Some practice sketches I did for Baro Investigations during office meetings. Trying to get his face right. BAH! The comic is still coming out, but it will not make it to the last Komikon of this year. Been preoccupied with thoughts of babies lately...

My Melon contribution...

Drawing the female figure / face is hard. Every time I draw a woman she ends up kinda sorta looking like my wife. I don't even know if this could pass as a pinup since its only half a lady. Liked how it turned out tho. Did this while doing some film-noir research for Baro. See the cross-promotional thing going on in the background? :)

If you weren't able to get a copy of Melon last Saturday at Komikon. Too bad. I don't have a copy as well since I was too busy with my husband-soon-to-be-dad-pre-baby duties during the weekend. Get a copy at the next 'Kon!

P.S. - Thanks Happy Lockjaw crew! Benj! Mike!

Another poster for Baro Investigations... sort of lost my momentum drawing pages. Needed to get motivated again. Been looking at film noir / 40's - 60's movie posters & they are inspiring! Particularly these Polish movie posters from the 40's - 80's.

Here's a film noir inspired poster for my crime comic project, Baro Investigations. Needed to take a break from doing pages. Guess what movie poster I ripped this off from :)

More posters soon...

???#3

 The cover! Oil painting by my wife :)

My wife & I were supposed to go on a vacation during the Holy Week. But alas, my wife being pregnant put a lot of things on hold. The past week was not wasted though. Finished a lot of things (??? pages / covers, Baro pages, a script for a collaboration thingy & packing some of our things in boxes for our move to a still undetermined place).

Will post more stuff once I get them scanned.

Validation

 BLTX2 was a huge success! Only stayed for about 3 hours so I wasn't able to go around much & check out stuff. But from what I've been hearing there were tons of great books, zines & comics that came out. Had fun hanging out & talking to some komiks peeps, too. 

Thanks to everyone who bought ??? #2! Seeing peoples reactions when they crack open a copy was priceless & I am extremely flattered by all the nice things people said & are saying about the comic...

"...??? #2 was one of the better reads from this summer's BETTER LIVING THROUGH XEROXOGRAPHY. It felt like listening to a girl you've been crazy about for months finally talk to you about her favourite movie." - Adam David (El Bimbo Variations)

"‎???#2 is the !!!" - Dark Chapel (Silent Sanctum Manga!)

I'm not sure if the last one was a compliment though, but I ♥ U Chaps! More "Josel & Chappy Show"! I feel validated as a komik-book-making-person. Yey! Props to Josel for cleaning up my sloppy lettering & getting the book printed. Also for being the biggest supporter of my stuff. You da man, BROOO!

Here's the original cover, where my one-armed Deathlok action figure makes an appearance...

If you have anything to say about ???#2 (good, bad, whatever), please leave a comment. Would very much like to know what you thought of the komik. Again, thank you komiks-buying-person! See you next issue (which will be out hopefully by December 2012). Oh yeah! Baro Investigations this (fingers crossed) November 2012! 

P.S. - Check out Rob Cham's The Amazing Topless Head. Rob (who along with his girlfriend Pat are very nice peeps) released a printed version of the komik at BLTX. Reminded me a lot of Invader Zim. Also, buy a copy of SSM Jet at the next 'Kon or at them comic shops (Comic Odyssey / Sputnik)! Fun kid friendly komik done the SSM! way.

A preview... 2 years of procrastinating! This is it! I need to finish the comic this year! GRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAA!!!

In other news, watercolors are the new markers! I love them! This is how the actual comic will look like :)

Happy New Year!

Hooray for late greetings! 2011 was an awesome year. A lot of life changing decisions were made. Some things came to a close. Some things have only begun. In spite of the ups & downs, I feel really blessed. Thank God for everything! Looking forward to 2012. Apocalypse here we come!

On the comics side of things,  2012 will hopefully be a productive year. The QBCCC crew are already planning on releasing more comics & we are thinking about turning QB into an imprint / publisher. We already have great stuff on hand if this pushes through. More details on that as soon as we nail stuff down.

I will be putting out ???#2 & hopefully ???#3 this year. ???#2 is 90% done. I already have ???#3 outlined & it won't be auto-bio stuff, I'm tired of drawing my face. hehehehe... It'll be a mix tape for the apocalypse in comics form. I've decided to make ???, a comic about anything. So expect an issue with short crime stories & a sci-fi issue soon. Baro Investigations will come out this year!!! Still haven't nailed down certain plot points but I really need to finish this. Baro is my baby. Started on page one last week. Will also be working on other comic projects with some of the QB peeps. Exciting times!

To celebrate the new year here is a strip of what i did in the office yesterday...

Very productive day. Influenced by reading too much Hark A Vagrant (Kate Beaton! ❤!), Forming & Xenu the mad alien dude of Scientology...

Fan Art

This made my day (2 days ago) :)

By Mike Banting, artist / co-creator of local indie komik Drop Dead Dangerous!

Baro Investigations will be finished next year! i hope... Many thanks Mike!

Baro Investigations (V1)

It's been almost a year since i started writing Baro & it's still not finished... had a lot on my plate the last few months & i was kinda stumped with the direction of the story. but after working on another story (details, hopefully soon) ideas started coming again. since i'm sort of rewriting the story, i didn't want my Baro-drawing muscles to atrophy. so i decided to do a series of vignettes which will serve as a "window" to the world of Baro. also, the vignettes are inspired by Mavis Staples' (of the amazing Staple Sisters) album "You Are Not Alone." how did a Gospel album inspire a crime story? i don't know. i love Gospel music! here is the first one...

Baro Investigations (Update I)

So far finished outlining the plot & thumbnailing almost half of the story already. Also done penciling two pages, i'll just be adding the dialogue once the pages are finished. It's taking a lot of time just to write the talki talki stuff. Research is still ongoing, been reading criminal law and it has been inspiring. got a lot of future story ideas off of it. Hoping to publish the komik by November in time for the next Komikon.

For now, tease number 2!

Baro Investigations

Is a crime-noir-pulp-70's/80's-pinoy-action-b-movie komik project i'm working on. Born out of my love for crime / pulp fiction & the fond memories of them crazy Pinoy action movies. Already have an idea for the plot, still need to hammer out the details. So far i've been doing a lot of research. Police procedurals, PI guidelines, gun handling, CSI stuff, etc. On top of this, i've been reading on tips / guides on how to write a (at least, a decent enough) crime story. On top of ALL these things, still have a lot of work to be done in the office.

Research is HARD! Really excited for this. Hope i can pull it off.

Update: Update!