Back after two years

Hello everyone! Myke here.
Felt like ages since I used my blog. Many things had happened to me and Robin in those two years. We became more loving and supportive to each other and we gained weight. Hehehe! The past two years we grew as a person and as a couple. We cherished friends and group that we support. But sometimes along the way, everything has to end. We left the group that we help built and we started focusing on our our ideas and looking forward to share it with everyone in the near future.

As for work and families, freelance work was very overwhelming. I got lots of gigs and you could say that it was a break out year for me last year. I got to work with a great comic book digital artist named Brian "Tots" Valeza. He colored two of my artworks and I seriously I was stoke. I'm a big fan of his works. Will post it next time.

Robin on the other hand had been promoted twice or trice within that two years. From French Pre-audit at IBM to managerial position. She is still very strict with procedures and she works hard to plan our next out of town adventure (We both love going to the beach and BOHOL is our paradise). We also hoping by next year we can have a baby. So that'll be exciting!

Anyhow, this is just a quick post and hopefully Robin and I could have more time again to write here. Again, NICE TO BE BLOGGING AGAIN!

The Honor of Interviewing Danny Acuña and Clem Rivera

Yep, it's still Robin, but nevermind me. Read on :) The article I did for Playboy Philippines is my favorite assigned article so far since it gave me the opportunity to write about the people whose role in reviving the local comics industry has in my opinion been ignored in favor of a more flamboyant showbiz personality (with questionable merits I should add, but I already vilified him in an earlier post). It also allowed me to meet and chat with veteran artists Danny Acuña and Clem Rivera whose work I'm ashamed to admit I wasn't familiar with prior to working on the article. Now that I know what they've accomplished and how hard they've had to struggle, I'm all the richer for it.


This post-interview supplement is my way of thanking them again for their time and their candor. In some way, I also hope it pays just tribute to their immense talent and the generosity of their spirit.

"Hindi nila iminulat kung gaano kahalaga ang trabaho ng artist"

Most of the anecdotes Sir Danny shared with me I was able to include in the article, but I wasn't able to write about the production-line style of page creation he described. This was adopted as circulation for comics increased and more pages were demanded of each artist. Lesser known artists were allowed to assist the "big name" artists, but only the well-known artist got the credit. The assistants though were given a percentage of the main artist's fee.

Now Sir Danny spoke of a pay scale that ranged from A1 (for the likes of Francisco Coching and Nestor Redondo)to D at PhP125 per page which goes down to 100, 75, 60 and 45 depending on where the artist was on the scale. He says it was possible to assist multiple artists at the time and he himself preferred to assist Nestor Malgapo and Fred Carrillo and share a percentage of their fee rather than slave away at a full page for only P45.

I wonder now if that system may have in part contributed to the eventual stagnation of the industry in the 80s, with new artists not being given the chance to develop on their own and opting instead to assist those who were already established.

In those days, though, the acknowledged comics superstars were undisputed masters of their craft. Of Coching's 45 comics novels, Sir Danny says, "nagsisimula pa lang, binibili na ng producer (they weren't even completed yet and producers already wanted to buy them.)" He compares this with another who has claimed that 80 of his 1000 novels have been turned into movies. Sir Danny smiled at me and said, "What percentage is that?"

He remembers the big billboard ads for the P10 comics only a few years ago and asks where they all are now. The real revival he believes is in the hands of a determined new generation of creators.

"Mahina pa rin ang comics pero nakikita mo naumpisahan na, ayun sumisigla (Comics are slowly coming back,)" he says,"ang comics magagawa mo ngayon na paxerox-xerox lang (you can make comics now through photocopies)" and you hear in Sir Danny's voice just how much he marvels at this.

He urges support of comics today if only for patriotism and he also stresses the need to educate audiences about the value of art. He tells of a colleague whose original pages were used by his wife to pick up dog poop. "Hindi nila iminulat kung gaano kahalaga ang trabaho ng artist," he rues. It saddens him too that many are still unfamiliar with our own rich folklore and mythology. "Sinarahan ng kamangmangan."

And yet Sir Danny admires the creators who persist in creating comics today. "Ang lakas ng spirit non no! Iba yung sa kanila eh. Di nila tinignan yung pera"

"Dun sa comics convention, dumami sila, nabuhay sila. Kaming mga senior, kaming veterans, nabuhayan na din. Gumagawa na rin kami ulit ng comics." (Their spirit is amazing! They don't care about money. There are even more comics creators now because of the conventions. They've inspired us seniors to go back to creating comics too.)

