I’m wondering if the person who asked for this Arzach commission isn’t American, and if that’s the case, how different the dynamic of “only handling commissions I deliver in person” to “I’m open to mail orders” is. I almost never go to festivals and conventions in France (much to my regret, and I plan on changing that), so most of the requests from French (or, in a broader sense, European) fans about commissions used to be impossible to fulfill before I started to consider the mail order option, and now, besides the fact that people from all over the World can ask for a commission, the taste of these fans is very different from the usual American collector, so now I have the chance to try my hand at characters from all over the World.
I was never asked to draw Asterix or Obelix. Maybe that will happen one day.
I was never asked to draw Kaneda, Tetsuo or Akira.
Someone said online (and I don’t remember who it was) that Japanese readers have different collecting habits, or a different relationship with original art, and I’m curious if I’ll ever receive a request from a Japanese collector, and what it will be about. I suspect I’ll have to do a lot of research, because for every manga I’ve read, there are hundreds that I have not.
The request on this commission was only to draw the Mandalorian, but I snuck a little Grogu in the shadows to make for a more interesting composition (and maybe it wasn’t the only thing in the drawing I added to make it more interesting for me).
One day, when I have time to go through the mess of my studio files, I’ll find and scan the first test pages Bá and I did for Diana Schutz. At the time, see edited a Star Wars anthology at Dark Horse, and it was the only book she edited where there was a demand for artists with a decent page rate (most of her projects where creator-owned books where the writer and the artist are the same person)
I got a little carried away with this Daytripper commission, but then again, it is Daytripper, you know? It’s Brás and Ana, and it was during Carnaval and I was feeling especially romantic. That park with the bench that appears on the first chapter of Daytripper, which was also on the first preparatory pitch images (the ones which appear at the end of the book) is a real place near my studio, and I walk past it every week on my way to my swimming sessions, so I took new pictures of the trees to make this new image and then compare it to the old drawing from 15 years (!!!) ago.
Like I said in a previous letter, I’m doing all these new commissions because I’m traveling to a convention at the end of the month. I’m going to Galaxy Con Richmond and, besides visiting the Edgar Allan Poe museum, I’ll be at the convention delivering all these drawings, and probably doing a few more while I’m there. I’ll have a table, and I’ll have some prints, and I’ll probably have a few comics (some where I drew inside, some where I only did a variant cover), so stop by if you’re at the con and we can chat a little about how awesome comics are.
Since Brazil is SO FAR AWAY from all these places I travel to, this time I’m extending my trip a little in order to catch up with more of my friends. In doing so, I realized there was another convention the following weekend, where more of my friends would be, so I decided to go there as well. You know what that means?
I’m going to C2E2!
I won’t have a table at Artist’s Alley over there ( I might hang around some tables a lot, so I’ll be easy to find), but I’ll have a panel on Saturday instead. I’ll tell you more about it next week.
It will be my first time in Chicago. What should I do? Where should I go? What will I see?
Who will I meet?
Be safe. Be kind. Be curious.
Pa-ZOW!
Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
March 13th, 2023
That Daytripper commission is incredible