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I was walking in the streets, a mix of the neighbourhood where I used to live when I was a teenager and some streets in São Paulo. It was night, and I walked inside bars and cantinas, for no apparent reason. I think I saw someone who used to go to art school with me, but we didn’t talk to each other.
Eventually I ended up in the top of a hill. It wasn’t night anymore, it was late afternoon. The place looked like the area where my parents live, with some small buildings around a green area where the kids play in the grass and around the trees. But there were 30 cops in there, joyfully chatting with the nannies and the kids. The sky was grey and it looked like it could rain any time.
Suddenly I noticed something really weird.
Around the little plaza, there were several huge animals. I don’t even know how to call them. Imagine a longer elephant, almost like a dinosaur, but with a head way too small for the size of that body. They were four times larger than the horses who were attached to them by leather leashes. The bigger animals had long leather strings coming out of their asses, as if their tails were shaped like collars and leashes and were all attached around the horses’ necks. As the big animals moved around the streets, one of the horses started to freak out for being pulled around like a dog, and started to neigh and whine. The giant animal stopped walking, turned his head, raised a front paw and started waving it up and down, while saying: “Calm down… it’s OK… relax…”
After that I arrived at a house I have never seen before, but part of my family lived in it. They were waiting for me to arrive. There was a little white gate in an outside corridor with a rubber pink thing in it to lock it and stop the house dog from opening the gate.
I entered the house and there was a pizza box waiting for me, but when I opened it, it was the ugliest pizza I have ever seen. It looked like a nightmare version of something out of Pizza Hut, covered with a catchup lake. I couldn’t eat it.
Then I woke up, with a very strong sense that those fantastic animals were real. It took me a long time to realize it was just a dream.
 All my life I had problems trying to understand why I love Ireland so much. I live in a far distant country, with a very different culture, and had no contact with Irish people for most of my life. A few of my long-gone ancestors were English and Scottish, and even American, but no Irish gene has ever crossed my DNA.
How could I explain, for instance, my childhood sympathy for the IRA? The ETA was also constantly on the news, but I never really cared much about them, while the IRA always seemed to mesmerize me for no apparent reason.
Things got even worse when I found out that The Lord of the Rings had places with names like Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul. I live in a place called Minas Gerais. Should I be worried about ork attacks?
I had a small clue once, when a friend of my brother was telling us about an article he had read. According to what he said, our state and region were colonized by Portuguese people coming from a place called Minho, back in the old continent. Turns out that the Minho was once colonized by the Celts, coming down to the continent after the Roman Empire left the Iberian peninsula.
That could explain why the people of our state is famous all around the country for the binge liquor drinking, or by the hopping dances. Minas Gerais traditional dances, like the catira, are remarkably similar to Irish hop dancing.
Maybe I’m just imagining all that, and my obsession with Ireland comes from the cover of Houses of the Holy. The images of the Giant’s Causeway and Dunluce castle have always grasped me by the throat and by the heart for no particular reason. I simply feel right inside my guts that I have to go to these places before I die, and I don’t care why.
All I know is this: Belo Horizonte, the city where I live, capital city of Minas Gerais, has the largest Saint Patrick’s Day party in the country, and every year people come from all around the country to take part of it. Go figure.
 Tonight I dreamt I was walking around downtown, wandering randomly around commercial galleries in old buildings. I went to costume shops, and shops that sold sewing kits and sequoins, things like that. Eventually I walked into a room that was magical and perfect and completely different from the cold bright white of the galleries: it was a yellowy room with a thick carpet and all of the walls were covered in ancient tomes bound in leather. I saw a big dark oak desk and a man looking at me. Turns out he was a psychotherapist and I said “well, what a coincidence, I was really looking to find one, and it’s good that I came here randomly, because that’s the best way to choose a therapist”.
It is true. In new year’s eve I promised myself I would stop slacking and finally solve all of my problems and do all the shit I’ve been telling myself I would do in the last, what, 10 years, but never really went out and did it. And to understand why I procrastinate so much, and other things, I also decided to go to therapy, simply because I think it would be interesting.
Recently I had dropped therapy in the list of priorities, arguing with myself that it was much more urgent and important to go back to the gym, or to get a driver’s license. But now this dream made me think again.
I will never forget the way the office looked, and I’ll not rest until I can get one of those for me.