"Ang comics pag binuhay mo, zombie lalabas dyan. Patay na eh."

Animator Clem Rivera was one of the veteran artists Sir Danny convinced to come out of retirement at the height of last year's National Artist controversy. Their outrage over those questionable proceedings and the developments in the local independent comic book scene encouraged them all to go back to creating comics. ""I knew i wasn't going to earn from it," he says, "but I wanted to be part of the industry again"

He told me that years before, he really had no plans of going into comics. "Dati akong nagtatrabaho sa pabrika ng sinulid. Factory worker ako. Pagkatapos nagkaroon ng problema sa post ko. Nagresign ako. Nun pa lang ako naging interesado sa komiks." (I used to work at a thread factory. It was only after I resigned due to some trouble at work that I became interested in comics.)

Sir Clem says he knew a little bit about drawing but it was his godfather, Mar Santana, another local comics master, whom he really learned from. "Walang formal training," he says. He just watched and copied what his godfather was drawing until 15 days later Santana said he was ready. He was 25 at the time.

As a full-time comic book artist, Sir Clem says he used to be able to produce eight pages a night for 16 hours of continuous work daily. Those were fully penciled and inked pages so he got used to only getting four hours of sleep a day. He did that for 15 years, with only Saturday night as his time off. The punishing work paid for the college fees of his three children, something he says he couldn't have managed if he didn't work that hard.

When he started out, Sir Clem says he was paid P15 per page; by the time he left the industry he was up to PhP300 per page. Rates for artists he says didn't increase for years; it didn't matter if a local talent already got international exposure, publishers had to keep the prices of their books down.

It was from Sir Clem that I learned that an artist's drawing table is never silent. He used to turn the quarter sheet of cartolina he was drawing on repeatedly to get the right perspective. If you don't hear the sound of the paper scraping again and again on the desk, he says, the artist probably isn't really working ;)

My final quote for the Playboy article came from Sir Clem. Here's the quote in its entirety. "Bubuhayin mo yung comics, tapos ilalabas mong comics yung namatay na comics. Sinong bibili nyan? Sabi ko nga kay Rico Rival, pagka ang comics binuhay mo, zombie lalabas dyan. Patay na eh."

"Pag yung patay pinabangon mo, zombie yon. Ang kailangan sa komics ipanganak muli. Maging brand new." (If you revive the dead, you'll end up with a zombie. Comics need to be reborn.)

Photos by Myke Guisinga :)

Of Local Comics Gods, Rocker Homecomings, Playboy Magazine and Other June Highlights

Robin still at the helm as Myke is hard at work at his latest timed sketch. The sight of Myke bent over his drawing table until the wee hours of the morning is becoming more and more common as he continues to refine the art in his comics portfolio. What he used to tell me he did only "for fun" he's now dead serious about pursuing. It's helped that the pros over at Sketchpad Studios have seen the merit of his work and he's now training with them; but it's admittedly been a difficult adjustment as he has to stay there one night each week. Still, I'm insanely fan-girl proud of him and it's with more than a fan-girl's gushing that I pronounce that he's made a quantum leap in the quality of his art :) Please visit his Deviant Art gallery and see what I mean.

We've also been out and about nearly every weekend, starting with the Bayan Knights meeting early in the month. This was our first meeting again after the Summer Komikon and it was one of our most productive too. We're looking forward to sharing the group's upcoming projects soon :) We were glad that Jon Zamar was also able to join us for the first time and the visit of a surprise guest made the meet even more memorable -- Myke invited local comics god Roy Allan Martinez who arrived later that evening with his girlfriend, Paris Imshi :D

The moment the tall, long-haired messianic figure walked in, the Knights fell silent and I swear I've never seen them look so timid, hehe. There's talk now of an Exodus reunion :) here's wishing with all our fan-ardent hearts it'll become a reality.

