I, Douchebag

I’m Vaaaaaaaaaalid!

Wesley and the gang over at Indy Comic News are running a series of features showcasing indie creators, and who should the bottle happen to point to next but my dumb self…

ICN: What will be your focus for 2009 in regards to your projects, networking, and growing your career/business?

JA: I’d like to work on an OGN and have it published later this year. Nothing big, probably just a slightly oversized one-shot. It’d also be great to get a pitch picked up, so I’ll definitely be putting a real effort into that. Marvel or DC may be somewhere down the line, but I definitely need to strengthen some ties in that department and bang out a fresh set of samples apart from my indie stuff.

Yes, I behaved myself.  The rest of the interview can be read here.

Also, my friend Deanna over in Colorado recently sent me some love via the myspaceseses on the internets.

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She thinks I’m adorable.

Win.

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Order The Mask of Manolo here.

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::: ::: ::: Tres Komikeros episode 20 ::: ::: :::

Intervoo

Got together with some friends over the weekend to help some Fine Arts majors out with a paper on Sequential Art Professionalism, or some other equally oxymoronic misnomer.  I just call it that now for lack of a better… uh… nomer.  I can only guess we were selected to be interviewed to add some sense of volume to a subsection about how not to go about becoming overnight successes.

Good times though.  Julian and Isteb (I still say that’s his ninja name), the fine arts guys in question, certainly knew how to get us talking what with the free beers and crap.  It was the shutting up that took a bit of doing.

Right!

Back to work.

Playlist Meme

Kinda old this, but I feel like avoiding the work desk just a bit longer, so hey!  Why the fuck not???

Here are the instructions:
1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the “shuffle” button.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. No skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty.

1.)  That’s Just the Way It Is (Bruce Hornsby)
2.)  Enchanted (Patrick Wolf)
3.)  Man on the Moon (R.E.M.)
4.)  Last Letter (One Day as a Lion)
5.)  Tired of Saving Souls (Neverending White Lights)
6.)  Please Don’t Tell Her (Jason Mraz)
7.)  The Fastest Guitar Alive (Roy Orbison)
8.)  Shopping (Duncan Sheik)
9.)  Faust Arp (Radiohead)
10.) Burning Man (Third Eye Blind)

So yeah, that tharr list is a peek at my work soundtrack.  Needs more Britney.

Tagging Justin Jordan, Gerry Alanguilan, Alex Cipriano, Heather Harris, and Massacre Mike to do the same in their blogs.  Leave a link in the comments if you feel like wasting time and doing this as well, fuckers.  That is… if you haven’t already done this.  I’ve a feeling Justin has.  At work no less.

The Thick of Things

“That’s crazy!” was one of the first things my high school classmates at Sacred Heart School for Boys told me when I said I’d be doing indies with some college artists.  Wasn’t as into sports as much as a lot of my friends wanted to think, and wasn’t at all excited when that Dreamcast-thing started making its rounds.  I was the comics nerd in the crew.  Sure, we’d hike over to the all-girls school down the avenue practically every day and engage in ill shit, but when the sun went down… we all still went home and played with our toys.  Take that any way y’all want, heh.  The year was 1999, and I was about fifteen.

Somehow got a graphic design teacher at a local university to take a look at my art — I had recently finished a personal project re-telling the origin of the Thundercats (yes, I was that kid) — and after giving me some constructive crits, he extended an invitation to join a gathering his students were planning.  My old man took me to the meeting, probably worried that the college boys would give the geeky high schooler a hard time.  Turns out the lot of them were worlds geekier than I was.  This was Sukol, my very first taste of the local comics scene.  This is where I met artists before they even became artists, if that makes any sense.  Looking back now, I feel somewhat humbled by it.

Tyke Villalonga (the teacher) was there, giving some last-minute project notes to Alexander Cruz.  To the right of the lecture hall, Michael Dizon, John Paul Vicedo, and Ian Areola were making fun of Vinzon Ngo’s (Bleedman) art.  He deserved every bit of it, the bastard.  A whole bunch of artists were there, but names were never one of my strong points (Right, ladies?).

What started out as a gathering of artists eventually became a movement, and we ended up releasing a monthly black-and-white comic, funded by our respectively meager allowances.  We gave these pamphlets out for free, and we didn’t care about ROIs and any of that “responsible” crap coz they were just too much fun to do, and the energy one got from being among fellow artists was just electric.  It didn’t last though.  Eventually some people decided they didn’t care about it anymore, others decided to pickaxe their own way into stardom solo, and the rest sort of just evaporated into creative limbo.  My title, Twilight (yeah… yeah…), which was very Battle Chasers-inspired, sank like a brick.

