22.4.08

YELLO AWARDS 2008

Remember the Robot story that me and Diego did last year? So, the book where it's featured just got nominated for the Eisner awards! We're listed with one of the coolest mini-comics of the Year, 5, from my friends Becky, Grampa, Fabio and Ba.

Here is the whole list for Best Anthology:
> Best American Comics 2007, edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore and Chris Ware
> 5, by Gabriel Bá, Becky Cloonan, Fabio Moon, Vasilis Lolos, and Rafael Grampa
> Mome, edited by Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds
> Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened, edited by Jason Rodriguez
> 24Seven, vol. 2, edited by Ivan Brandon

Well, I know this is not important, but it sure is nice. Congrats to Ivan and everyone in the book.

12.3.08

WHO'LL WATCH THE WATCHMEN?

When I was a kid, in the corner of where I lived, there was a newsstand that I visit every single day. It was the 80's – So, I don't have to explain what this meant to comics – Each time I went, there was a huge wave of new information to blew my mind. Always something, from all over the world, that get it's way to that small corner in São Paulo, only to drive kids like me nuts. Pages and pages of wonderful art and meaningful stories, panels and panels of a universe that sticks with me untill today. 

And one day, in a small super-hero comic book, bought in that same corner, maybe Avengers or even Batman, there was a ad of a new release. Black,white and red, only a clock with some blood on it, written:

WATCHMEN. 

That stayed with me. And one morning, I saw it. American format, soft cover, between the adult comics section, behind a brazilian magazine.

WOW.

I was forever changed. I brought it home, read it, and study all the scenes, lines and colors (that I love to hate until today). I couldn't keep my eyes of it. How could something be so perfect? How could this talk to me is such a deep level? It seemed that it was always there, since the dawn of time, in our genes, and this artists only translated it into paper.
And next month a new issue. And another. And another...

So many things to see. It took me years to understand all it's depth. I still think I didn't get it all. And that's the fun part.
I thought that I would loose interest with time, but it's virtually impossible. It's that same book that grabbed me in that old newsstand. Each page I draw today, I think it is that boy trying to repeat those panels and that pace. I may never do it as good, but it's there with me, in each stroke, each line.

There is many other books that moved me, but this was almost like my first love, my first kiss. I could say that I lost my virginity to it. 

I lost my virginity to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and I liked it.

6.2.08

YELLO REMAINS

The two last spreads from NAPOLEON series. Done and done.




RETORNO

After a long long time, quer dizer, depois de muito tempo, eu volto a Blogar, não sei quando volto, mas estou de volta.

Esse Carnaval eu trabalhei bastante, foram 11 páginas em 3 dias, queria ter feito 20, termino as outras nove até domingo, mas foi o bastante para me sentir um quadrinhista de novo.
É muita coisa que se tem que fazer para se sentir "no jogo" novamente, e não necessariamente é ficar com os amigos artistas ou lançar um livro. 

Simplesmente é sentar a bunda na cadeira pegar a caneta e desenhar. Até que no fim você tenha algo que faça sentido, ou uma história para contar.

Esse livro que estou desenhando, uma ficção histórica de 100 páginas terá mais do que só nanquim e guache nas páginas originais, terá todo o sofrimento e dúvida e dor que passei neste último ano.

É um livro sobre perdas, mas um livro sobre recomeços também.

Quem esteve do meu lado vai me ver em cada linha, quem ler o livro vai me conhecer sem nunca antes ter me visto.

De volta às paginas.


PS: Codespoti, fiz uma adaptação do Sharpe para Harper Collins, que pelo visto nunca será publicada... um dia coloco as páginas aqui.

PPS: For those who want to read this in english, send me an email. In a NUT SHELL: Do your comics!!!


5.9.07

YELLO BATTLES

This is the second part of the info-comics NAPOLEON'S BATTLES. This was more cinematographic than the last one. And I love it like this. Because of it's pace and imagery. I like the colors, but as a artist I needed a little more space. As the style is concern I did it more loosely, just like I did my first Napoleon Story FIRE AND ICE.




16.8.07

YELLO FINAL

This is the final version of the Napoleon Spread, with text and maps. I this it is a great stuff, great way of telling a story with comics substituting the everyday info-graphics. I hope the readers like it.