A couple weeks later, Myke and I were at the UP College of Fine Arts reunion at Club Dredd. Now, I'd never been to Club Dredd before and the life I lived before meeting Myke was so hopelessly square I'd have likely gone through the rest of it without ever having set foot in Dredd. The few times we kicked back for a few drinks in Eastwood though he was reluctant to check out its new home above Gweilo's. On Edsa, whether we're in a bus or a cab, he never fails to turn his head in the direction of the old Dredd to pay homage, reminisce, and then rue its demise in 1998. The idea of his old "home" relocating to ritzy Eastwood seemed to him to be sacrilege of the highest order... until he was back there with old friends and familiar faces and it was like 1995 all over again :)

1995 was the year Myke got into UP as a Fine Arts freshman entirely through his own efforts, and it was also the year I ran screaming from the College of Science (after doing the same from the College of Engineering years earlier) into the College of Arts and Letters as a European Languages shiftee. It was the year we both found the path we were going to be on for the rest of our lives (notwithstanding a few detours and a healthy dose of branching out along the way). That night in Dredd, we were once again where we were on the brink of possibility and Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and the other grunge bands provided one hell of a soundtrack.



The reunion party was high octane from the start with one awesome FA band playing after another. By the time the Intergalactic Butt-Nuggets were onstage ripping through one death metal number after another, I was in my zone with my beer and completely oblivious of Myke's urging to take a photo of him just chilling with Leinil Yu (yep, he's a CFA alumnus too!) I do remember seeing them talking though and thinking, "Aw, they're getting along...great party...great people... oh hey, an unopened beer bottle..."

Citizen Leinil with fellow CFA alumni :)

"Thank you for the beer..." :p

In the midst of all this, my article on the revival of Philippine comics came out in the June issue of Playboy. This was a bloody difficult article to write, as in madugo @#$%! There was the tremendous history of Philippine comics I had to take a crash course in and online resources The Philippine Komiks Encylcopedia and Gerry Alanguilan's Philippine Comics Museum were indispensable in that regard. I also wanted very badly to do justice to the anecdotes and insights my interview subjects willingly shared; these were people I deeply admire and whose work meant a great deal to me. Being a member of Bayan Knights, I've seen first-hand what our creators have to go through just to get their books out so I really wanted to make the most of this opportunity to tell their story.

I had the honor of being able to interview veteran artists Danny Acuña and Clem Rivera, Komikon organizer Jon Zamar, comics pros Edgar Tadeo and Gerry Alanguilan, publishers Boboy Yonzon and Gilbert Monsanto, indie creator Gener Pedriña, multimedia guru Jonas Diego and Metrocon/Sketcpad Studios top honcho Ernest Hernandez. The article was also made possible by the assistance of artists Heubert Khan Michael and Jann Galino.

There was so much I learned from them that I wanted to put in the article but I kept trimming details away in order to make the 3000 word limit :( Maybe next weekend if we're not rushing off to another event I can make a separate blog entry for the stories I could no longer include in the article.

For now, Myke and I are just so very grateful for the opportunities that have come our way. Yesterday, we also celebrated our 20th month together by staying home and just cuddling up before the TV.

We raise our glass of iced Fit 'n Rite to whatever the rest of this year may bring :)

Belated Birthday Video (Warning: Less than Sober Annotation)

Robin can't sleep so she once again takes over. Myke and I have yet to develop the habit of immediately transferring image and video files from our respective phones to the laptop for uploading, hence the delay in sharing this year's Clawie birthday escapade. It was one of our quieter celebrations, and we'll just blame the occasional hiccups on tequila and the sudden bursts of laughter :)

After buying his gift (more on that later, eheh), I lead him to Sakae Sushi at the ground floor of SM North Edsa. I'd eaten at their branch at the Mall of Asia before and found the eat-all-you-can-sushi-on-conveyor-belt a fun test of wills between the diner and the restaurant management. One has to grab all the good tasty stuff before the chef starts churning out endless permutations of fried tokwa skin stuffed with rice balls.

It was Myke's first eat-all-you-can sushi experience and he was at first daunted when I plunked down six saucers of sushi from the get-go. He soon enjoyed munching on raw salmon, cream dory, tuna, and even squid. Before long, he was standing to take things from the conveyor belt himself, keeping an eye on each new offering even as he chewed.

The chef eventually caught on and after a blitzkrieg first half hour, the taro balls started to come out. Myke decided to wait it out another half hour before resigning himself to a final saucer of tamago sushi as his encore. At P399 per person, though, with free miso soup and unlimited hot or cold green tea, Sakae Sushi had a good deal going. We promised ourselves we'd go back... and park ourselves at a table as early as 5 or 6 o' clock in the evening, hehe.

Not having seen a movie together since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, we bought tickets to see Clash of the Titans. Having both grown up though remembering the 1981 movie starring Sir Laurence Olivier and LA Law's Harry Hamlin, we were sorely disappointed. Zeus in frikking armor??? Perseus not marrying Andromeda??? Black Pegasus????? Sacrilege.

