Merry Christmas

See you in space cowboy...

Some good catch.

At some point I can say I´ve reached some peace of mind. Yes, I´m bored out of my brain with my dead end job, but lucky for me that is gonna be over soon. The good news is that I was finally able to find two books I´ve been looking for a long time now. One of them is called MOVING PICTURES and it’s a graphic novel made by Stuart and Kathryn Immonen. It was published by Top Shelf in 2007 and when I heard of it I was already in Carmelo (a.k.a no-comics-for-you-town). I spent a lot of time and effort trying to find this online, but let´s be honest: If I don´t have a credit card how am I supposed to buy it form amazon?? Here´s where the piracy comes in handy, just that it seemed that no one had scanned it, so it took me a couple years to finally find it. And now I got it…SUCCESS!!!

The second piece that piracy has granted me is the long out of print and very hard to find Bram Stoker´s Dracula, the movie adaptation made by Mignola when the Coppola movie was released. I looked for it all over the place, here, there and everywhere, even people I used to work with at midtown comics had never heard of it. I remember one time, many years ago, I had it as a hard cover book in my hands and decided not to buy it (what a douche). Ever since that day I´ve been looking for it. I perused the web searching for the scans without any results, until last night. There they were, the four issues, waiting for me to download them AND IN ENGLISH!!! The blessing, the relief, what a tremendous catch for one night. This is what I mean when I defend piracy, there is some stuff that for any given reason is impossible to get or too complicated, or too damn expensive, thank god for the scanners that compile all these marvelous things for people like me. How else am I supposed to get a copy of Wertham´s Seduction of the innocent? Scanned my friend…scanned.

P.S: When the scanners don´t deliver I have my brother Ronnie to take of me. He got me two books I was crazy for as birthday presents, Icons: the Jim Lee art for DC comics and wildstorm and the all pencils version of Batman HUSH. Amazing stuff from my amazing brother. Good times ^_^

Eduardo Barreto: 1954 – 2011

Mucho ha pasado en ésta última semana, pero lo más relevante del caso es que el querido Eduardo Barreto nos ha dejado para irse de gira con otros grandes del comic que consideraron que ya habían hecho mucho acá en la tierra y se fueron a marcar nuevos hitos alla arriba con el barba. Eduardo fue siempre un amigo y más que nada uno de mis maestros, mucho (pero mucho)de lo que sé hoy día se lo debo a su cuidado e infinita paciencia y me ha llevado todo este tiempo el juntar las fuerzas para poder hablar de ésta perdida. Mi corazón está muy triste por éste evento, pero como todos sabemos, hay que seguir adelante. Esto no es un adiós Edu, solo un hasta luego.

My own RED RING of DEATH!

Yes, this is what you get for being optimistic!

OMG! This is like the worst thing ever!! This and finding your spouse (or couple, no judgement here, what am I, the marriage police?) in bed with someone else. Someone else of your same sex, that´s a given, because let´s face it, if you are a chick and you find your man with some tramp you should have thought about that when you refused going down on him, you know? If you´re a dude and you find your woman with some guy, well man, that sucks for you…but what if you have a really hot wife and you find her in bed with some other hot chick, huh? How cool would that be? Imagine you´re married to Scarlet Johanssen and you find her in bed with Angelina Jolie, there´s no losers on that scenario—right? Right on! Gimme five!! And what if you find your wife (who suddenly gained like 40 pounds) in bed with some guy that is too ugly for his own sake? Please, we all know that wasn´t working for anyone. Besides, that´s probably the only chance that guy will ever get laid without being arrested for looking out for hookers, and you haven´t even touched the bitch for over a year by now! So is that bad? NO, this is bad! I haven´t got to play Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3, and I was just getting all warmed up to take a trip to Arkham City…AND NOW THIS???!?!?!? You gotta be frakin´ kidding me! So this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone besides finding your girl in bed with someone else, or…I don´t know…getting home and finding your kids chopped down to pieces because the bitch you live with went berserker on their asses. But I wouldn´t know about that, my bitches are running low and I have no kids…my fraking XBOX just died!!!

35 años

Guilty Crown.

