SMP Back Issues!

Review of TROPA and RAMBOL by jtmtzrwj

I was finally able to get my hands on Gilbert Monsanto’s Sacred Mountain debut releases. First up is Tropa. This comics stars a group of high school friends imbued with different abilities via different circumstances. I’m not saying no more. All is explained in this “origin” issue. This comic is drawn by different artists like Gilbert Monsanto, Luisito G. Antonio, Jim Jimenez, and others. Though I was first bothered when I learned about his via Monsanto’s blog, I was quite satisfied with the implementation and the results. Each artist draws each of the main character’s origin story. Hopefully once we get a non-flashback story, we’ll also get only one artist per issue.

Next is flipbook Rambol Komiks which features Alagad Inc. (not pictured) and Metropolitan. What is most noticeable is Alagad Inc’s art style which gets much inspiration from Japanese manga and anime. The story is about some supernatural beings, most probably ancient dieties of some sort, coming down from their domain to send a challenge to Earth’s mightiest champions. A group called Alagad Inc. re-recruits some of it’s best agents to help in this time of crisis. Last, is Gilbert Monsanto’s Metropolitan which brings back Monsanto’s old characters from his 90s stint in Infinity, Sonic, GASI etc. Drawn by Monsanto himself, this Metropolitan features quite a lot of fight sequences. There is also some hint that the Biotrog character featured in this book may not be the same Biotrog from before.

All in all, I found the both books quite satisfactory. The materials used for these releases are also quite different from the komiks back in the day. Komiks before were printed on newspaper-like materials, Tropa was printed on glossy paper probably the ones used on magazines while Rambol on some thicker paper. My only big problem with the books specifically the flipbook Rambol Komiks was the coloring. Although Tropa was fully colored, Rambol only had colors on the first few pages, the rest were on black and white. I would have preferred to have everything in black and white instead of having only the first few pages colored.

Check out Monsanto’s blog @ gilbertmonsanto.blogspot.com

Creating the Art of Timawa

Creating the Art of Timawa by Gerry Alanguilan

Hello Guys! My name is Gerry Alanguilan, guest poster on komiks.i.ph, and I thought I’d post something here that I haven’t written about yet in my own blogs. And that’s how I create the artwork to my current series for The Buzz Magasin, TIMAWA.

I get two pages a month from The Buzz Magasin to do my series, and since this magazine is in a large format, I’m free to create more panels per page without necessarily crowding it up. I usually have an outline on  what happens per issue. The events in those two pages I keep percolating in my mind a few days before I actually do the art.  So by the time I actually start it, I have a pretty good idea how I’m going to lay the page out.

In this particular panel, which is Panel 1 of Timawa #2 (The Buzz Magasin November 2007), the setting is the early 70’s in a squatter area beside a railroad in Manila. One of my main characters, Lolo Tanda (who is still a young man in this panel) is sitting beside his shanty while his mother and his nephew look on at some “happening”. A kid is running towards them telling them that the bank in the corner is being held up.

I drew it loosely in pencil and then used my Rotring tech pens UNI drawing pens to actually draw the scene. I scanned this in the computer so I can color it in Photoshop. I don’t really like doing elaborate colors as I prefer, as much as possible, to do flat colors on figures and scenes this small. There is another step I will do later that would put texture on all of this, which I always keep in mind.  

When doing close ups (which I don’t have here), I usually do go in and do a little “painting” to shape the face or body, but in small figures like this, I like to keep it flat. The only real effect I do here is the sky, which I chose to use a gradient on.

Notice the orange light inside the shanty? I just chose a random bright color that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the page so it would stand out. This way, I can easily select it with a Magic Wand in Photoshop. On it I pasted another one of my drawings from another comic book I did earlier. I do this ocassionally to add a little background. in ELMER I did this using drawings of Elmer sent in by friends and readers of the comic book.

After I finish coloring, I add on some texture over the entire page. The texture comes from this:

This is a portion of a high resolution scan of the back of a Nestor Redondo original artwork from the mid 1960’s. Manipulating it in Photoshop I can bring out some nice textures and folds and dirt. I then paste this over my colored Timawa page, and playing around with Opacity and other options in the Layers, I can choose just how much of this texture I want to show up. And the result is on the third panel above. I truly get a kick knowing that my comics carries the “spirit” so to speak, of Nestor Redondo, who remains one of my biggest inspirations.

The lettering is all done on the computer, using a font I created from my own lettering. But that’s a topic for another post.