I'm not even going into the absence of Hermes, the unnecessary liberties with the story, the everyone-has-to-have-a-moment storytelling...

Hayz. Just about the only highlight was seeing Mike "Boy Ipis" Ignacio and his girlfriend, Ailyn, as we were stepping out of the movie house. We often bump into the couple on the weekends we do our groceries. I swear we're each other's fans :p

Disgruntled and still way too chatty after the movie (well, I was :P), we decided to wind down at Agave at the Sky Garden. There was a nice acoustic band that night that seemed to be made up of kids who were fresh out of college. As soon as he heard them play, though, Clawie let his hair down and menaced them with his aura :p

I had my first strawberry margarita, didn't like it so much, then ordered my first pineapple margarita. First margaritas apparently make me a whole new level of chatty and Clawie spent the latter half of our stay convincing me why it would be unwise to order a third. When the band ended their set, we headed for home as well. In the cab, he had the smile of a young boy looking forward to trying out his new toy.

Which is what he did as soon as we got home. There were a few glitches with the installation though and I recorded the process in a 12-minute video. Those extra last two minutes however have made the video impossible to upload here or on YouTube so I'm afraid we'll never get to show you his Cookie Monster intro to How Not to Install a Wacom Bamboo.

Oh yeah, the Wacom Bamboo was my gift to him this year and in the vid below he happily gives his brand new pen and tablet a test drive. Fair warning: There is evidence of my two first margaritas in the quality of my videography.

Next year should prove to be even more fun. Among other things, I hear Agave offers bottomless margaritas :D

Wicked Cool Design Contest: VOTE FOR MY DESIGN #1

Wicked Cool Comics
Let The Voting Begin: Wicked Cool Design Contest (Link)
Please Vote for my design..

THANK YOU!

My design is #1
(this is it...)

Vote For Your Favorite BK Artist

Hey there, guys! Just want to have some fun and get the fans involved for selecting the next "Featured Artist" for Bayan Knights issue #5.

We picked at least 6 from our top artists and let you guys decide who should get the spot. The two artists who gets the most scores will be featured on an article written by one of our very own. Heheh...

Here are your choices...

* Aaron Felizmenio (Gwapoman 2000)
* Erico Calimlim (Pag-Asa)
* RH Quilantang (Manila Man)
* Gio Paredes (Kalayaan)
* Gener Pedriña (Sanduguan)
* Wan Mañanita (Ang Morion)

The poll can be found here "VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE BK ARTIST!"

And as they always say, remember to "vote wisely!" :)



*Artists have been selected for doing their best in releasing as much books as they can during our numerous conventions.

Superheroes from the 70's show Part 1

Isis or "The Secrets of Isis"

Starring:
Joanna Kara Cameron - sometimes listed as JoAnna Cameron, (born September 20, 1951)

My favorite of all the superhero T.V. series back in the 70's when I was just a kid. I like her alot (yep! better than Linda Carter). Well, I guess it's because of the time slot the show was being aired (around afternoon - while Wonder Woman was on the evening prime time), and she is very pretty. Anyway, I also did like the cartoon version of this "SUPER 7".

A little facts: Andrea Thomas (played by JoAnna Cameron), a high school science teacher who found an ancient mystical amulet on an archeological dig in Egypt. The amulet belonged to Hatshepsut, an ancient Egyptian Queen and it gave the wearer the powers of Isis. Andrea, by virtue of being able to open the casing in which the amulet rested, was recognized as an heir to Isis's secrets. Whenever Isis was needed, Andrea would reveal the amulet and recite an incantation ("O Mighty Isis!") and she would be transformed into the goddess Isis.

As Isis she was given great strength, the ability to move inanimate objects, and the power to fly and run at super speed. To invoke her powers, she often intoned rhythmic rhyming chants, such as "O zephyr winds which blow on high, lift me now so I can fly," which enabled her to fly.

The Secrets of Isis ran for two seasons from September 6, 1975 to September 3, 1977. Twenty-two episodes were produced and Isis also appeared in three episodes of the related Saturday morning super-hero drama Shazam!. Despite the show's popularity it was not renewed for a third season. The character of Isis later appeared in a cartoon called Tarzan and the Super 7 with the voice provided by a different actress.
**some facts from wikipedia**

ELECTRA WOMAN and Dyna Girl

Starring:
Deidre Hall
Judy Strangis

I only have some short memory of this TV series. I only remember is the tone of it's theme song. Kinda weird when I saw some episodes on Youtube. Anyway, some info: Sid and Marty Krofft show "Electra Woman and Dyna Girl" which originally aired on ABC television back in 1976-77.