 Happy birthday, fictional character known as Jesus in some countries of the world! As some of you might have noticed, Christmas time is here again, and to cellebrate this enchanted season, I have selected some classic screen gems for you to enjoy with all your family and friends while drinking buckets of eggnog and whiskey and eating several different kinds of meat with complete disregard for animal’s feelings and for global warming as a whole.
So here is the list… If you disagree with my selection, well, write your own selection at our own damn blog and leave me alone. My favourite Christmas carol is “A Christmas Carol” because I love Scrooge so much. What a role model.
Merry Christmas to all of you and your families, and may Satan touch your hearts and warm your souls.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
 Who needs Homer Simpson when you can have Clark Griswold? National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is by far the most realistic depiction of actual Christmas ever captured on film. It’s all there: the senseless money spending, the hypocritical family relations painfully and slowly falling apart, the fake Christmas spirit disguising the true bullshit capitalist motives of the characters. It even features some actually cute moments. A must see.
 Mele kalikimaka! Yum yum!
A Charlie Brown Christmas
 It's Christmas time again... Good grief... A Charlie Brown Christmas is a milestone in the history of television and animation as a whole. This deceptively simple story, animated with minimalistic technique, is not only heart-warming and cute, but actually delivers a modern Christmas message, exposing some of the hypocrisies that surround this holiday’s tradition. Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack is superb and is a must at my household when Christmas time is coming.
The Junky’s Christmas
 Heroin makes a great Christmas gift. The Junky’s Christmas is based on a short story written by William S. Burroughs. It is an animated short film, made with puppets in stop motion and featuring Burroughs himself reading the text. The story is brutally real, and truly heart-warming, showing the long-forgotten spirit of Christmas going through two junkies sharing a needle at a hotel. The contrasting balance between the shocking lifestyles of heroine addicts and the hopeful feelings of Christmas season is brilliant and will never leave your mind.
Mickey’s Christmas Carol
 When you work for a man who wears a top hat with the color of shit, that's all you gonna get from him. Miles and miles of shit. Mickey’s Christmas Carol brings me some distant memories. I remember watching this in the movie theatre with my dad when I was about 4 or 5 years old. It was the opening act before “Peter Pan” and I never forgot about the movie. Everything here smells like classic Disney stuff. The character design is perfect, the animation is masterful, the backgrounds… everything works like a clock, but it’s not as boring as watching an actual clock. It is my favourite adaptation of the classic story by Charles Dickens, which has been adapted countless times, like in Richard Donen’s “Scrooged” and Richard Williams’ animated adaptation.
It’s a Wonderful Life
 This image has not been photoshopped for humoristic purposes. I refuse to make a joke with it. Comedy is a challenge and I hate easy jokes. "Look, Santa, I don't need no toys, all I want is my candy cane to grow this big, do you know what I mean? Wakka wakka!" It’s a Wonderful Life is a great classic, not only of Christmas movies but of cinema in general. Even the most jaded and bitter movie watchers (myself included) manage to extract some awe from this little pearl of a film, directed by the always competent Frank Capra. Suited for watching any time of the year.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas!
 Chuck Jones is King. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a classic animated film by Chuck Jones, based on a book by the equally classic Dr. Seuss. A modern Christmas fable. And being a Chuck Jones movie I don’t even have to say the animation is great, the voice acting, the music, the pacing, and… oh, I just said it.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
 Don't eat the yellow snow, Jack! The Nightmare Before Christmas is probably Tim Burton’s best film so far, and a tour-de-force into his pseudo-dark fantasy world. The story is pretty interesting: Jack Skellington is the king of Halloween, but when he escapes his world looking for new thrills, he finds Christmas land, and tries to turn Halloween into some twisted Christmas of his own. The character and set design itself are enough reason to make you watch the movie, but the rest is very nice too, even the endless singing and dancing.
Joyeux Noël
 Merry Noël and a Joyeux Neu! Year für vous. Joyeux Noël is a movie about one of the best Christmas stories of all time, because it was real. It’s a 2005 movie about the time during World War I when enemies on both sides of the trenches decided to stop killing each other and just have some fun together. (I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I’m adding it here in behalf of that true story, and also to remind me to watch the movie someday.)
Miracle on 34th Street
 So what if I'm insane as long as I make people spend oney at your capitalist venture? Miracle on 34th Street is such bug classic that it has been remade about 3 times. I am talking about the original 1947 version, that tells a modern Christmas tale involving cold corporate bitches, bored little girls who are being swallowed by a bullshit society, and a crazy old man who firmly believes he is Santa Claus. A nice watch if you’re really into the holiday’s spirit, or if you enjoy courtroom movies.