This is what I´m watching right now. A new anime about the same thing all animes are made about: a young japanese guy that borders the autistic meets young super hot chick and fall immediatly in love with her, but he won´t say anything to her because he´s such a tool. Bad guys of the goverment against a rebelious lot and some mecha in between them. Nothing new there, think of it as Eureka Seven meets Evangelion. Characters are cool and the overall tone of the series seems good enough. Plus I really like the visual aspect of it. Go check it out.

Birthdays.

And now, a few words from our publisher--wait...what?
Oh...right...we don´t have one. No one´s moving a finger to get us published...
Well then, a few words by a bitter man:

El humor en esta noche!

Arrancamos con una leve auto crítica:



Luego seguimos con algo que parece una tontería, y en realidad lo es:



Y cerramos con más fantasías de ESTE nerd:



P.D: Hoy me enteré que pasé a segundo año de profesorado. Así que por lo menos por un rato hoy puedo decir que la vida es buena.

Salú, turros de Balvanera!

Did I mention that we are in the app store?

Nope? Then check this out:



And maybe you might want to also take a look at the picture bellow to see how we rank:



I don´t need to say that my brothers and I are exultant with joy. But hey...we are!
Good times. ^_^

The book about JIM LEE is ready.

Very well, the book on Jim Lee’s work is finished and one thing I neglected to mention earlier is that is all in English. Don’t ask me why, my head it’s just wired to think in English, so everything comes easier that way.

All corrections have been made, so keep this in mind, if you spot something wrong now, you can’t imagine how it looked before. Thing is; I always seem to miss some words while I’m writing them, and those mistakes or typos are corrected by whoever is making the work of a proof reader. In this case I didn’t have one, so I had to actually wait until I saw a printed copy to spot all the things that went awry. I also changed its name to Jim Lee: a sketchbook project for two reasons; a) because it really was just a project, and b) to make it sound less pretentious (some idiot tries to tell me that everything I do it´s incredibly pretentious, while all he does is sit down and scratch his sorry ass…dick).


There were a lot of images that needed to be replaced because the program doesn’t save the actual image on the project, so if you move either the working file or the image that link gets broken, which leaves you with a faulty image and when you print it, it looks like shit. This program (Quarkxpress) it’s pretty easy to use, but there is only so much you can do when all the reference you have next to you is the manual. Sometimes I had to make things time and time again to achieve what I was going for, try that for “trial & error”.


I have to say that coming up with a whole book it’s not an easy task, especially when you are doing it without previous knowledge, I couldn’t figure out how to number the pages for instance, or how to wrap text around some images, but hey, I did the best my limited knowledge allowed me to.

For the future book I’m working on I hope to count with the assistance of a proper designer, I have the whole look for it right in my head, but I don’t want to risk it. Hopefully I will be working with a publisher and the right people to do what I can’t do for myself. This next project has me really excited about it, work it’s already in progress and seems to be having a very positive response from those involved in it. This Jim Lee book was completed from conception to last edit in about two weeks, I’m certain that because we have a lot more time to work on it the next one will be simply awesome.


Now my dear friends, feel free to get this book from HERE, but remember: whatever you do with it it’s you own responsibility, it was never intended for sale, you can print it, you can share it, all I ask for is credit where credit is due and for you to keep me out of trouble.

Thanks to all for their kind words in Facebook and the support of anyone involved in one way or another. There are BIG THINGS in the works for 2012 (if the end of the world allows them to happen) so stay tuned. Like I always say…more to come.

P.S: there’s one thing that is missing, and that is a dedication, so here goes a palliative:

“I always pictured dedicating my first book to my kids and my beloved wife for all their love and support. Since I don’t have neither of them I plan to save that dedication for the future. Right now I feel that dedicating something like this to someone who doesn’t appreciate comics in the least will be a waste of space and time, so It won’t be dedicated to my mum either. But I will thank her for the mates she gave me while I was working… gracias vieja.”

This is what I do when I get bored.

It turns out that I´m planning on writing a book about comic book artists and their methods of work, and because I´m used to be a one-man-show I´m assuming that it´s gonna be me the one that it´s going to end up suffering while designing the whole book. With that in mind I´m diving head first into a new program to design books. Maybe some of you have heard of it , I´m talking about Quarkxpress.