6.8.07

3.8.07

YELLO JOBS

A two pager done for HISTORIA magazine. This will be a series of stories showing some of the battles fought by Napoleon. The first one is MARENGO. Written by Ricardo Giassetti (with Onça's consulting) and colored by Diego Sanches. On a very personal note, I always like the thumbnail better... no matter how good is the final product.





7.7.07

YELLO APPERANCE

From time to time a comic book fellow artist will feature friends in their comics... I appeared in a bunch, and this is the last one I found. Actually Jefferson told me to look for it.

6.6.07

YELLO RECOMMENDATION

I met this guys from o continuo some time ago. They remind me of Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba in their beginning some 15 years ago. Well, besides the fact that they're not a bunch of twins, they can do great comics for a cheap price.

Now they have a new site Up. Check it out.

25.5.07

YELLO HELP

This is a plea for help. Many of you know that we are set to publish our first serialized comic book, PHINEAS POE, a graphic adaptation of the acclaimed neo-noir novel Kiss Me, Judas by Will Christopher Baer. PHINEAS POE #1 was solicited to our national distributor in February for shipping this June. Many of you have already pre-ordered this title.

Ralph Hemecker, the President of Mythic Films, purchased the rights to the Kiss Me, Judas novel at the end of February of this year. In April he sent my company Terra Major a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that his purchase agreement extends to graphic adaptations. Hemecker has also threatened my distributor Diamond Distributors, Inc. Diamond has complied with his cease-and-desist demand and will not distribute PHINEAS POE until our dispute is resolved. Will Christopher Baer and I met and agreed to adapt KMJ to comics before Hemecker entered the scene. We have been working on this for years, in our spare time, for no pay. Terra Major is a self-publishing enterprise. We make no money; we do what we do out of sheer love of comics. The artist Jefferson Costa, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has produced 300 pages--as much as the graphic novel FROM HELL which was 12 years in the making. The fruits of his efforts can be seen here:

http://www.terramajor.com/POE01.lores.pdf

http://www.terramajor.com/POE02.lores.pdf

http://www.terramajor.com/POE03.lores.pdf

http://www.terramajor.com/POE04.lores.pdf

http://www.terramajor.com/POE05.lores.pdf

Although I have a legal right to publish the PHINEAS POE comic, I have offered to purchase a license from Hemecker. He has refused me; he will not answer my phone calls or emails; he will not talk to me at all; he will not negotiate with me. According to Baer, Hemecker just wants to "shut us down." It's hard for me to understand why. In his cease-and-desist letter he claims he has plans to produce his own graphic novel version. Again, I don't understand why he can't simply get behind the one we have already completed, and in close collaboration with the author.

Hemecker will seek an injunction against me in the next two weeks. My request to fans of Will Christopher Baer is simply that you download the PDFs above, look at we have done, and if you back it, write Hemecker an email in support of our work. The theory being that you all are the most important fans with respect to Chris' work and Hemecker would not want to alienate you. Again, I don't know why he is so hellbent on crushing us--it's not as if there is any money in comics.

Thank you for your support of indie comics and of the PHINEAS POE comic book. You can contact Hemecker at studio@mythicfilms.com Perhaps with your help Hemecker will be persuaded to sell us a license so we can fulfill our purchase orders from Diamond--so that you can get your copy of the PHINEAS POE comic.

26.4.07

YELLO CREATURE

I have decided to create a new short story based on a Literary Challenge from PIAUI magazine every month. Actually, they refused my first two stories, because it's in comics format. But I don't care. It's my way to practice my storytelling skills.

After all, a friend told me, that I have to showcase what I can do besides Drawing (poorly).

13.4.07

YELLO SKETCHES and TERRA MAJOR

As you must know by now, I'm part of 24 Seven new album to be printed by IMAGE.
My story is called SELF-STARTER, and it was written by the acclaimed Carla Speed Mcneil from the FINDER series. To help me on this I invited the upcoming new talent Diego Sanches, Brazilian illustrator, master of digital arts.

Here is the first look on the main character, colored by him.

And this week the new site from TERRA MAJOR is up. Check it out!!!

11.4.07

YELLO ROBOTS

The second volume of 24 Seven anthology is coming!

Check out this preview, and try to find with one is mine...

5.4.07

YELLO STUFF 4

The first page in colors. I don't know if this would be the final version from JAPS, but I think it is close enough from what he planed for it.

