Gradients Begins

Posted on by luxshine

If you are one of my Patreon, you already know the misadventures of Romeo during his first day of College. However, I’ve also shown you art of a bunch of other people who share the world with him, and it’ time to know HOW he meet them, in a completely new Gradients serialization, that will start the first week of December on Tapas.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the Patreon strips will stop. They will continue as always, and will follow Romeo and the gang between the pages of the Tapas serialization.

The first week will have daily updates from Monday to Friday, and after that, you can follow Gradients every Tuesday.

Like and subscribe at: tapas.io/series/GradientsComic

 

Traveling Seers Comes Back

Posted on by luxshine

In 2015, I started in spanish a series that is really, really close to my heart: Traveling Seers.

The story of a baseball team made up of mediums, the only ones allowed to play in the Afterlife League, where all those people who loved baseball in life can keep playing for eternity.

I published two books of short stories in spanish, Traveling Seers and Traveling Seers: The spirit of the Game, but they have never been available in English… until now, sort of.

Starting this Wednesday, September 5, you can read the stories of the Traveling Seers  Here. For now, I’m starting sharing the stories that are already available in Spanish, only translated, but after a while I will also start adding completely new stories (That will, in time, make the third volume of this series). Of course, if you want to buy the volumes in spanish, they’re still in stock at the Store.

I really hope you enjoy this new adventure, and  while the real Baseball season is about to end, you have fun with the new afterlife season.

Gradients

Posted on by luxshine
From Left to Right: Romeo, Rene, Aria, Luisa, Moonbeam Honesty, Noemi, Xolotl and Henry

Around 15 years ago, I was called by my editor at Vanguardia Editores, Mr. Arnulfo Flores (R.I.P.) to tell me about a new magazine he was launching. The magazine, Saga Shojo, was a huge risk for mexican market: one that would be run by women, with only stories by women and only women collaborators. And he wanted me to be the editor, and to make a story “like Friends”. I was all up for editing, but there was a small problem… I hated Friends.

There were other problems (such as the resistance to more LGBT+ friendly stories from both audience and editing staff), but I created Abre una Ventana (Open a Window. Long story that has to do with my love for musicals), and la Saga Shojo had the love of the readers for about 10 issues. (Well, less according to sale numbers, but due to mr. Flores’s faith and stubborness, we lasted 10 issues). And while the others stories closed, I left mine open ended because I hadn’t finished with the characters.

In 2006, I tried to relaunch it with the Oubilette magazine. But due to time, and other situations, I couldn’t get past issue 2.

Still, I didn’t forget Romeo and the gang. And so now I can tell you all that I have written the whole story (22 chapters of 16 pages each, more or less) , and while I am drawing it, I am doing small strips with the characters, that am posting in Patreon, once a week.  First strip of the month is free for all, the other three are for Patreons starting at $1.00 USD.

So, I hope you all like it, and trust me, you will be seeing more of the gang around here too.

And of course, I hope you follow me in Patreon too! 😀

Dream Keeper Robin 3

Posted on by luxshine

Since the fight with Erin, the Earth Squire, was interrupted by a Mitakan Agent, Robin, Alex and Erin venture into a different dimension to fight the new enemy. Unfortunately, Robin still has not enough information, and Gavin and Zander are MIA. Still, Robin is not going to let anyone threaten Earth, even if he still can’t get his warmace out of the medallion, or get some answers from the Alnitak’ Squires. 

Black and white Comic, 32 pages. English language. Soon for sale on the e-store, but for now you can get it at Conque 2018!

You can also follow it one page a week at:

https://tapas.io/series/DreamKeeperRobin

 

Cats Make Bad Familiars

Posted on by luxshine

This is a one page comic I made last year for a contest (That, unfortunately, I didn’t win). While I know that cats are by tradition the witches’ familiars, my own experience with my cats make me wonder… how did they manage to get ANYTHING done.

(those who follow me in facebook… yeah, the cat is based on my beloved Hei Hei)

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.

Memory Lane: Lost

Posted on by luxshine

Going back to the beginning of my career, Lyonesse (That can be read about in this post) was a moderate success. By moderate I mean well,  it had about 20 readers (and I know this because that was about the number of copies we could print, and they tended to sold out). At some point during the second part, we moved it to the information fanzine we had started, named Animanga, mostly in order to make it have more pages, and then I kind of lost track of how many people actually cared for the story, but we never got complains, so I counted that as a win.

