a great excuse to draw Iron Man, especially since I never did before - that's right, this is my first Iron Man! This is also the first place where I'll post this, so you might get a look at this before the good folks over at my other galleries. Hope you like it!

Rex Splode

Do you guys read Invincible? NO? Well then, what are you waiting for? It's only one of the coolest comics around these days and you should absolutely check it out. Which leads me to this drawing I made of Rex Splode, one of the secondary characters of the comic. In case you haven't seen it already, enjoy! And if you have seen it before, enjoy it yet again!

Invinciible and its characters are a creation of the wonderful minds of Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker.

Cadavre Exquis page 44

A cadavre exquis, or "exquisite corpse" in english, is a collaborative method of creation in which each author adds a sentence, or a drawing, to a previous set of sentences or drawings made by other authors, in order to create a story that makes sense in the whole. Maybe this isn't the best explanation ever, but most of you are probably familiar with the concept of the thing already.

Well, portuguese comic artist extraordinaire Daniel Maia started a Cadavre Exquis back in 2008, with the participation of many portuguese comic artists and illustrators, each artist creating a page. The project is a lot of fun, and Daniel invited me to contribute with the 44th page of this ongoing story! I accepted, of course, and it a lot of fun. After 43 pages, you can imagine how insane the story got, with different people putting their own spin on the characters and events, and my page ended up being no different. I went a little crazy with it and made a giant baby stomp around! I apologize to my international followers for only having the page in portuguese, but don't worry - it doesn't make a whole lot of sense detached from the other pages, so understanding the plot is not essential. And it's pretty self-explanatory anyway. Still, here it is, and I hope you enjoy it!

Click on the page to see it bigger! And if you want to see the original post on the Cadavre Exquis blog, go here.

Kick Ass

Kick Ass opens in portuguese cinemas today, and to celebrate, I drew a quick Kick Ass! I really enjoyed the comic, and everyone who's seen it says the movie is great, so I'm definitely very curious to see it.

Kubrick's Garage - 17

As you may or may not know (you probably don't know if you're an entirely new visitor), I've been collaborating with my friend J.B. Martins on a regular webcomic focused on cinema and pop culture. It's called Kubrick's Garage. You might have heard of it if you used to follow my other blog, or follow me on deviantart or twitter - I pretty much talk about it a lot, not only because I want to promote it, but because I'm genuinely proud of this project. J.B. delivers consistently funny scripts, and I love drawing them. But since I haven't posted anything about the webcomic on this blog so far, I'll leave you with the latest strip, number 17. I apologize that the text is in portuguese, but I didn't get a chance to translate it yet.

Click on the page to see it bigger!

By the way, Kubrick's Garage has a fan page on facebook, where we post sketches, finished strips, and all kinds of other goodies. So come join us there: Kubrick's Garage on Facebook.

Bang Bang

Hello, everyone! Your eyes are looking at an exclusive. This is a drawing that I hadn't yet posted on deviantart or elsewhere, and I decided it was time to give you something to look at that hadn't been posted anywhere before.
A while ago, late last year, my friend Hugo Teixeira asked me to contribute with a pin-up for the upcoming volume of his manga, Bang Bang. It was a pleasure to contribute with this piece for his book:

And here is a photo of it, on the book:

Enjoy!

Zona Fantástica

This year, I was lucky enough to participate in a new project, involving comics and illustration, called Zona Fantástica. Fil is the artist and mastermind behind Zona, he had the idea to create a collaborative publication, that would allow artists to showcase their work in comics in a country where there aren't many opportunities to do just that. It started with Zona Zero, then Zona Negra came along (dedicated to horror, and released in Lisbon's International Movie Festival, MOTELx - I'll probably post the illustration I did for it sometime in the future) and, last but definitely not least, came Zona Fantástica, the third volume of this project, released in Oporto's International Film Festival, Fantasporto. It was the most ambitious volume so far, with 80 pages printed in full color and over 30 artists collaborating. I created a 3-page comic to be published inside, and I also had the pleasure (and honor!) of creating the cover. Here's a photo of a preliminary phase, the inks in process:

The cover features characters that can be found in comics and illustrations on the inside of the book (one of them is mine), and here is the final version:

I wanted to give it an old, almost grindhouse-poster like feel, because I thought it would be fitting - Fantasporto started out being a festival dedicated mainly to horror cinema, and I have a soft spot for horror grindhouse flicks. I don't know if it's the cheesy dialogue or bad effects, but it's something that appeals to me - so much so that my comic inside plays out like a grindhouse trailer (or at least, that was my initial plan). I can't post the comic for now, but when it's cool to post it, I will. This was a great experience, I got to collaborate with some great people and we got to have a couple autograph sessions, which were very cool.

(The geek in the pink-striped sweater is yours truly).

It was very exciting when I started seeing the book pop in various bookstores, alongside other comics I read and love.


Especially since I drew and colored the cover, I feel a little more attached to this book and so felt extra happy to see it achieve success - the first edition sold out on the first week, and a new batch has very recently been ordered. The book is now available on Fnac stores too (before it was only available through online orders and specialized comic book shops).

(There it is, right in the middle, sharing a shelf with Persepolis and many others!)

The book even got blurbs on national magazines, and has been having a great reception with the audience, receiving good reviews on blogs and websites.

(it's in Portuguese only, this blurb was published on the magazine NS, of Jornal de Notícias)

So it's all pretty much been going wonderfully, and I have no doubt that the new volumes will be even better. The next one is already in the oven, and will be released at the International Comics Festival of Beja (where several original works from most of the authors will also be exposed)! This has been a great project to participate in, to learn from and to grow with. I hope we can continue for many years.