I love the way he does Skies.

Click here for another example from FIRE and ICE.

30.3.07

YELLO STUFF 3

This is the First page. And the second version of the third panel, with the cockpit, suggested by Kazu from Flight.


28.3.07

TERRA MAJOR NEW RELEASE

SEX, LIES, AND SAMBA
American Indie Comics Publisher Terra Major Teams Acclaimed Noir Novelist with Brazilian Talent

Santa Barbara, CA (3/26/07) ‹ Santa Barbara-based indie comics publisher
Terra Major is set to release its first monthly serialized comic, PHINEAS
POE, a graphic adaptation of Kiss Me, Judas, the first book of the
critically acclaimed noir trilogy Phineas Poe, by author Will Christopher
Baer.
Phineas Poe is a disgraced ex-cop who walks out of a Denver psych ward on
Christmas Eve and heads for the nearest hotel bar, looking to lay low.
Instead, he chats up the wrong girl, a stranger with dark eyes and a scar at
the edge of her mouth. Deadly as she is beautiful, Jude is a freelance organ
thief who leads a willing Phineas upstairs, cuts him open and tosses him to
fate. Reborn in a tub of ice, Phineas chases Jude on a twisted quest for
redemption that rapidly blurs the lines between victim and accomplice, lover
and torturer. From the black snow of Denver to the scorched Texas desert,
Phineas and Jude are plunged ever deeper into the company of pimps,
parasites, pushers, and perverts‹a freefall into deeper and darker planes of
drug-fueled paranoia and erotic obsession.
PHINEAS POE will be illustrated by award-winning MTV Brazil animator
Jefferson Costa, making PHINEAS POE the eighth Terra Major title illustrated
by an up-and-coming Brazilian artist. Costa's American debut was a short
story in GUNNED DOWN, a Western anthology featuring ten Brazilian artists
published by Terra Major in 2005.
Kiss Me, Judas was first published in 1999 (Viking/Penguin) to wide critical
acclaim, including selection by Barnes & Noble as a "Best New Voice." It has
been translated to seven languages, and is now in its fifth domestic edition
(Fall 2006, MacAdam/Cage). A feature film is in the works.
Born in Mississippi in 1966, Will Christopher Baer received an MFA from the
Jack Kerouac School at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO in 1995. Baer has
lived and worked in Memphis, New Orleans, Montreal, Milan, San Francisco and
Los Angeles, working as a cab driver, homeless counselor, college professor,
and journalist. After wrapping the Phineas Poe trilogy with Penny Dreadful
(2001) and Hell's Half Acre (2004), Baer began work on the much-anticipated
GODSPEED (due Fall '07, MacAdam/Cage), described as "apocalyptic
horrornoir." His stories and essays have appeared in numerous print and
online publications, notably Nerve and Bomb. His short story "Deception of
the Thrush," a Phineas Poe retro spin-off featuring femme fatale Jude as a
teenager, was featured in the crime fiction anthology SAN FRANCISCO NOIR
(Akashic Books, '05). A longtime reader and collector of comic books, Baer
hopes the PHINEAS POE comic will be "the best little love story from hell it
can be."
PHINEAS POE #1 will hit comic book stores nationwide in June 2007 and will
also be available for sale online at http://www.terramajor.com. Each issue
will contain 32 pages of story and black-and-white art and will retail for
$5.00 US.
Terra Major is distributed by Diamond Comics Distributors, Inc. PHINEAS POE
#1 is listed this month in their April PREVIEWS catalog for products
shipping in June. Item Code: APR07 3955; Page 342.

See the Previews

Contact the Editor: shane@terramajor.com

Praise for the original novel:

"Starts off bloody and zooms nonstop to a gripping climax‹not for the faint
of heart." -Library Journal

"A paranoid, surreal, drug-induced nightmare full of the hard-boiled noirish
spirit of Raymond Chandler." -San Francisco Chronicle

"..stylish neo-noir paranoia and wall-to-wall deceit, smoky poetics and
sexual obsession." ‹Chicago Tribune

"If Chuck Palahniuk and Brett Ellis got together in Raymond Chandler1s
basement for a drug deal turned cockfight, the unholy result might be
Phineas Poe." -Omaha Pulp

26.3.07

YELLO STUFF 2

After we developed the AEROBLADE, I came down with the Thumbnails for the 8 pages.
This short story was created visually, no script was written whatsoever. That's why some scenes are hard to understand. It was supposed to be a action sequence, but because of it's low number of panels it became too slow. And all the motion and power was in the hands of the artist, me. And, to help the confusion, the story is about a Plane that fights a Mountain-man and get saved by a kid that gets transformed into a huge Black bird, while some ordinary people watch all the action... Got it?

