Daddy Home for Christmas - Cover

Our first Christmas Special.

Lucerio - page 20

Lucerio - page 10

Lucerio - page 7

Make up! - page 1

The Pirate Balthasar - Special - Stars (compiled)

For those of you who like to read our specials all in one go, here's the compiled version of Stars. Enjoy!

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

The Flower and the Nose (ad XD)

Hi guys, I post it here too. This is the blog for my next upcoming series: The Flower and The Nose.

It's very different from The Pirate Balthasar.

If all goes well it should start in July.

La scommessa

Su richiesta la versione italiana de "La Scommessa".


La Scommessa

The Bet

My friend wrote a short story and asked me to illustrate it. Here's the final result! :D

Why ♥ your Sketchbook 2

Why ♥ your sketchbook again?

Because you can keep wild animals in it.

You can keep people, ideas, wishes... tickets... you can keep a place and a time.

If you want to be an artist you have to learn to observe and learn from reality. The difference between those who doodles and those who get the jobs is that the ones who get the jobs are observant people.
Being creative and original does not exclude hard practice. Your imagination is a variation of something that already exist in nature so you have to learn the rules really well if you want to break them.

If you break them before you learn them it shows and your artwork will look amateurish.

Drawing from life - objects, people, animals, landscapes - is a good way to train your eye/hand coordination.

You cannot know what something looks like if you don't see it first and learn to reproduce it. If you need to draw the ellipse on an imaginary cup you have to observe what a real ellipse looks like.

If you draw by guessing and you draw what you think things should be like... it will show. Brain getting in the way of hand&eye (who are a prefect married couple) will always create troublesome problems for your art.

People who work in the artistic field will notice, will see all of your technical problems and wonder: can this person understand what he/she sees?

Never take your skills for granted, practice to improve them, try different and new things continuously but never stop going to the zoo to draw animals, even though zoos are sad, scary places, never stop drawing people sleeping on the bus or the train, never stop drawing buildings and perspective.

Drawing is a language if you don't practice that language you will loose the lexicon and the grammar.
Observation is the grammar and creativity is the lexicon.

Observe, draw and imagine. Look twice and draw once. Don't fall in love with your drawings... especially your sketches. Keep them rough and simple, try to capture the gesture, the angle, the motion, try to capture life. Understand the mechanics of the anatomy, understand the motion, feel it.

Only if you understand you can reproduce and be creative. Only if you learn proportions you can push them around and play with shapes. Only if you observe light you will be able to apply color theory.

Everything you think you can create anew it already exist in nature under a different form (cope with it, you are copying already, might as well use good reference!)... the most imaginative fantasy creature, the tallest dragon... they already exist in nature: a piece is attached on an animal, another piece is attached on another one. Our creativity is derivative and cannot live without understanding.


You can draw an eye in one thousand different ways... but it will always be, at the core, an eye.
So an eye, a standard boring eye, is the grammar, light reflects in a certain way because of its shape and the material is made of... and you can derivate your lexicon and make it long, golden, thick, oval, glassy, metallic, whatever... but it will always be an eye in a material you know the existence of.

So deal with it: practice and reality, if you want to be an artist, you cannot do without. :)

Know your story.

What's a story?

A Story is something with a Beginning, a Middle and an End. As simple as that.

Your story has to start, go somewhere and then find its way towards the ending. It might seem logic but try and ask this very same question to anybody you know and almost nobody will come up with this answer.

Because it's simple, it's straightforward and it's a bit obvious.

But clearly that is also what a story need: it needs to be simple, linear and obvious.... but don't take this words literally.

Simple is best, linear means you need structure and obvious simply means that everything must be clear enough for everybody to understand, without a reasonable doubt, without interpretations of sort, without way outs.

What are the main elements you need in a story?

You need a character, his environment, you need his dream, a conflict and rising action and then a resolution and then...

No, let me summarize this better. A story needs these elements: D + D + D.

Or to say it better: a Dude with a Dilemma and how he Deals with it.

A Dude is a Character.

The Dilemma is a Conflict.

And how he Deals with it is all the series of Rising Complications that would lead him to the Final Resolution.

A story can be moved by two things: plot and character.

Plot drive stories can be quite tricky and may lead inexperienced writers to character betrayal.

Character driven stories, if not dealt with properly, can lie flat and never go anywhere.

Plot is the series of events that move the story forwards, carrying the character along for a crazy ride.

It needs a good amount of cause and effects.

There can be stories with very little plot but there can never be a story without characters. 

It is one of the reason why a character driven story is to be preferred to the plot driven one. You can have a cool plot and mess up the character, then nobody will believe you... but you can have a cool character keeping together chaotic elements and people will follow you in the ride (let's not forget that most movies have very simple, linear plots and are held together by the charisma of the protagonist).

If you really want to know your story you have to know your character.

Know your character and he/she will move the story forward for you.

Know your character and you shall also know your story. 

Index