Chaos Campus - Wizards World, Sacramento this weekend

So, the first episode I drew for the Chaos Campus serie is available! ...well, only at Sacramento's Wizard World as for now. Alex Thompson will be there with our booth, if you can, check it out!

I can't wait to have a couple of these in my hands.

Worry not, the next episodes are on their way too

Drawing routine

Nevermind me, just keeping on drawing

Dawn of the Dad in progress

Random commission of the week

Chaos Campus #27 in progress

Chaos Campus #29

This month is being super hard due to a short deadline...Chaos Campus issue 29 on its way! I'm having super fun drawing this. Boobs everywhere!

Action!

Drawing action scenes is something rare for me, both because of my preferences when writing a story and because of the commissions I usually get. I guess it's the cat biting its tail, but I somehow got out of it with Chaos Campus.

I'm also studying this kind of violence. Thanks, Crossed.

Working on Dawn of the D(e)ad, too! First pencils are on their way (it seems I forgot to scan them, so let's talk about them next week), and a work in progress cover art. I swear if I don't get this published I'm gonna turn it into a webcomic.

Cover art!

 It seems like all of the issues I've been drawing lately ended up in the same moment, right in time to force me to move to do all the covers one after another. I'm so grateful for those that give me the graphics to add, because I really hate to decide on the title looks and similar.

This is for the school project. I noticed I hadn't a real title for it, because the story actually sucks and it's completely different from the one I wanted to write...but it was my first script, I understand. So basically, the main character's name seems to work well enough.

Chaos Campus is still in the making, as you can see by the rough stage of the cover. I love it anyway.

And last but not least, I'm re-coloring the cover art for an upcoming project about Tomoe Gozen's life. Now that I'm adjusting to watercolors it feels so weird and difficult to make proper use of digital coloring. I'm not sure I like it, but it improved a lot since the first version

Spaceships and motorbikes

 I've spent the whole Christmas week to my parents' house, and I couldn't actually study or do any work. I supposed the week to be more active, but we ended up sleeping most of the time - so I barely had paper and pencils with me. I ended up studying my little brother's toys. He's StarWars crazy.

All the proportions are wrong, but at least they look like spaceships and not like sandwiches

I'm also trying to put together a good portfolio, so I'm remaking some of the pages I've done this year, with improved storyboard and drawings. This is somewhat inspired by the Rider graphic novel I've drawn for Fastback pictures (the project is still in the making)

Recent favourites: pages

Some of my favourite results from the last episodes I had to draw.

Chaos Campus, page 3. Alex Thompson gave me just one simple rule to follow when drawing his pages: insert as much cheesy ass and boobs as possible, without having them naked. It's a really fun to draw comic and I did my best on that point. I like the storyboard of panels 3 and 4.

Valley-01, third episode, page 13

This is my absolute favourite of the last months. I couldn't wait for it to be online to share it, as it's a massive turning point in the episode. I had a lot of fun with the storyboard for this part; I'm still learning how to handle fight and action scenes, and episode #3 has been mindblowing. Check out the colored version and the rest of the episode at bilateralcomics.com!

I'm still questioning my ability to color, and I plan to start studying it again from the basics. I kind of like the inking lately, but I still strongly prefer the pencils, and I feel it's worth publishing both the stages right now.

Dealing with the text walls

The infamous text wall, alias: when you have so much text in one page, that you struggle to actually put drawings in it. If you read the second episode of Valley-01 you know what I mean. I felt like the writers should learn to contain themselves and leave something up to the drawings, then I fell in the same problem myself with the EKOenergy script.

The main problem with this script is that is an informative comic. We had to put a lot of informations in it, as well as some developing of a story, and common dialogue scenes. It has been indeed a challenge: I'm still cutting some words here and there to make the text fit the actual space in the page, and we agreed on adding an information page at the end, because we felt we haven't expressed everything we needed to in 30 pages of comic. All of this, in english, that has some of the shorter ways to express a sentence. 

It's harder than I thought to keep a reading flow that is not too boring for the reader. I'm learning to get creative on where to place text, and which angles to use to leave as much space as possible without cutting too much on the drawings. I've had similar issues in some of the Bilateral Comics pages before, but in this case I don't have the easy escape

The ups-and-downs of this job? Valley-01 #3, online from mid-october, is action full. I'm sure I'll miss the text walls as soon as I have to handle full art pages with multiple people fighting.

Speaking of Bilateral Comics, our new short story CODE 991 is launching this week and already got a very nice review - so keep tuned, read it, and let us know your thoughts!

CODE 991 review - Curiosity of a social misfit

EKOenergy - European Volunteer Service

The big project for this summer brought me all the way to Finland, thanks to the European Volunteer Service, to work on a one-shot comic for EKOenergy. It's an Helsinki-based organization working with European electricity supplier to improve the green energy market. 

I couldn't image to build a project so close to my studies and interests, when I applied for the EVS some months ago. I've spent the last month writing the script for the story, teaming with the other volunteers and members and let me tell you: I thought it could go worse. I've never had to write such a long story, neither to write alongside with other people. It's been interesting, but not a thing I'll do again. I've been longing to draw, and finally I've started the pencils!

The pages are meant to be black and white, both because I feel more comfortable and because I don't have that much time to color, too. The project lasts only three months, mostly due to school that starts in october already. I'm trying to focus on perspective more than I've done in the recent other stories, and it already feels different. Life is better when perspective works.

Once the comic is done, other volunteers will translate it in various languages, as it's going to be readable for free on their website.