Some of the pages changed in the final version. As you can see below the thumbs, there is a study for the third panel of the first page and some studies for the giant's opening scene.
As this was previously posted in the FLIGHT FORUM, we received a lot of suggestions (that we followed). I even had the request for words, but it never worked well.

Next week I'll post the first pages.









19.3.07

YELLO STUFF

Well, for quite a while I've been doing some stuff and not showing anyone.
In one side because I was hoping that something got published, on the other, and most frequently, because I've been working to much in stuff that are not comics related.

Well, forget all that, and just pay attention to some stuff I'll post from now on.

Todays stuff is something that was made for FLIGHT and got lost in the middle of the process. Japs, my partner in this project, lost his grip and never actually finished, not his fault, he also have bills to pay too...

This project was called AVIA, and I'll start showing you the Aeroblade's sketches.





5.3.07

YELLO HATTING

I never thought that one single book could create such a mess in my mind. Not the normal comic book producing mess, like the time it takes to research or draw, or even the months expecting it to sell or people to talk about it. That's normal. It's weird when it haunts you everyday you pick up a copy in your shelf.
I have this relationship with Horns of Hattin, my third book. Since day one it was a crazy experience. Even before it's completion it was demanding. A friend of mine was supposed to do it, but it didn't happened. After trying to solve this personal/professional issue (that was never really solved) I had only six months to work on it's 120 pages. And this book was meant to be part of Shane's incomplete trilogy, so it couldn't be done lightly. I had to make it perfect or at least put all my soul in it. I did the later surely. All of it are in those pages, bad drawn and all. All the fears and expectations are printed with the uneven material that I used on those old papers. The originals are pieces of art, not for it's artistic achievements, but for it's deformities. But the book was done. Kako's cover make it looks like a real book. Not just my guts printed in brown. Maybe I took the readers far from his story and too much closer to my hart.
This book demanded more that life. We'll never forget all those who died during it's making.

The real deal is that after all this blood shed we had not many reviews or sales. The book is in the oblivion, far from those whom the book was written to.

Today I have mixed feelings about the book. Some days I hate it, some others I only think it is pretty confusing. Shane has a crazy gift of making everyday stories into sagas and myths. He can grab you when you least expected. Some of the best scenes I have ever seen in comics was in my mind while reading his scripts. If Horns of Hattin is any good, is because of him.

So, this must be his making: http://graphicnovelscomics.suite101.com/article.cfm/thehornsofhattin


26.2.07

YELLO MOYASHI

Remember when I said, I'm a Moyashi, you're a Moyashi? Well, here is an better explanation (in Portuguese, so be prepared) at KIAI TV. I'm still a Moyashi, and you probably are so too.

19.1.07

YELLO PEOV

PEOV is an old friend. A great friend, he's also a great artist and a great story teller.

He can work in many medias, he feels free to try and succeed in any art form. Now he's testing the boundaries of what is real and what's fiction in the internet. He and his character shares the same body in the virtual space and having responses in the real one. To many people that's a new thing that the technology allows you to do. For PEOV this is old, he always manage to live between the real and the dream world. Visit PEOV's Myspace and his Blog.



15.1.07

YELLO FRIENDS

I have never met Hugo Pratt, nor even in dreams.

Actually for years I had never even seen a page of his work, I did only knew his character, CORTO MALTESE. But, somehow my art, my style and the way I want to tell my stories is much like his own. OK, I know he is a freaking master and I have to be born a hundred times more to draw and to tell stories like him. Even so, different people have said that my work reminds Pratt's. A lie, but a great compliment for the soul.

The first one to say it was Fabio Cobiaco, the greatest of Pratt's disciple.
Cobi, as we call him, is a master him self. Publish comics for decades, knows everyone, and kick ass in any style he chooses to render. A very humble man, he knows how to be a friend and how to tell you what you need to hear to move on.

I wish I could be Cobiaco, to have Hugo Pratt dreams. I wish I could see Hugo like him.