Then college came around and I went from private catholic school to state uni to take up Political Science; Don’t know if it was pride or a denial thing, but I couldn’t stop what I had already gotten to do.   Somehow convinced myself that this is what I wanted to do, so I kept at it and migrated to Popcorn Comics, a publication apparently inspired by Sukol’s efforts but with wider distribution and actual advertising, owing mostly to Warren Tan’s extensive connections.  But the best part was that the artists actually got paid this time.  This is where I learned became aware of the value of staying on deadline.  I was getting paid to do comics at seventeen.  Shit didn’t get any more real than that.  and here I met Leandro Panganiban, Lloyd Limbaga, James Neish, and Harvey motherfuckin’ Tolibao.  Icelander, my “story” essentially about cavemen fighting aliens (yes, I was a fuckin’ prodigy) saw the light of day.That ended too though, because apparently the market just wasn’t healthy enough for local books, what with people still being burned out by the nineties stunts.   So college went into full swing, and naturally that was a whole different experience in itself… and I may talk about it in the future.  Still, Sukol and Popcorn were both intensely formative experiences for me though — both as a person and as an artist.

My high school friends were right, it was crazy… but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world.

Whilce Portacio’s Message to Komikeros

Image Comics co-founder Whilce Portacio recently released a video message to Filipino Comic Creators/Komikeros, I’ll shut up and let his words do their job.

Don’t Miss Deadlines

FYI #1: I’m currently drawing a comic called OVERTHROW!, a superhero/political thriller written by Zuda veteran Justin Jordan.

FYI #2: One of my favorite things about using WordPress is getting to see my blog stats in the dashboard. Among other things, I get to see search terms people put into engines to find their way to my site.

Y’all tryin’ ta tell me something?

All… part of the plan…

It’s finally November. Haven’t been able to post a lot of art lately coz I’ve been spending most of my time doing stuff that I’m not allowed to show. Can’t reveal shit, can’t tell anyone or the terrorists win.  Justin’s been compromising national security by showing off inked OVERTHROW! pages on his blog though, which now feels to me like I’m standing naked in the snow, seeing as how Paul Little’s colors add so much to my drab crap.  Feeling pretty confident that OVERTHROW! #1 (or most of it) can be wrapped up before MASK of MANOLO #2 kicks in. On that note, I’m posting the cover for the first issue.  Solicits and website stuff along with the attendant artist profile juju should be up soon, I’ll make announcements here as I get the news myself.

Halloween is spent boozing up with cousins and siblings whilst re-watching old Filipino horror films.  Crispy chicken skin from the nearby grill went pretty damn well with the malt liquor.  Costume parties aren’t really our thing since we’re all just too damn lazy to put that shit together, but I live vicariously through my more disciplined friends, so I’m posting the costumes that didn’t completely suck balls:

1) Artist Paolo Gomez laying it on thick; 2) Komikero EJ Afzelius with his own brand of horror;

3) Artist/photographer Jan Rodriguez pays homage to Ledger; 4) Maia Layno  (opening voice-over for the Tres Komikeros podcast) ain’t sportin’ anything scary, but hell, I ain’t complaining.

:::Tres Komikeros Episode 8:::

:::Tres Komikeros Episode 9:::

Every single time I’ve picked up the pencil lately has been to either work or do stuff directly related to work. I’m happy as fuck for the influx (influck?), but I realize I’ve sorta been going about it the wrong way coz it’s burning me out to some extent. So November will see me trying out a sketch-a-day sort of thing. Y’know, just to loosen up every day before work. No script, no audience (well maybe you guys), no guidelines, no mission. Just me, a blank sheet, a pencil, and a small chunk of time.

I did this Intersketching thing before, I just need to pick up on it again. I stopped it when my old PC crapped out, and then I simply forgot about it when I was… blessed… with this new one. Anyway, this sketch-a-day shit is important to me coz I somehow forgot that before I had deadlines to meet and contracts to fulfill, it was all primarily about loving to draw — I somehow lost sight of that a little bit, so I’m starting the dailies again to remind myself of the childish thrill. It’ll also serve to polish the ol’ style somewhat, which won’t hurt.

Is THAT what she said?!?

Took the Sunday off to recharge my batteries and chill with the boys. Things were getting a bit tight in that studio after about two straight weeks of comic work. What’s funny is I chose drawing as a way to relax from… drawing.

Suede Monkey Rey :: :: :: Seuss-whore Lloyd :: :: :: Viking Alex

That’s no moon…

Yes, my hand really does blur like that. True Story.

The Comic Book Club on Kirkman

Most of my friends know that I enjoy listening to podcasts and watching video reviews about comic books. A coupla weeks ago, I emailed the guys on the Comic Book Club (formerly The Stack guys on Next New Networks). Since everyone from Millar to Bendis was talking about Kirkman’s recently released mission statement about comics, I was interested about what the comic book club guys had to say. Here’s the video of the episode they decided to answer my viewer mail in, it’s the second question asked in the show:

You can catch more Comic Book Club shows here and download an mp3 file of the Kirkman message here.