In order to start figuring out how it works and what it can do with it I took it upon myself to create some sort of template of what I want my book to look like, so I grabbed a folder I have filled up with hundreds of drawings made by Jim Lee and decided to put some of them together as a hefty sketchbook.


I plan to have this book completed soon enough, I mean, it´s just compiling the images and writing the occasional text to go with them. How long can it take?

Truth is, I should be doing some stuff for school instead, but fuck that, passion comes first, and if there is something I´m passionate about it´s comics. Fuck school!

Anyhow, there you have the cover of the sketchbook and HERE a chapter as a preview. All this is made just for fun, it´s not going to be for sale or anything, it´s just to get in the mood for when the time comes to work on MY BOOK, a book that is going to be called "Creating comics: a visual journey" and if all the artists involved return the interviews at any time, my co-writer Lord Magnus and I are gonna get cracking with it.

Until then...see ya!

Sketch the night away.

Misleading as a title can be, this post is not necesarilly about thing I´ve made on one single night, there´s a couple of then actually. Anyway, right now I´m not doing any work in comics because I´m in between jobs, so this is the situation: when I´m working I complain about not having enough time, and when I´m not working I don´t know what to do with my life.

So I sketch stuff, like these:


This is sort of a celebration of the new shooters I plan to get my hands on. You can never underestimate the healing qualities of blowing up some heads with a sniper rifle. It makes me feel good about myself. I have so much hate directed towards humanity that is not even funny (to some).

Then I´m picking up the Sketchbook pro 2011 and doing somen drawings on the PC. It´s not easy for me to do this since I´m not used to drawing on a pad, but as I´m sure Corey here will testify...I´m getting better.


Here´s the first attemp I did with the sodding program:


And last, but not least a very interesting book about sketches and designs I found online. It´s sort of a complilation of the artistic side of Brian Wood (writer of Northlanders, DV8, DMZ and Local among many, many more titles). This is the second volume of PUBLIC DOMAIN, and you can get it from here TOTALLY FOR FREE (you cheapskates). So go and get it.


I´m writting a book about artists, so maybe you will find out more about that in the near future.

Until then...bye.

NEW YORK COMIC-CON 2011 is here!!

And for the second year in a row so are 3 GUYS MAKING COMICS!
I promised before, and because I´m a man of my word here you have the covers for our brand new book:


Just like last year you´ll be able to grab a copy of our newest issue of HOW TO SURVIVE WORKING IN RETAIL (in this case #7) along with all the previous ones.

Look for our booth and make sure to stop by and say hi to Ronnie and Markell, they are going to be more than pleased to sell and sign the books for you.



Let me remind you that the SKETCH VARIANT will be available ONLY during the show, from then on you´ll get the book with the regular cover.

Enjoy the CON, I´ll see you soon!

House is...

...whenever your heart is?!

So he´s the run-down. Last Friday night I went out to try and socialize a little bit, see if I could meet someone and maybe, if god existed get laid. I got so frustated that I´ve decided not to go out again, at least for a while.

I´m so useless that I can´t muster the strenght to go and talk to some chicks, no matter how whorish they look or how drunk they are. I don´t know why I keep doing this to myself, but it keeps happening. I mean, I was close enough to some woman who was talking about how much she loved so suck c@ck and not even that was incentive enough for me to go near her and offer her something to do, y´know?

I´m so pathetic that I ended that same night watching the bonus disc from spiderman 2 in bed...alone.

Can someone kill me or at least fuck me out of pitty!?

Anyway, I´ve reached the following conclusion:


I mean, I already have the charming personality, the unabashed arrogance, I´m totally self-centered and egotistical...I just need to work on my addiction to drugs.

sketch time!

So we meet again my fellow readers. I´m totally thrilled to inform you that "How to survive working in retail #7" it´s complete and ready to be picked up for you at NEW YORK COMIC-CON, with an exclusive sketch variant, just like last year.

In the meantime I leave you this two little sketches, one honoring the new incarnation of the boy wonder, the one that will be playable in BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY, a new game that I hope to see very soon in my XBOX´s tray.


