The Usual Suspects

Posted on by luxshine
Left to Right: Moonbeam Honesty, Dew, Phoenix, Raziel, Winchester Mansion, Moira McNabb

In every story, there’s that one character who enjoys getting in trouble and getting everyone else in trouble. The troublemakers, so to speak.   Obviously, my stories are not the exception.

I made this illustration, with the most mischievous of my characters from my stories for a new banner in my patreon and facebook page, but of course, I just had to make them full body to share them with you all.

Moonlight Honesty is from Gradients, which is currently a Patreon-exclusive strip and you get the whole archive for just $1.00 USD a month. Updates on Fridays.

Dew is from Dream Keeper Robin, that you can read for free at Tapas (Link on the main menu), or buy at my store in physical form. Updates on Mondays.

Phoenix is from Traveling Seers, that you can read at Tapas (link on the main menu). Updates on Wednesdays.

Raziel is from Devil in Disguse. More about him to come out soon 😉

Winchester Mansion is, of course, from my Haunted House series, that you may have seen here.

And finally Moira is from my very first professional comic, I.Doll.  But hers is a story for another time.

Memory Lane: I.Doll

Posted on by luxshine

I.Doll was my professional debut in Mexico. I was 17 years old, and couldn’t believe my luck when I was told that an editorial actually wanted one of my stories for a new project with national stories. It was thanks to the recommendation of my friends Obal and Gaby Maya, who was an editor at the time, and Victor Fernandez, who would be the editor of the magazine and you have no idea how grateful I am to them even now.

This particular image is a bit old, but I was cleaning my harddrive and found it, and then realized I had never shared it anywhere so… here she is, Irene Doll, I.Doll, my very first original character who, despite the fact that I ended the comic three years ago (after long hiatus, long story. The whole thing is about 420 pages long), is still very close to my heart.

Who knows? I may draw her again someday.

Writer’s Block Kids Cosplay

Posted on by luxshine

The Writer’s Block Kids love to cosplay (Well, let’s be absolutely honest… the whole Cosmic Family except maybe for Grandpa ‘Thulu love Cosplay) and at the beginning of July, I decided to do a short run of them dressed up as some very epic sci-fi characters.  Can you name them all?

 

Writer’s Block Kids

Posted on by luxshine

Writer’s Block is Mandi Gordon’s and my baby. We’ve done almost 150 strips so far, and we’re going for more. And we both love our angels.

Now, Mandi also loves Calvin and Hobbes, so she challenged me to try and do a more comic strip-style for the cast. While I didn’t do the Horsemen (yet), I did all the kids. And I think that it’s a fun and quick style, that I might use one day in the strip. Or in another project.

Maybe.

Cosmic Family Family Tree

Posted on by luxshine

I adore the Cosmic Family. They all have a specific role to play (even the one who hates the idea of having a role to play). I’m considering making this a print for conventions, what do you guys think?

(Oh, In case you wonder the order: Granpa Ch’tullu is Mama Chaos’s father. Mama Chaos is Janna, Thanatos, Mahlon, Carmen and Dad’s mother. Dad is the father (and mother) of Lucifer, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, Cassiel and Ariel)

Steampunk Writer’s Block

Posted on by luxshine

I love, love, LOVE Steampunk aesthetic. One of my dreams is one of these days to make a steampunk story. In the meantime, I get to play with the cosmic family. So here are all of them in a steampunk version that well, suits them all very, very well.

 

Horsemen of the Apocalypse Art Noveau

Posted on by luxshine

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse, older siblings of Dad in Writer’s Block, have quickly become my favorite characters: From long suffering Mahlon, to apparent eternally cheerful Carmen, from zen-like Thana to coffee-maniac Janna, I adore them all. It’s a pity we rarely see them in their work clothes (especially Mahlon as he looks really cool), but in exchange, here are these illustrations I made for double sided bookmarks last year. Hope to finish the whole family set this year.

Apocalypse through the ages

Posted on by luxshine

As part of my daily drawings, I made a series of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Writer’s Block dressed in the 1900 century fashion, one per decade. This was so much fun, that I ended up deciding on another project around period clothing, since at times, it was hard to decide which horseman went with what decade (Let’s be honest, Janna-war kind of monopolized the last century), and what clothing they should wear. The only constant was that Carmen wore mexican fashion, because well, it’s her favorite place on Earth.

Red Skies, take warning.
1900 – Janna
Not a good decade to travel through the seas
1910 – Thanatos
Although to be honest, she looks more like a female Mahlon here
1920 – Carmen
Pestilence was also busy in the thirties
1930 – Mahlon
War was again in the horizon in the 40's.
1940 – Janna
We invented corn syrup. Famine was happy.
1950 – Carmen
He always look fashionable
1960 – Thanatos
In the Seventies... Janna had... issues
1970 – Janna
The eighties were hard work for Pestilence
1980 – Mahlon
She only wanted to have fun.
1990 – Carmen

Memory Lane: R.E.D.

Posted on by luxshine

Back when I was doing fanzines in 1996, I wanted to do EVERYTHING. Like, I couldn’t choose one genre and stick to it. So, when Lyonesse (That it’s in the Old Projects tab if you’re curious) was going to end, I cranked designs for about 5 different stories, draw two pages of it, and put it up to vote among the 300/400 readers that the Anime fanzine I edited with Gabriela Maya had. (Maybe there were more readers, I’ve got to admit that I never knew exactly how many people read us. I just knew they bought the fanzine at comic book stores, and that we had subscribers from all over the country).

R.E.D. -Professional Thieves, Anonymous Society- was not one of the most popular of those ideas, but I had a soft spot for them. I’ve always loved heist stories, so… I just wanted to do one. I just never developed them further after they lost (Out of the five, they were second to last in the voting process, although it was maybe due to the fact that it was the last preview we ran), even if I loved heists, mostly due to the fact that I finally debuted professionally around then and I started doing a lot more shojo stories. (They appeared in a Conque Convention special magazine, kidnapping the organizer, and in another one for the same convention stealing everything from the booths. I wish I still had those pages to show you guys)

(Of course, while the watercolor I did was directly based in their original looks, except for Diamond whom I decided looked a lot better with darker skin, If I do go back to a heist-based idea, it would not be women in brightly colored jumpsuits. THAT particular trend should’ve stayed in the 80’s)

Writer´s Block Volume 1

Posted on by luxshine

Writer´s Block Volume 1, or Parenting is Hard Work.

Writing is HARD. And for Dad, the creator of everything in our world, it´s a bit harder as he has to take care of his six sort of teenage angelic children. Things do not get easier as he recruits his older siblings, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, to try and get some calm.

All he wanted was to create the world, is too much to ask some peace and quiet?

Parenting is Hard Work is the first print collection of Writer´s Block, and it includes all the strips from our first year.

Written by Mandi Gordon, and drawn by Adalisa Zarate (yours truly), it is a pocket size book, 32 pages total, in black and white with a color cover. It only costs $4.00 USD in our stores (Kaliko Dragon will be up soon, promise), and is the very first Kaliko Dragon produced book.

The first edition is almost gone, as we introduced it at Spooky, so grab your copy now! Don´t make baby Velociraptors cry.