Working on Batman/Danger Girl
Doing Batman is just great! Doing this after Superman seems just perfectly right, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to do it. Leinil Francis Yu is my penciller again on this one, and he's been doing just a terrific job. The details that he puts in every panel is just INSANE. But I'm not complaining. I think it's cool and anything that would make the work look really good is nothing to complain about.
Our way of working continues to evolve. Leinil would Fedex (Air 21) me the pages and I would receive them on the following day. I'll look at the page and after getting over blown away by it, I hunker down to put inks on it. It takes me longer to finish pages this time around because of the detail and I finish a page in around 6 to 8 hours on the average.
After I finish it, I scan the page and clean it up in the computer. Cleaning includes correcting mistakes I did in the inking. Once I would have corrected it in the actual page, but sometimes because I'm so pressed for time, I do the correction straight on the computer.
Then I would FTP the page up at Wildstorm's server. And then I work on the next page. I hope to finish as much as I can before I leave for Bohol this coming Sunday. I'm pretty excited about that trip. More on that soon!
Meeting Rod Espinosa
I recently met Rod Espinosa, the writer and artist of such comics like Neotopia, Battle Girlz and the Eisner Award nominated The Courageous Princess.
Rod emailed me some months ago and it was such a pleasure to hear from him. I was a bit paranoid that he would chew me out for my stance on manga, but he seemed to be a real nice guy.
The other day I met him at Megamall with a mutual friend Sandy from the old days. Rod turned out to be quite a friendly, accomodating guy enthusiastic about creating comics. It's so refreshing to meet someone like that, someone so infused with the thrill of creation.
Inexorably, the talk turned to manga and it's good that he brought it up before we talked further just to get it out of the way. I have absolute respect for the work that he does, specially after reading his comics and I was totally entertained. He's quite a remarkable writer, and his art is just beautiful. I did tell him that it was just a quirk of mine that I would not personally use manga if I were to do my own comics.
But I think his art is just stunning, specially on Neotopia. And I was amazed at how he accomplished it. He brought out his laptop and he demonstrated how he did the things he did on that book. And I was just bowled over. The techniques he has shared with me I see myself employing in my own comics in the future. What an inspiration! And I'm glad that I was able to share a few techniques with him as well.
I invited him to visit the museum whenever we both had the time. Most likely this December.
Hal Santiago
Uploaded in the museum is artwork from one of the more popular and talented artists to come out in the late 60's, Hal Santiago. Hal is known for his ultra popular and award winning comics novel THE HANDS in the 80's and more. A much bigger profile for Hal is upcoming.
Click for Hal's Art Here.
TAONG BUWAYA COVER
