Underwater!

A very old picture of an underwater Judge Dredd. I thought it would be interesting to see such a great city dweller in a rare medium. I have tried to adjust the gray levels 'cos the original was drawn on a transparent sheet and the were still a lot of traces of pencil. This illustration was designed to be printed on a black t-shirt, so I would use a negative image for this purpose...

Can you notice everything?

Another page from Mool. Once more.
A splash page full of little details and even little lines.
When I now see so much work (fishing nets, the links of the chain, the mollusks in the post, the rope...) made me wonder "really worth it?".
Fortunately, most times I answer "yes".

Fast and sloppy

More stuff from Mool. This page is titled "run and hide". The end of the saga was so near that everything became much faster and brutal... Even my way of drawing, as you can see in the absence of background in some panels.

Brush tribute

I've always been a great admirer of black and white artists. Artists like Frank Robbins, Alex Toth or the spaniard Jordi Bernet.
Indeed, this old illustration is about Bernet. My brother was working in the latest spanish edition of Andrax, and I was asked to draw the main characters.
I thought it would be a good idea to imitate Bernet in the brush stroke ... I even did it with his signature, as a small tribute.

Mool means Death!

Time without posting, folks. Today I will solve it with another page of Mool. I think that ye have seen in a very small size some time ago. Now I post it in a larger size that ye may be witnesses to the brutality of the Dark God.

Waking up with the devil inside

More from Mool.
A quiet, talking scene...
...before the nightmare begin.
(what else can you get with a boy and a cursed god in the same place?)

No substance

I remember when I designed Mool character I thought I'd draw it as a translucent being, without shadows or reflections. The original idea was that he was feeding off the shadows of his victims, and so, gradually, he would be turning dark and massive (in this page Mool has swollen the shadow from the Priest of the Dark Order, so you can see little black spots on him).
Today this would have been easy to do with computer effects, but at the time was more complicated.
Just try to draw something without substance...

With great power comes...

...great voice!
From Mool.
A priest of the dark order conjures the God spirit through the gem of blood. I used the graphic appeal of the runes around the priest to indicate that his words were not those of mere mortals. Aesthetics, again, derived from my vision of Dark City. Great movie, indeed!

In a Dark Hole

This is one of my favorite pages from whole Mool series.
In fact, it's the fourth page of the first chapter, and I was very excited to translate graphically many of the ideas I had in mind about this character.
I remember that at that time I saw the film Dark City, by Alex Proyas, and I was very surprised and admired by its aesthetics (and for the great soundtrack too!).
So probably part of the paraphernalia of this temple can come from my admiration for that film.

Save some time!

"Your time is precious! The day still has 24 hours but from now on you'll have more extra time due to the power of the totally new Super Black India Ink, that makes inking easier".
Great!

Lines and Shadows

Another page from Mool, where I take the opportunity to expand the silhouette of the protagonist, created by using lines and shadows, creating a contrast between the first shot of the character based on solid shades of black.

Every f*****g detail!

I'm trying to find the original pages of the comic Thousand Gods and a single heaven, as my friend, as my friend Cromsblood asked me to do. So far I've found an old folder with a bunch of old pictures and character tests. I think some of them do deserve to be shown. Like this one I'm posting now. This is an full detailed illustration of Thazer, a character I created with my brother as a writer 15 years ago! Who knows: maybe one day we return to that story for a major publisher...

Best shot

Another example from Mool. I emphasize the best shot of the entire page.
In this series I used a lot of brush, although not my favorite tool for drawing and I've never really felt comfortable with it. But I really like the contrast between the thicknes of lines that it provides.
I take this opportunity to inform you that last week José González died, one of the best spanish cartoonists and illustrators. Perhaps you know his Vampirella, but there are a lot of work that you should seek to understand the greatness of this artist.

Gripping narrative...

So long, my friends. I've been really busy with some deadlines and a lot of commissions, but now I'm back. Today I bring you one of my favorite pages from Mool, the god of shadows.
I posted time ago this page in a very poor resolution, so now I get it back directly from the magazine where it was published into a much greater size.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Team Triumph...

...Triumph time! This picture (quite old, it must be said) corresponds to my vision of the heroes of the team Triomphe. A genial spoof of superheroes created by my good friend Torres, Machuca and Pepe Diaz. We all were working at the time in the same editorial, and it was quite often to see little contributions from ones to anothers...

Caza...hunters

Cromsblood from ultimateconanfan.blogspot.com (if you are a true fan of sword & sorcery genre, please: visit the blog. You do not be let down), was kind enough to translate my Conan's short story Hunters.
Now I'm using that translation for you all to see.
Y'know: big hugs to Cromsblood!

Wrap me single cover!

It's time to continue with the hypothetical lizard and other oddities from Mr. Moore. If in the previous post I showed the wraparound cover for the #1, now I'm showing the standard cover for the same issue. It is customary for Avatar Comics to launch the same number with two or three different cover versions. Now I'm not sure I showed this picture before, I think if I did, it was with the logo --that's why there's so much room at the top of the cover-- and color edited.
Hypothetical evil memory ...

Where nothing is what it seems

Ends the year. Ends this first episode of Elder and Roc. What your eyes had seen as a human army, now reveals itself as a group of reptilian humanoids. Only Elder, whose eyes are different from ours, could see beyond that appearance and fight them.

Now is the time when I will shake hands with each and everyone of you, and wish you, all my firends, a Happy New Year. Thanks for following this blog.

See you in 2010 --

(Pre)historic mayhem

Ok. I have to press the accelerator to finish showing these pages before the year ends. On one page is the classic disaster from a heroic fantasy gore pushed to the limit, and the next we see Roc findindig the last survivor of the army that was hidden under a large beast.
In the last panel Elder is asking Roc not kill him ... still ... We can see the strange Elder's eyes, and we realize that, hey, he's not blind at all!
Very soon the last page.

A Christmas Eve massacre

Well, my friends. Here I'm showing you another couple of pages about my favorite barbarian: the giant troll with no brain, and the old man specialist in melee combat. Drawings may not be the best suited for the day before Christmas Eve, but I have not time to prepare anything special for these days.
I wish you so much happiness!