Sunday, August 20, 2006

Komikero Video Blog #5


Komikero Video Blog #5
Around The House and an Interview


In this video, I make a very short tour of some of my comics, books, and original art, and then two students come over from Manila, Marcel and Teddy, to interview me for their thesis. Here, I make a special message for those students who have emailed me asking if they could come over for personal interviews.

Plus, there's a preview of the next video blog, one I'm really excited about putting together where you can see how one installment of Humanis Rex is done! Can you guess what I was watching while I was drawing? I'm a really big fan of that show.

Somewhere in between I'll probably do a video blog extra. I attended a family reunion of my wife Ilyn's family and who else would I get to hang around with for an entire day but Arnold Arre and his wife Cynthia! I just couldn't help but ask him and Cynthia questions for this blog, questions I'm sure no other interviewer asked them before and I've got some pretty interesting answers!

How exactly I'm related to Arnold is complicated, and explaining these complex family relationship ties really make my head hurt. Let's just say he's a cousin in law.

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Ruel de Vera, who is a member of the Manila Critics Circle, the award giving body responsible for the National Book Awards, sent me a message explaining the deal with Lastikman. In an earlier post, I talked about being puzzled at why Lastikman was nominated this year for the book awards, when it was published in 2004, not 2005, making it possibly not eligible. I guess I was just feeling a bit paranoid and wanted to head off any possible controversy over it.

"Regarding Lastikman; the MCC goes by copyright date and Lastikman has a 2005 copyright date, even if it physically came off the press in late 2004. We were looking at it last year and moved it to the 2005 list because of the official copyright date."

Thanks to Ruey for clearing that up! Whew!

I'm glad and honored that Lastikman is a finalist, of course. Although I'm also part of Siglo: Passion, the other finalist, I hope Dean and Vin forgive me if was sort of hoping that Lastikman would win. Collaborating with Arnold on this book was one of the most creatively fulfilling exercises I've had in recent years and inspite of its quirks, I'm really proud of that comic book.

Kung pupunta kayo sa awarding, kita kita na lang!