New Chapter

A drastic change in my routine

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

Despite the title sounding a bit dramatic, nothing bad went down. You see, I have three daughters. And for the first time, all of them went to school. That means that 5 and a half years after my first daughter was born, I’ll be working with no babies or toddlers around the house again.

My days are now going to be very, very different. (Until 4pm, when all of them return and, with them, chaos).

Working with kids

When my first daughter was born, we decided to have her with us for longer than most parents do. Most people have to leave their kids in nursery schools when they’re just months old, which feels way too soon. But most people don’t have a choice. We did and we decided to take care of her until she was old enough for pre-school (around 3 years old).

It was a great decision as we saw the first steps, first words, we taught her to use the potty, to eat and all the other stuff. Make no mistake, that was a privilege. When the twins were born, naturally we did the same thing. For the following 9 months, before the eldest one was old enough to go to school, we had 3 at home, which was intense to say the least. But it was great. Now, for the past roughly two years, we had just the twins while the older one was at school. Again, a privilege.

But something has to give, even with my wife taking care of them full time (she was also working at home but stopped when our first daughter was born). So, for a while (especially after the twins were born) my work capacity slowed down. With twins, I always had to be around to feed, change or clean one of them in many moments.

Rewiring the brain to compensate

When it came to work then, I rewired myself to pick up some speed. How? I started treating every second at the desk as working time. I stopped scrolling on social media or browsing around for 30 mins before actually start working and other nonsense that we all do but I suddenly couldn't afford to.

This helped quite a lot and as they got older, things got simpler and I had to do less all the time (no diapers, no bottles of milk, etc). I kept the habit of “sit down, start to work right away” and I started going faster. Once Righteous Thirst was done (twins were born right when we began the book) and I was back at Phenomena I was just as fast as before. And now? I’m even faster than before having kids, crazy as it may sound.

With them at school now let’s see exactly how much quicker things will be in the following weeks. One thing is sure: there will be, as there never was, no rushing on my part. But the habits I picked up helped streamlining the process and helping me to use much better the time I have available.

All and all, it feels great to have nursed the kids all this time and now to recover some space without the constant interruptions. Also, they return in the middle of the afternoon, so I won’t have much time to miss them. ❤️

This week’s work

This week’s work saw me finishing all the inks up to page 46 of book 3 an beginning the grey tones already (more on those in the following weeks).

Let me show you what is already a respectable pile of paper:

Original pages for Phenomena Book 3

The ones that seem shorter pieces of paper are spreads. I print the digital pencils in the middle of the paper, so I have to trim the inside margins on the spreads to put them together, hence why they end up being shorter.

Also, on the theme of not cutting corners on my work, there is no cut and paste around here:

I inked pretty much the same panel four times, with the small differences that come naturally from not being a robot. I did it because not only would it look weird to have an original with just one panel that I’d later copy and paste digitally, but I also think of that kid that will be pouring over this page and trying to find the small differences that prove that I drew it 4 times. Because not that long ago, I was that kid.

A quick study

As I wrote above, seeing that I became faster than I was 5 or so years ago is making me start to go back to do some of things I had stopped. Sketching and other type of studies are on the top of my priorities when it comes to work. So I did this one last Sunday while I was with the family (and there was no F1 Grand Prix to watch). It’s still a work in progress, but you can see some of the goals here - anatomy of the face, color and lighting.

A lot more of these in the future. I hope.

Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

I also got back to playing Zelda. Another thing that I had dropped and wanted to get back to. Beginning Phenomena Book 3 demanded all hands on deck and gaming time went out of the window. Good thing the game is light on story so you can easily slide back into things without having to watch 2 hour recaps on Youtube.

And it’s a superb game full of superbly designed puzzles. Makes for some great bite sized gaming moments. I had the Switch on my desk this entire week and I’d pick it up for 10 minutes breaks here and there.

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Finally: I’ll be at Heroes Comic Con Belgium next weekend in Brussels. I’ll be sketching and signing books all weekend, might even sell some prints there. If you can, come to the show - it’s always great to meet readers. So, most likely, there won’t be a newsletter next week.

See you all soon!

André