Script and Art by John “The Reverend” Amor

Letters by Rey “Potent Citrus” Siasar

Urban Animal #2 will be available for purchase via cash or massage at the Second Cebu Comics Convention this October 1st.

It was Kat’s turn to pick a theme, and it sure wasn’t hard to tell she’s been itching to draw some Disney themed stuff for a while.  I was apprehensive at first, as my style doesn’t exactly lend itself to anything this cartoony, but I ended up having a lot more fun than I thought I would.  I had somehow forgotten that the House of Mouse had some of the hottest animated ladiez.  Silly me.

I noticed a slight deficiency around here in terms of new art, so I thought I’d peel some skin back and show some bones for a little bit.  Closetworld is a webcomic written by Matt Yocum that went online a little while back.  As pretty standard procedure for all my projects, I make sure thumbnails are approved by the writer and/or editor before I actually begin work on the page.  Below are the layouts for the first four pages of Closetworld, and the finished sequentials for comparison.  As usual, click to biggify.

Aside from camera placement and shot angle, two other very good uses of thumbnails are the preconception of Shadow Placement and Shorthand of Expression.  Figuring out where your shadows go in this miniature version of the page saves you a lot of time and ink.  It’s not just shadows really, but blacks in general.  If the page reads smoothly as a small sketch, there’s no reason for the finished version to be weak compositionally.

As for shorthanding expression — it can get tedious when you’re already drawing the page and you need to keep checking the script to see if the emotion on your character’s face fits what he’s saying and doing.  If you indicate this in your thumbnails ahead of time, you save yourself quite a bit of hassle later on.

Somewhere, Alex Cipriano is cracking a Nicholas Cage joke.

Here, people, is the mock cover to the second issue of Urban Animal.  I’ve been drawing it on and off for the past couple of weeks, and today I was blessed with a three-hour window to just slap some color on it.

I had come up with various plays for the layout of this thing — from showing the main character in mid-transformation, to a dinosaur doing an Abbey Road crossing — but I decided to just go with my gut and hint at a key moment within the issue.  I was initially conflicted about whether to make the rex snout bloody or not, but the deep red color turned out to be a nice point of interest.

When in doubt, go for the gross out.

We’re closing in on a year since I spoke with male strippers Rey and Tom over at Big Ape Design and decided to dig up this decade-old comic and give it proper distribution.  Originally titled “Beast Boy Joe” (I know, I know…) this was something I now want to refer to as a quasi-biography.  The book is now available for download for three reasons — firstly, as my attempt at participation in this admirable 100 Araw ng Komiks movement local creators are advocating.  Second, to stir up some attention and to get people ready for #2 (which was also drawn about a decade ago).  And third, because I love stories, and I love you.

This .cbr file features the first full issue of the mini-series, minus the bonus sketches and introductory text.  Urban Animal is © John Amor and Fort Bastard Studios.

Download Urban Animal #1.

Download in PDF