ANDRES VERA JOURNAL

CHARACTER SKETCHES

2008-08-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

Following the advice of my all time favorite cartoonist, I've made character sketches for all the main characters in the story. Below is the Big Bambino through the years. I'll post more of his family, his friends, and the Brothers a little later.

NEW BABE PAGES !

2008-08-07T10:12:00.000-07:00

The march is on! I'm almost to page 50. Here are some of the highlights. The pages I'm posting are in chronological order, however, I'm skipping around. If you want to read the story you'll have to wait until late February, when it hits book stores.

COVER DESIGN

2008-05-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've been working closely with an art director at Simon & Schuster to get the Babe cover out. The book is part of a young adult comic series so the design had to conform to the previous book. Despite having to conform to a template, I've been able to maintain a great collaborative relationship with the art director who happens to be the designer as well. I think the cover turned out great!

RABID RABBIT NO.8

2008-04-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

I was asked to contribute to the Rabbid Rabbit comic anthology no.8. This is a great publication of collected comics. The theme was lots of fun. They asked 30 comic artists to illustrate the 30 songs off the The Beatles White Album! Rabbid Rabbit no.8 will be on sale soon! Here’s a link of where you can buy this unique book. www.rabidrabbit.org

Below is a preview. This was my interpretation of George Harrison’s song, Long, Long, Long.

Here's a sketch of the first page

BIG NEWS

2008-04-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

My agent found me some steady work. I’ll be illustrating a 120 page graphic novel for Simon & Schuster about Babe Ruth. The script is pretty good. It’s a comic for young adults, so it focuses on Ruth as a kid growing up in Baltimore. It’ll be a lot of fun since I like drawing old cars and buildings.

I already started working on the cover. it was just approved today. Here are some of the sketches, inks, and final color.

GHOST WORLD

2008-04-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Well even Ghost World didn't fly with the New Yorker editor. Oh well, I had a lot of fun doing these movie illustrations. Maybe I'll try them at a different publication.

FAVORITE MOVIES

2008-03-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

An editor at The New Yorker Magazine asked me to give him some samples of celebrity likenesses in order to assign a particular job. I picked a few of my favorites movies to illustrate. I then realized that i have yet to depict a female actress. The editor did say that if I can draw Jenifer Aniston the job would be in the bag. Not being a big fan of Jenifer, I think I'll stick with Scarlet Johansen in Ghost World.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Training Day

Successful Collaboration

2008-01-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

Owen Brozman at www.owenbrozman.com did some fine inking on this Doctor Strange drawing I did a while back. I just put the finishing color touches on it.

Look forward to seeing more Marvel Heroes. I am having a blast drawing them in my spare time.

2 MORE POSTCARDS

2007-12-17T12:33:00.000-08:00

A couple of more postcards this week. The first is of a character I'm developing for my graphic novel. This is a scene i have planned where he battles a lechusa in Matamoros, Mexico

The next image is just for fun. I guess my version of a B-horror movie poster.

Tejano Ghost Stories in Color

2007-12-08T17:10:00.000-08:00

Trying out some color on the title page of one of my usual black and white comics.

Postcards

2007-12-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

I'm in an art-card correspondence with some of my old grad school classmates. They have been diligent in sending me cards consistently. Me on the other hand ...

However, they are in for a dark treat this Xmas. Take a look at some of the cards I'm working on. Are they in the holiday spirit? not necessarily, but they were sure fun to draw.

The first card is from the opening chapter of my favorite book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. It shows Colonial Buenda facing the firing squad.

The next image is of an exorcism. It's based loosely on a Posada engraving. I found a great site of Posada's work on line, if anyone is interested, http://elibrary.unm.edu/cswr/posada/

Last one is Dr. Strange from Marvel Comics. He's one of my favorite heroes. I'm sending this drawing to a friend who requested some work of mine to ink over. He's interested in being an inker in the mainstream comics biz and wants to try inking over someone else's work. Owen is really talented, I'm sure he will improve on my drawing ten fold. I'm looking forward to seeing it. You can see Owen's fine work at
http://www.owenbrozman.com

2007-12-04T08:58:00.000-08:00

Got it. Here's the colored version.

2007-12-03T01:56:00.000-08:00

WELCOME!

Hello world,

I'm calling this a journal because as much as I wanted a sketchbook blog, I think ultimately I want some documentation of my work and process. I hope to chime in every now and then to not only post some new drawings but also talk about how things are moving along in general.

For those that have visited my old sight, ya'll will notice some major changes. I put in some long hours this weekend doing some revamping and updates.

The newest stuff in my site is the Mexican Movie Directors Series (that's a mouth full). I couldn't come up with anything else. Anyway, I've had these drawings done for two months now. I've finally gotten around to coloring them.

Since this is the first post in my journal. I guess it's a good opportunity to show how I go about making an illustration

STEP 1: The Sketch

My thumbnails are fairly small. I usually get some reference photos at this point before i enlarge the sketch to define the drawing. I ink over my drawings so this leads to ...

STEP 3: Inking

Here is where I should say hello to Klaus Janson, veteran cartoonist and all around great guy. Klaus took me to school in cartooning. He actually was my adviser for grad school. Watching him ink for a couple of hours was worth more learning than a whole year of classes.

Next...

STEP 3: Coloring

Well, I'm having some trouble posting color files. I guess you can just go to my website to see the final.

Hope to figure it out soon ...