Finding Pedro

Figuring out the illustration style and over-all look of Pedrong Walang Takot took me a lot longer than I had anticipated. Part of it was because I wanted to do something different from what I did in my first book, but much of it was due to the extra pressure I put on myself to get things right. It was, after all, a Lola Basyang title, which meant (in my mind, at least) that my work had to live up not only to the previous books in the successful Anvil series, but also to the 85-year legacy of the Lola Basyang "brand". As such, I really thought about every idea I came up with, carefully considering how it suited the story and, more importantly, how well I felt I would be able to execute it.

One rejected idea that I am still quite attached to is doing the illustrations in a classic Pinoy komiks style. I felt that it would not only suit a story that had horror and action elements, but also be a nice throwback to the days when some of the Lola Basyang stories were serialized in Tagalog comic books. I planned to render the figures in a fairly realistic manner and outline them in ink, then color them digitally, approximating the look of printed materials from the 1950's (including halftone patterns and a few printing errors). Unfortunately, I was not sure if my broken computer could be repaired in time, so I had to let go of the idea. (I got to use it eventually, to some degree, for the artworks I did for Entablado's production of the play R.I.P., which was written by Severino Reyes--the same person behind the Lola Basyang stories.)

this illustration for Entablado's R.I.P. was done in a komiks style similar to what I had in mind for Pedro

Although I let go of the komiks style, I still wanted to do draw the figures realistically (at least as realistically as I could manage) as I felt it would provide a nice contrast to the absurdity of the story. I was not, however, entirely confident that I could pull this off just by drawing from imagination, so I needed photo references. I actually wanted to cast people as the different characters and have them act out the scenes, but of course that would have taken too much time and effort. Fortunately, I had amassed quite a collection of photographs from the productions I was part of in college. These came in handy when I was doing my early studies for the book, particularly in the character design for Pedro.

The person I had the most photographs of happened to be James Jumalon. He starred in several productions I was part of, and we also did a few photoshoots for various personal school projects. As such, I pretty much had photos of him with all the poses and facial expressions I could ever need, which made him the most convenient choice to be the reference for Pedro. And though I did not plan to directly copy an actual person's face for any of the characters, the fact that James came pretty close to looking like the Pedro I had envisioned sealed the deal.

photos of James Jumalon on one of the reference sheets I used for my early studies

an early study for Pedro, directly inspired by the bottom left photo in the image above

With a suitable peg for Pedro, as well as research materials on the period I chose to set the story in (Philippines, late 1800's to early 1900's--though I was not strict about depicting it exactly), I began making more studies for the characters and certain scenes in the story. At the back of my mind, however, I still felt a bit unsure about the direction I was going.

an early study for one of the scenes in the story

A friend of mine confirmed my fears. Since I knew she was artistically-inclined and also had some illustration experience, I showed her my studies and asked her for feedback when we met for lunch one day. She said that what I had so far may not be interesting enough, visually, especially for a children's book. She went on to suggest that maybe I should try a more stylized look.

So I went home and made lots and lots of sketches, this time trying to exaggerate the characters' features. I ended up liking the new, slightly stylized look I was able to come up with, since I felt that the exaggerated features would also aid in injecting a bit of humor to the illustrations which, in turn, would slightly offset the scarier elements in the story. Since I was, by then, also running out of time, I decided to just push forward with this style.

some of the sketches I did when I was trying out a more stylized look

Although I still used a lot of photo references, particularly to get certain hand poses right, I avoided using any more photo references for the characters' faces so I would not be limited when doing their facial expressions. Over the course of doing the preliminary sketches and cleaning up the line art, however, the slightly stylized, exaggerated look I started with somehow slid back into something closer to realism. As such, some of the illustrations ended up awkwardly between realistic and stylized, which I was not too happy about. I was pretty happy with most of my coloring work though, despite the fact that the style I used ended up resembling the one I used for my previous book. I hope the coloring on the finished artworks (some of which can be found here) makes up for the awkwardness of some of the drawings. (And in case anyone is wondering how I managed to color the illustrations that way, my computer did get repaired in time.)

I still needed something special for the cover though, and I found the inspiration for it in our college yearbook, of all places. I am not sure about the details, but from what I understood, my high school classmate, Jason Latorre, got an A for something (a paper?) in a class under the dean of the School of Management and decided to immortalize it in his yearbook creative photo (with the actual dean posing beside him). I felt that Jason's photo would be a good starting point for capturing the smug and slightly mischievous expression of a character who would simply shrug off (or perhaps even laugh at) encounters with reanimated corpses, gruesome ghosts and even Satan himself (whom I subtly included in the background).

Jason's yearbook photo and the cover art it inspired

It took a lot of hard work--and more time than the publisher initially gave me--to finish all the artwork for the 32-page book (plus the cover and bookmark). And then it took even longer (more than a year) before the book (along with the other four from the new batch of Lola Basyang books) got published. The hard work and long wait, however, paid off in more ways than I could have ever imagined. Having my first ever book sigining session at the Manila International Book Fair, seeing my work on the shelves of National Bookstore branches, and witnessing a little boy asking his father to buy Pedrong Walang Takot for him were among the highlights of the previous year (probably even my entire life).

I will truly be forever be grateful that Pedro and I found each other.