Bá joins in on the hunt

This saturday, Bá joined in on the "art hunt" game, doing the image below and hiding it somewhere in São Paulo. The clues to the hiding spot weren't the easiest ones – it was hidden on a subway station, and there are a lot of stations that look alike in SP – and we were happy that the drawing was found nonetheless.

The art hunts

Inspired by friends who did the same thing, and wishing I could do something fun to interact in some real way with many of the fans and readers that I have only reached virtually via twitter, instagram or facebook, I started an "art hunt" game during the last two big festivals I went. The first one, FIQ, happened in Brazil, in downtown Belo Horizonte, and I tested the waters for this game first there because I was more confident my brazilian audience would responde to it. Brazilians spend a lot of time on the internet (maybe too much time, in my opinion), so I decided a brazilian festival was a good place to start.



I did one drawing each day at FIQ, which is a five days long festival, so I had to find many different places for the drawings, and also I tried to make drawings that would always be worth looking for.
The one that took the longest to find was Jon Snow, hidden inside the beer fridge of the bar of the festival.

  


It worked out so nice that I did it again at Thought Bubble, the festival that happens in Leeds in the UK. I also did it daily, for three straight days, but this time, since it was my first time in that place, it was harder to choose where to hide the drawings. Two of the art hunts happened at night, since it gets dark at 4 PM around this time of year.
All the same, I think the english crowd also had fun, and all the drawings were found.


These two conventions happened in two consecutive weekends, so after that I was beat and had no energy left to continue my art hunt game during the four days I spent in London.

I had a great time doing this game, and I hope to do it again.

For now

Batman and Robin

Daytripper challenge

Last week, the Daytripper collection came out in comic book stores, for everybody to find, buy and share with their loved ones. Some people ordered it through Amazon, and then they saw that it was only going to be available on February 8th. In the same fashion, regular bookstores would only get the book and start selling it on the same date.

Today.

So, the direct market gets a one week head-start, and we should take care of our direct market and the comic book stores, but now there are a lot more venues where you can find Daytripper. Now, people who doesn't usually buys comics - or who at least usually doesn't go to a comic book store - can bump into our book and discover it for the very first time. I believe there are a lot of potential readers in bookstores, in movie theaters and everywhere in general, and they just don't read comics because they don't know the variety of stories that are being told in comics form, some of their liking for sure, so the more we can have our book along with other books, the better.

I think that that's what Steve Niles called "reaching out of our bubble" on this blog post, and I couldn't help but agree with him that there must be a more positive approach to our support to Creator-Owned stories than just complaining.

That's one of the reasons I made this video.

I also made this video because it was fun, and it reminds me that making comics is also fun, and it's supposed to remind readers - and specially those who venture themselves to bookstores with their cameras and phones in hand (I trust you, guys!) - that reading comics and discovering new stories is also a lot of fun.

The challenge has been set. I hope a lot of people join in.

So, what do you think?
Are you ready?
Go!

And then...

I'm writing something for another blog that I could have easily written for this one. It's about our work and about our love for comics, and about our inspirations and influences for Daytripper. We've said something about it in here before, and I guess we could talk about it for days, months, even years. We love what we do and, if we're not careful, we talk about it ALL THE TIME.

Kinda boring if you're in a conversation circle and it's not a hot topic.

Luckily for us, since Daytripper is coming out next week as a trade in comic shops, we had the opportunity to talk about work a lot in half a dozen interviews, so we're more than satisfied in that area. Let's turn our attentions to another area, then, called "future projects".



I did this sketch at the beach while thinking about this "future projects" area.

It's a nice area.

A secret area.

Kind of like Area 51, you know. Secret. If you think that 51 is the brand of strong pinga here in Brazil (not the best one, I'm afraid), then I think we have the perfect mix of influences to try to start to explain our future projects.

Except that we're not going to explain our future projects.

No.

That would ruin the fun, now wouldn't it?

We're just going to go back to work.

Right.

Disclaimer: the picture above has nothing to do with the so called "future projects". I just thought it looked nice.

Cute

A little cross-eyed, I guess, but still cute. Cute enough, and fun enough, for a warm up exercize. I wish every warm up doodle would come out like this one.

Bá and Hazel

We're no longer safe, not even in Brazil. I expect Cha-Cha with the briefcase and the atomic bomb.