Open the ink gates

Time to drown in black liquid

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

We’ll go for a quick one this week, as it has mostly been about inking. So we’ll get a nice gallery and move on with our busy weekend. What? Me, playing the new Zelda at my desk? Nonsense.

Ok, I’ll admit. I got the Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom yesterday and, like its predecessor, it’s a hard game to stop playing - more on that below.

First things first:

Let’s Ink!

As mentioned last week, I’m now on the last batch of pages for Phenomena Book 2. 44 to be exact, so it’s quite the stretch. However, I’m knee deep into it all: everything is penciled and after a full week of inking, the first dozen of pages is in the can.

The next 3 weeks will be mostly the same, until everything is inked and scanned and ready for around 10 days of gray tones in the iPad. There are lots of panels with lots of characters as we move into the final massive battle. It’s a great sequence but also a hard one - the trick is to not rush it so close to the end. It’s a temptation to cut corners and just get it done, but that’s the wrong frame of mind. The final pages should have the same care and attention as the first ones. That means drawing backgrounds and figures in the exact way the story needs it to be done. And this bit needs scale, so that means drawing lots of things, lots of times.

The Reservoir Dogs shot above.

This book is all about Matilde’s quest, so she’s the cornerstone of every moment.

I’ve been catching up with a bunch of hilarious podcasts and watching Twin Peaks as I work. Season 1 was seriously fantastic, I’ll surely have things to say after watching the entire thing.

New Pen

A quick note on a brilliant new pen I’ve been using this week: a Pilot Hi-Tec C. Rick Remender was the one that recommended it to all of us in Barcelona last month and he was right, it’s absolutely terrific. It’s the only pen I’ve found that allows me to draw as thin as with a nib and with all the precision of a pen. I imagine I’ll use it quite a lot. Some of the stuff above is inked with it. I’ve also been sketching a bit to get better used to the thing.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I bought a Switch, Mario Odyssey and the first Zelda (Breath of the Wild) to lighten the mood of things. I mostly play games on my PS5, but I had to get the new Zelda (Tears of the Kingdom) as the first one was one of the greatest gaming experiences ever. Well, I’ve only played a couple of hours but it sure seems that the new one won’t disappoint.

The fact that the Switch is portable and can be everywhere just increases the challenge of not playing it and getting the work done.

I mean, talk about devilish temptation:

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Time to go back to inking and avoid the demonic pull of this wonderful thing. Onwards!

André