Planning the weeks ahead
What's coming
Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.
Since the summer, I’ve been working on Phenomena Book 3 while doing smaller things on the side. These were mostly covers (there’s at least 4 or 5 you haven’t seen yet) but recently I got a couple of cover offers that pretty much filled all my time until we wrap Book 3.
Wait, how?
Because the offers are to draw 4 covers for one series and 6 for another one. So that’s 10 covers to do in the next few months. And since I always prioritize working on my own book, that’s all I can take for a while now. So fingers crossed no amazing opportunity comes knocking that I’ll have to agonize over either saying no or killing myself working.
God knows I might chose the latter.
So this settles things until February at least. By then we should be done with Phenomena and most of these covers.
January is gonna be wild.
And where are we with Phenomena?
Glad you asked.
This week me and Brian got an excellent meeting detailing the plans for the launch and promotion of Book 2 (which we finished months ago). Abrams as a whole is offering us a lot of support so I’m very much looking forward to Spring 2024 and witness the book reaching the hands of readers. After all, that’s what it’s all about.
As for Book 3, things keep moving quickly. I’m now inking pages 70-83 and I’m aiming at finishing the year with more than 100 fully finished pages of artwork. With 14 pages penciled by Thursday night, I printed and begun inking on Friday and I already have something to show you.
One page I particularly enjoyed doing is this one with you Boldon eating like only a young teenager can. It’s not everyday that you draw someone eating a burger the size of their head:
There was also a spread full of characters surprised with each other and unsure what was going on or what to do/say. Brian Bendis comedy at its best:
I’ve reached a point where I can draw these Cypers (the race of the characters above) with my eyes closed from any angle. Spike in particular of course. One of the perks of creating your own characters is when you reach the feeling that you actually own them in artistic terms because of how comfortable you are with drawing them. You feel like you can keep pushing with camera angles, facial expressions, etc.
New Book Commission
In other news, I’ve mailed a new Righteous Thirst For Vengeance Deluxe with a commission to New Jersey and got the confirmation that it arrived safely. Always a relief.
As usual, I went with Sonny. Who else?
In case you want, you can see a quick video I did on Instagram:
I sketched less this week because of commitments extra work, but still managed to doodle some stuff, including this random person:
Drawing random people is one of my favorite sketching exercises.
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In other absolutely unrelated news, me and my cousin keep sending each other so many videos and photos of Japanese cars - which we adore - that I relapsed and got back to playing Gran Turismo 7 yesterday. What an incredible game.
Just minutes ago I was playing a few races around Interlagos and the High Speed Ring in a classic Subaru Impresa (99 version) and a few Skylines (R32, R33 and R34). But work prevails, so I’m finishing this newsletter and I’ll have inked a few panels more still today before I can get back to chase an used Honda NSX.
I know, it’s a very niche talk, but it’s close to my heart.
I’ll see you all next week,
André