Them you have another doodle I did using the sketchbook pro software for the very first time. Too bad I don´t like to draw in the computer, seems cool enough though.

Next time you´ll have a look to the covers for HTSWR #7.
see ya then.

Make way for HTSWR #7.

Good news on the horizon. 3 Guys Making Comics are getting ready for the 2011 edition of New York comic-con and to make it a really sweet deal we are releasing the new issue of HOW TO SURVIVE WORKING IN RETAIL, Number 7!

It´s been a while since the book hit the shelves last March but things got really complicated for all of us, and since we have no back up from anyone life outside of comics comes first. But now the book it´s on the final stages of production and we are already working hard on the last issues of this first story arc that will conclude on issue 10.

Currently issue 1 it´s like on its SEVENTH print and like all the other issues it´s available in the states from COAST TO COAST and online on multiple places. We are also revamping the 3GMC website and don´t forget you can also follow us on Facebook. We are pushing hard to keep this baby of ours in the shelves and we really appreciate all the comments and all the fans we´ve been gathering all through this year. All the people have been extremelly kind when they talk about the look of the book and my art.

Thanks a bunch for that, I will continue to improve as I keep drawing, and that is because you are all there. THANKS.


Here´s also a nice pic from the store DEWEY´S in Madison NJ, if you see the book and want to shoot us a pic of the display or of yourself with it we will post it on the website and in FB.

Stay tunned, there are a lot of exciting things comming up in the near future.

Día nacional del Historietista Uruguayo.

Feliz Día a todos aquellos que hacemos historieta.

Para saber más sobre esta ilustre fecha los invito a dirigirse al Blog de la AUCH siguiendo ESTE enlace. También pueden visitar el flamante sitio oficial de AUCH siguiendo ESTE OTRO enlace.

Mis gracias a todos los miembros de la asociación por permitirme ser uno de sus miembros fundadores. Es un orgullo.

Salú!

Stuff

I really don´t know who made this, but it is just brilliant. Isn´t it?

I came across this while I was in New York. One day a girl came into the store with a bag sporting this image on the side. I loved it right there. I think it´s just so clever that it deserves to be showed.

Sobre la FIERRO.

Well, let´s get the obvious out of the way. This is about a comic I made for a contest and It didn´t win (or won, or whatever) So if you are Reading this whole post you are clearly out of your league (unless you speak spanish, that is).
I´m not gonna bother translating the text to english, you already know what you needed to know.

Now feel free to enjoy the pretty pictures. Here you have another testament of my eternal suckiness.

Ahora que me saqué eso de encima paso a contarles al resto. Esta es la historieta que hice el año pasado para el concurso de la revista Fierro de Argentina. Si bien en un post bastante anterior ya dije que no había ganado nada por lo menos llego a la preselección. Entraron más de 300 concursantes de los que eligieron unos 30, yo entré en ese número pero hasta ahí llegué. Los de la revista prometieron postear los finalistas en su blog pero nunca lo hicieron, así que ahora me tomo yo la libertad de postearlo acá para que aunque sea tengan algo nuevo para leer.

La historia la hice en un par de horas ya que era corta, se me ocurrió un comienzo y un final, el “desarrollo” apareció solo. La pinte en la compu con Photoshop y las letras también se las puse yo. Tanto trabajo para el mismo resultado de siempre. Es por este tipo de cosas que soy un resentido con la vida, y no es que ande por ahí queriendo dar lástima, es que no escondo lo que me pasa. Con nadie.

Me animo a citar al Talentoso (si, con mayúscula) Matías Bergara con algo que posteo en su Facebook, ojalá no se ofenda ni me lo tome a mal.

“El mundo del comic es muy parecido al de las artes marciales, para el que conoce a ambos. Mucho más sacrificio que guita; un amor y una entrega por el medio, que te exige hasta la última gota de tu persona; un respeto y una amistad instantánea entre los que juegan el juego, de cualquier pais y edad, que afirman apenas con una mirada mutua y una sonrisa la complicidad en esa disciplina tremenda a la que dedican sus dias; lo absurdo y desubicado del ego.”