Rankin/Bass TV Specials
 "Oh my God, it's so BIG and RED!" ... "That's what SHE said!!" Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer & The Little Drummer Boy are two Christmas specials created by the Rankin/Bass studios, the same who produced “Mad Monster Party?” in 1967. The animation is crude, the puppets are cute, and the storyline is simple and effective. They don’t look like much now, but if you saw those as a kid, you never forgot them.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
 Sorry, ho, but if you invaded a planet this year, all I can get you is a lump of coal!... Merry Christmas!! Ho ho ho!!! Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is an old acquaintance of all trash movie fans. It is listed at #77 at the Bottom 100 Movies at IMDB and is available freely from websites that feature movies with lost copyrights. The title pretty much explains it all, and if you wish to see it, good luck. Just click here and download it. After you see it you will see that no one, ever, could ever devise a Christmas movie as stupid as this one, specially by mixing it up with sci-fi.
The Star Wars Holiday Special
 Words fail me. Maybe I spoke too soon.
While many philosophers dedicated their entire careers to proving that life has no meaning and God doesn’t exist, this simple movie does all that and much more. A masterpiece in all of its dimensions.
Die Hard & friends
 I always wanted a machine gun for Christmas too. Die Hard is not exatcly a Christmas movie, it’s just set during Christmas time, but it’s awesome enough to make this list. Other movies that also share this category with it are The Godfather and Lethal Weapon.
“The Horrible Truth About Comics” is a 1999 32-pages comic book by James Kochalka where he makes a very interesting and inspiring reflection about what are comics. The book is very rare today, but I think it’s a really important one, so I transcribed the text here for you to read and think about it.
The Horrible Truth About Comics
by James Kochalka
 If you can find a copy of this, you're lucky. Buy it. “I can’t stop thinking about comics.
What is art?
Art is one of the most basic means for understanding the world around us. We process what we’ve experienced and recreate it in simplified form.
Often this brings revelations that we could not come by through sheer reason.
The creation of art should be accompanied by a sense of play.
Play is a heightened state of imaginative awareness that allows us to enter new realms of discovery.
Thank god play is fun and not just a lot of hard work. Play is our most important way of processing the information of experience when we’re little. That’s why children play so darn much… it simplifies the world’s complexities into easily understood and usable information. Unconciously.
Play and art are the same thing!
We try a lot of crazy stuff at random as little children… and we’re delighted to discover that pushing a crayon on a piece of paper leaves a mark.
Physically, on the most basic level, visual art is mark making.
Before the first mark, the blank surface is an undefined void.
We give it form and structure and space by the marks we make on it.
This happens accidentally at first, then we learn to structure the space consciously.
Perhaps a wild scribble to chop the void up into definable chunks.
This is a very literal way to define the void. That is, we define it as a flat surface on which we make marks.
But there’s much trickier ways to define space.
Being people, the most important thing in our lives is other people. So we populate the void with them: “this mommy, this is daddy…” “this is me”
We create a new world within the void. A simplification of the world we live in.
Every child is God, creating its own universe.
However, we’re not simply recreating the physical world we see around us…
We’re also manifesting the secret world inside us.
Our hopes and fears and everything. Art turns us inside out.
Art is not a way of conveying information. It’s a way of understanding information.
That is, creating a work of art is a means we have of making sense of the world, focusing to make it clearer, not a way of communicating some understanding of the world that we already hold.
If you already hold a clear understanding of whatever then there’s no reason to create the work of art. So you don’t.
In fact, you can’t.
If you are trying to demonstrate some known idea, or fact pictorially, this is called illustration.
Illustration is superficial, no matter how skilled, because it is secondary. The idea comes first and the illustration explicates it.
How tedious, and naturally doomed to failure.
It’s important to make a determination on the notion of quality.
Your art is “great” when you successfully focus your experience to reveal some profound new understanding of the world that had previously eluded us.
And the more clearly focused, vivid, and original this revelation is, the higher the quality of the work of art.
So it’s not a matter of “learning how to draw” in the sense that most people think of it.
It’s a matter of allowing yourself to boil in the intensity of your experiences, condensing and clarifying them.
But there’s so much just waiting to drag you down.
Timidness, dishonesty, fear, and pretension. These are some biggies!