In any case, Lyonesse was drawing to an end, and I wanted to do something different. But I will be 100% honest, I do have a bit of an hyperactive muse, and I had more ideas than time (Or ability) to make them look good. So I had this crazy idea of showing five different stories, with a two page preview each, and let the Animanga readers vote for the one they wanted to see.

Lost won second place, but because the first place suddenly was picked to launch my professional career (more about that later), it was picked to replace Lyonesse once it ended.

The very first Lost drawing. I was so proud of it, back in 1995. (yes, you can see the signature there)

The story was pretty simple. An earth girl named Jan found a strange macguffin called the Chihenshinchikawasei (Can you tell I was starting to learn Japanese and had just got my first dictionary?) and since the thing opens wormholes, she gets transported (and physically transformed into a blue haired girl for… reasons) into a sand planet where two brothers find her and nurse her back to health. Due to language and culture clash problems, she thinks the brothers, Jial and Zahia, are girls, and Jial decides not to correct her. And then, well, they get adventures as Jial convinces Jan to use the macguffin to find treasures.

I honestly don’t remember what was I thinking, besides “I like Indiana Jones and gender-confusing characters”.

In any case, after publishing the first.. I think it was two chapters, or maybe it was just one, we (That is, Gaby Maya and I) decided to do a crossover between the Lost guys and her characters, the Pirates of Aquelonde, which ended up being the very last story published in Animanga. It was a very interesting exercise for me, as she drew most of the backgrounds and her characters, while I just drew mine and then she inked.

Now, unlike some other entries in this memory lane I’m doing, I did come back to the Lost guys in 2010. Not for publication, but for my portfolio. I made 3 pages, changing the concept a little bit, making the setting more steampunk, making Jial’s gender a bit more obvious as I had decided to go in a different route with Jan. To be honest, I am still thinking about working with this characters again, as soon as I find the right setting for them.

 

Memory Lane – Lyonesse

Posted on by luxshine

I started drawing (and trying to sell) my comics when I was 15.  I wasn’t specially good -between being a bit of a hermit, no internet tutorials, and a slightly over protective dad I was pretty much self taught. I still am, but now I actually talk to people and get their input on how to improve myself. Plus, I’ve got about 20 or so years of practice over my 16-year-old self 😉

My very first comic was a small strip I did for a baseball magazine. Unfortunately, most if not all of those strips are lost to time. If I find them, I might talk about them more another time. After that,  and after renting Otaku no Video and learning that in Japan fans did their own comics in very small runs and showed them to the public, I thought “Why not?” and with the help of some friends back then I made Lyonesse.

It was… a bit of a mess.

Lyonesse was a story about a planet ravaged by war, three races in an eternal fight, and some magic thrown in between to show that deep down we’re all the same.  It was divided in three parts, the first and second sold in 12 page, letter sized, photocopied issues (first issue had a run of 5 copies. I have no idea where my own copy is) -well, the second part had a couple of bigger issues, as it was published with Gaby Maya’s Pirates of Aquelonde’s first chapter.  First part was 5 issues long, while the second part was about 4 and then the third part was published inside my other fanzine, Animanga, which is where you can say my career started to lift off.

Lyonesse was the first (and for a long time, the only, to my shame) story I finished. And once I finished it, I closed the file and tried to forget about it. From time to time, however, I remembered the characters and wondered if I could write their story better with my new experience and better art. Then I decide that it’s better to leave them as they are, a nice memory and a teaching experience.

Still, when people say that art requires “born” talent and not practice, I like to see that first Lyonesse issues (you can see the cover, done last century) and then, just to make the point clearer, I made the watercolor that opens this post in 2017. Practice does pay off 😉

Funny thing, though.  I decided to make the watercolor off one of the most secondary characters. His name was Kyja and, while important to the plot, he LITERALLY only appeared in the third part, and in short flashbacks in the second. Still, he was one of the most interesting characters visually, and I had never done a full color illustration of him. So, 20 some years later, I had to give him his due.

Dream Keeper Robin #1

Posted on by luxshine

  Robin Real coverRobin is a normal guy who enjoys spending time with his best friends in the woods behind his house. But everything changes the day he meets Gavin, an eagle from a distant star, who promptly tells him he is the true heir of his kingdom, and next in line to fight against the forces of darkness. There’s just one small detail that Gavin left out…

Black and white Comic, 32 pages. English language. Includes code to download the book in spanish.

You can buy the print book -with the spanish download- at

https://www.kichink.com/buy/1400337/tsuzuku/dream-keeper-robin-1

Or read it one page a week at

https://tapas.io/series/DreamKeeperRobin