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.

Nostalgia Zombie

I'm pretty sure all of you know the Angry Videogame Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic. You are, after all, on the internet, and are bound to have bumped into them sometime. They both make review videos, but the AVGN reviews games (old ones, mostly) and the NC reviews movies (really bad ones, mostly). Back in 2009, they set up a little rivalry, trading back and forth punches in their videos, culminating on a huge battle video where they both kicked each others asses for the entertainment of the audience. It was all in good fun, and the trading card game company Diving Dragon Games created an expansion pack for their Geek Fight series featuring only the AVGN, the NC and characters related to them. I was lucky enough to be contacted by them to do the Nostalgia Zombie card - basically, the Nostalgia Critic as a zombie. Since I love zombies and enjoy the NC's reviews, I was more than happy to do the card. This was what I came up with:

The good folks at Diving Dragon Games were happy with the picture, and so was I. It was the first time I had done something for a trading card game, so I was excited but a little scared, so I ended up making the image pretty simple - but I think it worked. I couldn't wait to see the real card, but until then I had to settle for watching the mock up they posted on their website:

It already looked awesome to me, but it looked even better when I got the chance to take a look at the real cards. I'll leave you with some photos of the deck, and remember, if you go to the Diving Dragon website: http://www.divingdragongames.org/ you can still buy the decks, it's a lot of fun to play. And I'm happy to say I'm still collaborating with the company, so as soon as I can release any more news/work, I will.

Sketchcard 4 - Lion-O

Well, the time has come to post the fourth and final sketchcard I did for this year's Comics for Cures, the BlueLinePro/Sketch Magazine Sketchcard Event for Cancer. I picked Lion-O, not only because of nostalgia but also because I realized I had never drawn him before. And who didn't love the Thundercats?

Here are the inked lines. As before, I totally forgot to take a photo of the pencils only stage, but it didn't differ too much from this except that it was, you know, penciled and not inked. I didn't get too crazy with the drawing, so it was pretty simple and straightforward.

Then, I started coloring the card with pencils. I used the same method for all four of the cards.

The background was, like in the other cards, just a simple color.

And know here are the cards all together! You might have seen them before on deviantart, but still, it's a first for this blog, so I hope you enjoy the set.

Sketchcards are really a ton of fun to make. I'd love to go a little crazier and be a bit more bold in the next ones. Hopefully I'll get to draw many more in the future.
I'll let you know once these cards are up for auction!

Usagi Yojimbo on the Covered Blog

A while ago, I stumbled upon a cool blog called Covered. It's a blog where basically artist's take on existing comic book covers and create their own versions. The new covers are posted on the website along the original ones, and only one cover is posted per day. I had a lot of fun browsing through the site - some covers were wonderfully re-created - and it wasn't long before I felt the urge to contribute. After I knew my participation would be welcome, I started thinking about what to cover. That turned out to be easy as well - I had been reading Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, and loving it, so I immediately turned to that. Who could resist drawing a rabbit ronin? So I covered Usagi Yojimbo number 37. It's been a while since I drew the piece, and the site is receiving a lot of contributions, so my work was scheduled to show up on April 5th. And sure enough, there it was, yesterday!

That's a screenshot I took of the blog, showing Stan Sakai's original on the left, and mine on the right. You can take a better look at my version below. I hope you enjoy it, and read Usagi Yojimbo if you get the chance!

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated

Happy April Fool's, everyone! Let's get that right out of the way, so you know I won't try to trick you with anything I post. Instead, I'll post some drawings, how's that?

Back on 2008, I got invited by Mike Schneider to participate on a big project he was curating. It basically involved creating an animated version of George Romero's classic, Night of the Living Dead. He was contacting several artists, on several fields, to contribute to the project, and I was one of them. I was very excited, and I quickly accepted. I love horror movies, and Night of the Living Dead is probably the most important zombie movie of all time, so working on an animated version sounded awesome. Thing is, I'm not an animator. I had never animated anything in my life, so I started out doing some illustrations, like this one:

And this one:And also this one:

I ended up doing a very big bulk of illustrations for the movie, (probably the most I've done at one time) and then Mike asked me specifically for an animated sequence. It was one of the biggest challenges I ever faced, but I ended up actually animating one tiny sequence (when Ben is tuning the radio, shortly after he arrives at the house). The movie is now making the round in several festivals and is due shortly for a DVD release. It was definitely a very interesting experience, both in illustration and in animation, and I learned a lot!

Though not designed by me (it was created by Mike) I'll leave you with one of the posters for the project, which features some of my artwork, and you can always go to the official website for more information.