In Fall, 2000 the WB network commissioned a pilot to be made of a new Electra Woman and Dyna Girl to be set in contemporary time. The plot was advertised as the once world-famous superheroine Electra Woman who, since the departure of Dyna Girl to become a supermodel, has become a disillusioned, foul-mouthed, trailer-park alcoholic. Judy Bennett, a journalism student rescued as a child by Electra Woman and Dyna Girl returns the favor by getting Electra Woman back in action and becoming her sidekick Dyna Girl.

The pilot starred Markie Post as Electra Woman and Anne Stedman as Dyna Girl.
The WB optioned not to pick up the pilot as a series for the 2001-02 season. As of now, there are no plans for any other netowrk to pick up the show.

Well...I leave you for awhile and will post next time part two of this article. Expect, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Hulk and The Man from Atlantis.

EARN FROM ADSENSE?

I AM NOT HAPPY!

As a customer and As a person who trusted a COMPANY to HELP me in small little ways, is now very frustrated.

I just got informed through email that I won't be receiving any payments from them (ADSENSE), because of "Generating Invalid Activity". I just want to know WHY and HOW did they come up with that conclusion?!

I asked friends from all of my social networking site to visit my blog and heavily promoted ADSENSE, and they responded very well. Some of my friends in the U.S. and locally said that the ads are very helpful and they'd come back (some, almost everyday) to check new ads that could be very helpful for them. Specially those in the arts community that I am very much active and which I earn greater amount of money than here. But like everything else that tied up to a big company, you have RESPECT for them and never thought that they'd gonna do this to you.

$100 is so small, YES, very small as an earning for almost 2 years. They can have the $100 and I don't mind. I don't care if I don't get it. They can have it. But I HOPE, they could just give me a specific, very precised report to what really had happened why I did get axed from their payment list.

If they gonna tell me that, because 3 to 5 people on my blog list frequently clicked my ads or in a day all of a sudden they'd all clicked to adsense from my blog, then that is ridiculous! Very ridiculous. I cannot tell them to click or not to click even if I don't have new entry here. Would that be a ground for me (or alot of users of ADSENSE) for them to conclude that I did commit "Generating Invalid Activity"?

So, aslong as I don't have any concrete and defined reason to How or WHY I got my AdSense Account Disabled, I will stick to my mind that "THEY JUST USED ME AS A FREE ADVERTISING ARM TO PROMOTE THEM AND OTHER PEOPLE".

How about you? Haven't you thought about that?


Ohh...SIDE NOTE:

If all of a sudden my blog (this blog), would suddenly disappears, you guys know why. Don't think I removed it.

Robin's postscript: This is a sad development after over a year of admittedly encouraging family and friends to visit our blog and check out the ads. But this be the way this cookie crumbles and we all just best move on.

Still, I can't help but think of how we started out with the Adsense program hoping it could help somehow in defraying the cost of our future wedding. Myke and I both have other means of employment and it's true that $100 dollars would have just been a drop in the bucket in the long run... but, for something this important, every drop counts :(

We're both the eldest children in our families and we both have considerable obligations to meet. We take all sorts of jobs on the side just to help things along, so yeah we're grateful for any reprieve that can come our way.

In any case, we've both learned from this and although we've lost our Google ads, we still have our widgets from Amazon Associates. Basically, if you go to www.amazon.com from our blog and place an order, then we get a wee bit back. They've got these adorable widgets too that let us share with you the items we like -- downloadable mp3s mostly :D and DVDs, plus comics but we still need to update our list, eheh.

If you've clicked on our ads, thank you so much. Myke and I have always appreciated your support.

And just so we can end this debacle on a positive note, we hope you can drop by tomorrow, 17 April 2010, at the U.P. Bahay ng Alumni in the U.P. Diliman Campus for the Summer Komikon Fiesta 2010 and the launch of Bayan Knights #4. Last year's first Summerkon was loads of fun and though the heat is likelier to be literally more intense this year, it's an event the true comics fan shouldn't miss. See you there!

(Photo is of Clawie and me at the last Summerkon ^_^ )