At the Bookfair 2011

I had a great time at the Book Fair yesterday! The event is always a wonderful opportunity to meet up with old friends in the industry. Yesterday, we got to meet a lot of terrific kids from a school called The Growing Place.

The OMF booth had a storytelling session with Mateo the puppet (who you can spot in the background of the photo) and after that came the book signing.

In the photo (left to right) are Joyce Piap-Go (charming author of Bee Safe), Robert Magnuson (that's me!), Beth Parrocha-Doctolero (brilliant artist of the Oh, Mateo! series of children's books), and Grace Chong (wonderful author of the Oh, Mateo! series) - who is busy signing her latest book Tree for All for an eager child.

2011 Manila International Book Fair

Come to the Book Fair! It's located at SMX, SM Mall of Asia, Pasay City. It's from September 14-18, 10am-8pm.

Also, my new book will be launched at the OMF booth (located along aisle D). It's entitled The Great Duck and Crocodile Race. Watch Duck and Crocodile out-do each other at the turn of every page. Who will reach the end of the book first? It's anybody's guess!

I'm well aware you can stand in front of the shelves and read the whole thing through without buying a copy to find out how it ends, but I'm hoping you enjoy the book enough to want to keep a copy on hand whenever you get that familiar urge that comes to us once or twice a day when we just have to see a duck and crocodile race.

I plan to drop by the OMF booth on the 14th and the 16th. I'll have my pen ready for anyone who wants their copy signed. Also on sale will be my other books - What Beetle Can Do and Bullysaurus Rex. Do visit Adarna House at booth 213-215 and ask them for my books - Mister Beetle's Many Rooms and Diego and Marie in A Secret Sense of Home.

Gene Colan 1926-2011

Iron Man in forced perspective action! Daredevil in sequenced acrobatics! That was the 70's and these were some of the indelible images Gene Colan gave me during my childhood. His style was very distinct.

Many years later, I remember flipping through a Daredevil comic published in 1997 and immediately recognizing Mr. Colan's work. By then I was already out of college, so the first thing I remember thinking was "Wow! Gene Colan is drawing the latest issue of Daredevil! Wait a minute, how old is Gene Colan anyway?" It amazed me that he was still drawing comics even if his eyesight was giving him trouble.

I recall listening to an interview with Mr. Colan in 2003 where he spoke about his art and the impact of his craft on his personal life. He said "My feeling about what I'm doing, the love that I have for it, how dramatic and how believable I want to make it for the readers gets right into the artwork. It's an unconscious thing. And that's how a style, I believe, is developed too. It's an unconscious thing. When you develop a style it's recognizable as your handwriting. Same thing. But to be successful in art or any other field, you have to really love it. You need to be totally devoted to it. Unfortunately, especially in my business, a family life is missed. It's a sad thing, but you're not really with your family that much. You're married to your art. And I have some regrets about that. There's nothing I can do about it. I did the best that I could, but my art seemed to come ahead of everything. Maybe that's what makes for the artist."

I could feel for Mr. Colan. In my own experience, I have learned that making good comics is not an easy craft, and so I can imagine that making great comics is probably very painful to produce. Looking at some of Gene Colan's pencils, one can appreciate how hard he worked, and how painstaking it must have been to produce each one of his pages.

What I have with me now are only tattered reprints of Mr. Colan's Daredevil and Iron Man issues. Most certainly they are poor reproductions of the artist's original work. Yet the quality of his work was potent enough to set my boyhood imagination soaring beyond the poorly printed pages that limited the presentation of this master's skills. But by gosh, these were really great comics!

Visiting them again over the years, I have found that Gene Colan's work is truly fine art. It seem to get better and better with age.

Thanks, Mr. Colan. May our good Lord bless you and keep you.

CrocaVenus

I'm heading for Singapore tomorrow so I won't be able to post a blog until I get back next week. It is with that in mind that I thought I'd share this painting I made a few days ago. (click the image for a slightly larger view)

Remember the new book I told you about? The one I'm working on that will hopefully be released in September? I thought I'd say something about my approach to the artwork.

Unlike Bullysaurus Rex, the art in this new book will not have the appearance of having been "painted". The characters are rendered in flat colors like those seen in traditional cel animated cartoons. Likewise, the backgrounds of each spread will take their inspiration from the simple yet delightful backgrounds of the old Hanna Barbera cartoons I grew up with in the 70's.

That said, I could not help the urge of rendering one of the characters in digital painting style. If it isn't a problem with the publisher, I'm hoping to stick this painting somewhere in the finished book.

Gearing up for the Big Race

I'm currently finalizing the artwork for a new book I'm doing for Hiyas. This one is written so that younger readers can join in the fun! I will show more artwork as the weeks progress, but for now I thought I'd introduce the two main characters - Duck and Crocodile. Hopefully the book will be launched at the Philippine Book Fair in September 2011 (if I have my dates right). I hope to see you there!

Double Punch Komiks

Professor Emil Flores of the University of the Philippines wanted to give away special versions of our Triple Punch Komiks to two very special kids, but felt that one of the stories in the anthology was too violent for the target age group. So he kept the two remaining stories and asked us to make variant covers. Jordan Santos, graphic designer of our cover title, altered "triple" into a "double" and for my Poso Maximo half of the book, I came up with a Poso themed cover artwork. Jordan ended up using only a portion of my artwork to make equal room for Ron Escultura's Project BC artwork. The cover featured here showcases a variant of the final Double Punch cover which features the full Poso Maximo artwork.

Dusting off an Old Read

I find that stories I write and illustrate have their origins in the books I was exposed to as a child. I have many good memories of reading comics with my brothers when I was very young. It's interesting to re-read old stories to see how they have influenced the kind of stories I enjoy telling today.

Sometimes, I stumble upon an old book I have not read in a long time and it's wonderful how turning its pages blows the dust from memories that have been patiently waiting for me to recall. It's terrific to be humbled when one's imagination soars high - realizing that no matter how old we get we still secretly crave that child-like sense of wonder, without which our lives would be all the more impoverished.

This book is "Our Fighting Forces #164". One of my brothers had a National Bookstore reprint of this issue back in the 70's. It was one of my earliest introductions to war comics. As a child who could not yet read I would open this book and take in the appearance of the format -the heavy textured inks, and the word balloons containing words which I did not know the meaning of. Yet in my own limited way I did know some of the words. Stringing those few words, placing them in context with the pictures, I managed to come away with the sense of a story - whether it was the intended story or not. But for a boy of four or five, it was more than enough to feed a hungry imagination.