Turning yourself inside out can be a very scary thing.
Which is another reason why play is so imporant.
It allows you to reveal yourself in a diasrmingly joyful manner.
Soon you’ll find you’ve struck upon a great truth dug out of the deep recesses of your soul… as easily as plucking a petal from a daisy.
A lack of technical ability can contribute to the fear or timidity that stands between you and greatness. But it does not have to.
Ignore your lack of technical ability.
Technical mastery of one’s medium does not an artist make.
The only quality you need is the ability to open yourself with honesty and pluck out the truth.
Resolve to put the skills you do have to work now and pick up more along the way.
Craft really is just a matter of personal pride and respect for one’s medium.
You want your comic to be well crafted because to do otherwise would be an insult, or an embarassment.
Still, I don’t mind a slap in the face if the result is good comics… but not if the result is just more garbage. The biggest insult is a comic that sucks.”
A few decades ago, comic book legend Alex Toth published a comic book adaptation of some movie called “Land Unknown”. It is a very good example of his work.
I managed to pick up a scanned copy from this blog and I was utterly impressed with the color palette, not because of some amazing artistic feat, but simply because it looked old and cool. I love making my drawings look older, but sometimes you need a little more than simply throwing some paper texture on top of it and turning it into Multiply.
So I used the cover of the comic, the page with the most colors, to create a color palette I could use in Photoshop and other Adobe softwares. You can download them right here. There are three versions of it, with 8, 16 and 32 colors. Enjoy and have fun!
Have you ever noticed that the cover of the Velvet Underground’s “White Light White Heat” is not entirely black?
To show what I mean, here is an image I created:
 Some photoshopping to reveal the original artwork of the album. And here is an awesome tattoo reproducing the one on that image:
Yesterday’s post raised a lot of discussion, so I’d like to throw a few more wood logs to keep the fire burnings. Just some topics that came to my head after I pressed the “publish” button.
Silent Movies
I was thinking of my PhD research about sound and animation, and the impact of sound and dialogue on early cinema, and then my brother also pointed it out on Twitter. The impact of synchronized sound on cinema is a matter or controversy even today, some 70 years before it’s establishment. Back then, when movies like The Jazz Singer (and many others) drove crowds to the movie theaters, critics complained that the new technology was killing the visual beauty of cinema. The Soviet filmmakers in particular were very critical of this new trend, and published a manifesto against it.
I understand why people reacted like this back then. At the same time when Hollywood movies were showing people talking and singing, people like Murnau were making filmes like “Sunrise”, which relied heavily on visual artistry and gimmickry to convey its powerful story.
But did synchronized sound really killed good-looking cinema? I beg to differ, and anyone could mention at least 10 moviemakers from the talkative era that used beautiful imagery to tell their stories, or even for more abstract purposes.
My point here: technologies and narrative possibilites are not supposed to kill anything. They are just possibilities. Options. New colours on the painter’s palette. If you want to make a 2-hour movie with people arguing, you can make it. Is it going to be bad or good? Depends on other things, not on the format of your film. Can you make a “silent” film in the XXI century? Of course you can.
Another example from Milton Caniff
I scanned this from a book. It is from a Terry & the Pirate series, when Burma dies.
 In a comic divided by pages, this silence is normal, but for a daily strip, it's an eternity. Caniff extended the mourning of the beloved character for 2 whole days, leaving the readers nothing to read, in mourning silence. The impact of this experiment comes from the very fact that, normally, the strip HAS text, and the CONTRAST is causing the effect - not because lack of words is inherently powerful. Wally Wood Learned the Lesson the Hard Way
I was reading a book the other day, “Wally Wood Sketchbook”, a collection of Wood’s scribbles and sketches and assorted texts about him written by people like Bruce Timm and Jim Steranko. It is a very nice book, if you ignore the terrible page design and some “special defects” like Photoshop drop shadows and other useless attempts to “pimp up” the drawings.
Steranko opens the book telling Wood’s story, and on page 39 he mentions something very interesting. It is one of the main reasons why I’ve been thinking so much about this image-text ratio lately. He was describing what happened when Wood became an editor and started publishing his own comics together with other artists. The comics were good, but the line didn’t last long. I quote from the book, and the italic is my own:
“Two companion books Dynamo and Noman were initiated in 1966, but the line’s 64-page 25¢ format simply couldn’t compete with Marvel’s high-powered low-priced product. The art was outstanding, but character development was minimal and dialogue sparse–a Marvel book took a half-hour to read , while a Tower comic at twice the price could be digested in five minutes. (…) By the end of 1968, Tower threw in the towel.
