Righteous Thirst! Phenomena! 3W3M

News on multiple fronts

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

This week we’ll dive into the current status of the multiple things I’ve been working on. Let’s dive into something that I’ve spoken of in the past but couldn’t reveal what it is. But earlier this month everything was revealed:

[WELCOME] André Lima Araújo, Juni Ba, and Ming Doyle

But before we go any further…

A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance

Please take a look at our final cover for the Righteous Thirst Dexluxe edition and enjoy the stunning work of our designer Erika Schnatz:

She did all the design work of every issue and TPB and has been putting together the deluxe collection. It’s gonna be fully packed with extras (character designs, thumbnails, script, pencils, inks, grey tones, etc) and all kinds of amazing little touches and I can’t wait to have a physical copy on my hands. Out in July 19th.

3W3M

3 Worlds / 3 Moons is an absolutely fascinating project that I encourage you to check. It’s a brand new science fiction universe created by Mike del Mundo, Jonathan Hickman, and Mike Huddleston which they’ve been enriching with multiple stories done by them or by inviting other creators. They also explore its rich lore through texts, concept art and character designs, which they collect together with the individual stories in luxurious editions.

Needless to say, I was beyond excited when I got a message inviting me to illustrate one of their stories. My story expands their religious themes by showing a battle pitting their main religious sects (filth priests vs gold priests) one against the others. The battle happens simultaneously between the priests’ rituals and prayers and battlefields, where mercenaries engage in actual combat. It all builds up superbly, as one thing influence the other, to a climatic finale. Despite being just 10 pages it gave me a lot to work with and room to expand the ideas. I think it turned rather well and hopefully, I’ll be back for more.

See here a few samples (with colors by Chris O’Halloran):

First panel of the first page, showing the Filth side and the Gold side

The fierce battle being fought through prayers and actual combat

Phenomena Book 2

Finally, an update on Phenomena Book 2. We already can see the light at the end of the tunnel for the second volume. At this point we have 93 fully done pages of artwork and while I was at Barcelona, Brian sent me the complete script (it’s 136 pages long). Since I returned, I did all the thumbnails for the remaining pages and I’ve penciled all the way to page 115. I imagine I’ll be done with pencils in a couple of weeks and then enjoy a long month of nothing but inking - it’s gonna be fun.

For now, enjoy another spread from the opening scenes of book 2. Yeah, this is how it begins:

You can also take a peek at Brian’s newsletter, where he talks about Phenomena and all the lovely other stuff he does:

FORTUNES! COMEDY BANG BANG! JOY 2! PHENOMENA 2!

Doctor Strange Commission

Finally, good progress was made on my current commission work: Doctor Strange vs Shuma-Gorath. With the pencils fully done and tightened up nicely, soon it will be time to ink it. Perhaps next week, to have a little break from so much penciling.

Recommendations

Finally, two quick movie recommendations that I’ve seen this week. I caught both on Netflix.

Hunger - A great Thai drama about a young cook who begins to work with a ruthless superstar chef.

Kill Boksoon - A superb thriller about a legendary assassin who finds herself being hunted after failing a hit job. Some shots and action sequences are as good as it gets, don’t sleep on it.

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As always, thank you for reading. See you all next week!

André