Cover image colors by David Garcia
1. What initially drew you to comics?
The comics in the mid-80s and early 90s in Spain were a bomb for us. I suppose that all this amount of stories so fantastically told and with such spectacular art,
fascinated me and since I was good at drawing since I was little, I never hesitated to make comics. In elementary school, I had a group of slightly nerdy friends who were very motivated by comics and animated TV series, both American and Japanese (always in parallel with the cinema, of course).
With this group we made our own comics of ourselves but with powers, like superheroes in our school threatened by beings from outer space! I mean with this, that I not only liked to draw, I wanted to tell stories and we quickly saw that the comics allowed us to do so. In adolescence, I convinced my parents to go to a comics school, and there I began to study it more thoroughly. There I began to absorb more comics of all times, European American... The comic was also and is for me a channel to meet fantastic creative people and to experiment with the medium, just because of how plastic it is.
2. Please tell us about your creative process. My work process has been evolving with the entrance of the digital age. At first, he did everything with the classic tools: pencil, light table, ink, pen, brush, adhesive tape...and with comics, books or photos for documentation. Now with new technologies everything is easier, faster! I use a digital tablet, I do the pencil in photoshop with large doses of photographic references mixed with the official documentation about the book and my imagination. Once I have the digital pencil done, I have two options; or I also do the ink digitally, which is in Clip Studio (it has many more tools related to ink), or I print the pencil on a generous grammage paper and pass it to traditional inks, with Chinese ink, Brush, Pentel , calibrated etc... Regarding the planning of the book. I read the entire script, I think which pages will be the interesting ones to contribute something new, something different and I make the layouts. Once approved, I pass them to the inks. I have had the opportunity to work with color in my latest book. It is a very satisfying job but it has a lot of nuances and possibilities that makes you have to have things clear to move forward. 3. Please tell us more about your work on Transformers, Elvira meets Vincent Price, and any other titles you'd like to share about. Good! My last job has been with Dark Horse, Star Wars Tales From Rancor Pitt. This is my second book with Cavan Scott and my first book with this publisher. Cavan is a great writer. Working with him is really easy, evocative and pleasant. It is a book designed to launch on Halloween (November, not published yet) that is made up of several stories, as you can imagine! ^^ where several artists participate for each of them.
I'm super happy because I'm a big fan of Star Wars! and I have given my best to represent the characters, the environments and the necessary atmosphere.
Transformers Back to the Future; this was my first title with Cavan Scott. There I discovered how well he works! It was really easy for me to plan the story because Cavan did everything with rhythm, action, drama, cliffhangers and constant surprises! It was like an 80's movie! We get comics in space-time where timelines are frankly overlapping!
^^ The graphic part was somewhat laborious. The hardest of my career, I would say! Here I was also presented with new challenges, such as designing characters that did not exist, such as Skilz or El Vigia (The Clock Tower). Drawing the unpublished Gigawatt was also very fun, along with all the rest of the protagonists... the Autobots,
the Decepticons, Marty, Doc and their friends! ^^
Elvira meets Vincent Price with Dynamite, it was amazing...^^ Making this comic for me was a charm. I love Elvira! I'm from the 80's, you know? ^^ David Avallone is fantastic. He has a very neat, eloquent way of writing. What I like most about David is how he plays with metatext, self-awareness and the fourth wall. All this was a new professional challenge and a fantastic learning experience for me. He surprised me with a story where these two horror stars go on a world tour as two paranormal investigators but with Vincent being a ghost! When reading the script, you first have to imagine what you are going to draw, then you crack up!! The situations were the most adorably silly and that made me like him more and more. It was great to find documentation of everything David asked me! Like inhospitable places, cities, similar to silent film artists or paying homage to others. My goal was to get closer to the similarities of Elvira and Vincent, get the acting right (very difficult coming from these two figures), make good compositions and enjoy.
4. Where can we find more information about your work? You can find my works on my website juansamu.com , Instagram @juansamuart , twitter.com/Juansamuart and facebook.com/juansamu And my next title will be published in November with Dark Horse: Tales from the Rancor Pitt (But I'm sure I'll do something sooner!