Of course there other factors causing the demise of Wood’s artist-driven comics, but this lack of reading material was obviously important, and a good subject for thinking and discussing.
Scott Mccloud on Text & Image
Yesterday I was re-reading Mccloud’s “Making Comics” and found the part where he talks about this relationship I’ve been writing about here. Around page 30 he talks about “the choice of words” and the things that words can do in a comic that images either would take a lot of “time” to convey, or would simply not be able to express. I truly hope you all have this book, it is very good and has been one of my greatest friends for the last couple of months!
Of all the numerous subjects that get me worried and keep me from sleeping well at night, one that has been particularly annoying lately is the relationship between text and images in comics. No pun intended, but where do we draw the line between them? Which one is more important?
Yesterday I was reading “On Writing for Comics” by Kurt Busiek, and he said something that I find rather dangerous. I quote his text:
The single most important factor in plotting comics is the fact that the comics medium is a visual one. The stories are told through pictures. Each story is made up of a certain number of pages, each page is made up of a certain number of panels and each panel holds one illustration. The captions, dialogue and so forth augment the picture in each panel, but it’s the pictures that are the primary storytelling element. Therefore, the stories have to be visually interesting, and since you, as writer, are going to be telling the artists what to draw, you have to plot your stories with that in mind.
The last sentence is true, but it doesn’t make up for the rest. I found it appalling that a writer like Busiek would give up on the importance of the text on the very first chapter of his writing guide.
Maybe I’ve read too much Prince Valiant when I was a kid, but I think text and image are equally important in comics. If the images are not beautiful, we won’t feel attracted to read the comic. Images are the first thing we absorb from it, and we take less than 1 second to decide whether an image is appealing to us or not. However, what verb do we use when we refer to comics? We don’t watch them like we watch television. We don’t listen to them, we don’t eat them, we don’t sniff them. We read comics.
The text is fundamental. Why are writers like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman so above the average? Is it simply because they have a lot of references and use their culture in favour of their storylines? Great writers are not engineers of plot, architects of narrative gimmicks that surprise us every few pages. Great writers write great text, and that is a very difficult craft, but an important one.
When I was a kid, I loved “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Later, as a teenager, I forgot about it, thinking that it was too “for kids” for a snob intellectual like I thought I wanted to be. Recently I read it again, and it was great. Why? Pirates and islands are nothing new, but the way Stevenson writes about them is just seductive. He is so careful about everything: the rhythm of the story, the way the words sound, the inner pacing of each sentence… After you start reading it, you can’t help but keep reading, and you feel want to read it out loud, because it’s so fun and interesting. The same story, told only with images, wouldn’t be as captivating.
So does that mean that great comics need great text? Not necessarily. For me, the beauty of comics is that the relationship between image and text is fluid. The line that divides them is very blurry and can easily be pushed around.
Let’s see if I can find some good examples.
 A classic Valiant panel, with a big detailed drawing and narrative text on the side. An old style, where text merely jumps inside of the panel, without much interaction. But reading it is important, it's not just a poster or a pin-up. It's a story!  Flash Gordon was more balanced, mixing narrative boxes and balloons. It still "sounds" like a book, but now with dialogue, following the lead of talking movies.  Milton Caniff was a master of all things comics. In this example, a long speech, with a text so powerful that it was read out loud in a US Congress session.  In another example, a brilliant way to show the character's confusion and dreamlike state, with music lyrics flying around his head.  Contrast is always important and useful. Here we have an important piece of text, followed by a haunting silence--something you can't get in a book.  Sometimes Valentina doesn't say anything. We don't care much, really, but this page would look better hanging on your wall, on a tattoo, or on a t-shirt - not as a book page.  Comics poem by Aidan Koch.  Chris Ware is famous for his meticulous drawings, but his text is very good. Look how every little panel on this page has a small phrase, and they all sum up. The page is non-linear, meaning that you can read the panels from the left to the right, and from top to bottom, but with no "correct" sequence. Even so, the text works! Well, I could show examples for the rest of my life, but I think I’ve made my point. Comics are not supposed to be either a visual or a written media: they thrive on the dialogue of both, sometimes favouring one, sometimes the other, building a specific type of narrative that cannot be matched by illustration or literature alone.
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