Cuanta sabiduría y tanta razón en tan pocas palabras.
Más cosas en el futuro cercano. Gracias por leer y no comentar nada.

More stuff in English very soon.
C´mon guys, show me some love!

Cosas

Something I´m watching (or about to)

Let´s start with a brief disclaimer. I´ve never been such a big fan of David Finch. I´ve always thought that his style was ok. I mean, I can go for his baroque and sometimes over charged art, but he certainly doesn´t Rank in my top 10 of favorite artists, not even close. But if the guy can draw something like this, he´s ok in my book.



I´ve known his work since de Image days, going later to be milked away and thrown to super massive stardom at Marvel to his current affair with DC. He´s always been working on top characters and attracting a lot of people in conventions. The lines at his table were always huge, but so were the ones at Rob Liefeld´s.

Anyway, I came across a series of instructional dvds made by him and some other Image guys. Now, one thing I do love it´s the process of making comics and seeing other artists do their craft. That to me it´s some sort of nerd porn.
So after this brief intro here´s a rundown on the titles I found:


Dynamic figure drawing: the body with David Finch:
This is just one of many dvds he has made with the people at Gnomon Workshop. There are three more that I know of but this was the only one I could find with the links working. Here he show us how to draw the body accurately. It´s NOT and anatomy lesson, he just talks about the process of creating the figure and the methods he used to learn about the human body. It´s almost three hours long and it can get a Little boring from time to time, but it´s great to see what this guy can do. Not bad for a lefty.













Comic book inking with Joe Weems:
This one is a follow up to another one made as a team with Finch and colorist Steve Firchow. Finch draws a picture, Weems ink it and finally Firchow colors it. This one is particularly good for aspiring inkers, Weems shows you the whole process and mind set he has to tackle such a piece. He shows you techniques and instruments to use while he talks about his experience in the field.











Comic book Pin-ups with Joe Benitez:
Benitez it´s now making a creator owned book called “Lady Mechanika” at Aspen, so that´s what drove me to get this one also. To be fair I haven´t watched it yet, but from what I can gather he expleains what to keep in mind when doing a pin-up illustration. Y´know, how to use the space, be dramatic and stuff.








All in all they seem to be very interesting for the comic book artist. Since I don´t have anyone near to talk about comics with this comes as the next best thing.

Now let´s see if I can find the one about inking from Tom Nguyen.

P.s: We are getting close to the blog´s second birthday, so I´m trying to work on something to celebrate. I also notice that the number of visits keeps increasing, but it still is the land of no comments. Will it kill someone to drop a line or two?

piece of mind

7:15 am. National holiday, I´m working and destiling some poison in comic book form. Just tonite I discovered the work of Faith Erin Hicks and got floored by it.
All my demons are taking over. I need to write a few pieces for here and for school but I just feel I don´t have the time nor the will to do it.

FUCK LIFE!

More posts are a comin´

THE JOE QUESADA PROCESS TO MAKE A FANTASTIC FOUR COVER.

I´ve always loved Joe´s art, dating back to the days of SWORD OF AZRAEL or ASH. I have a folder with a gazillion images from him all the way from sketches, concept images, pencils, inks, complete pages and illustrations. When I saw this article about the complete process behind the creation of this cover I was just so happy that I thought that for some reason it was my duty to help spread the work of the good man.



You can find this on multiple sites, but I took it from BLEEDING COOL, so if you want to read it from there just go HERE.

For the ones like me, the ones who like to keep stuff and maybe print it to read them in the crapper I made a PDF version that you can get from HERE.

I´m heart broken because in Uruguay there´s no way to get his book with his art for Marvel comics and I can´t even find it scanned online. In the meantime this makes for some very interesting reading for anyone who makes comics (and reads English).



God how much I miss the simplicity of living in the US, whenever I wanted a book all I had to do was to go to some Borders or Barnes & Noble and buy it at once. Not to mention when I worked @ Midtown Comics and I didn´t even had to move to get them, even with my employee discount to make things sweeter.


My advice: If you are ME and live in the US, NEVER go back to Uruguay.
In the Meantime enjoy this article.

Sad Lisandro signing out.
More to come.