COPTHOR

Ok lets talk about this project.

sooo… it start 3-4 years ago, i decide to go back to studying after a year of working, and my main goal was/is to be a good painter and a better designer.

I knew early on that i want to make a project and develop a portfolio to apply for jobs… so i ask the gods to tell me what i should do because i was in blank and then a comic book fall down on the marvel comics shelf and said ok, hope thats a sign, and bought it.
i open the mysterious comic bag and jane’s foster thor comic was inside.
I hate it, the story was really bad and remember ones iain McCaig saying that you should take a bad story and make it good. so i start with that.

so i call craig mullins and ask him if he could teach me how to paint like him, told him about my portfolio plan, and start developing the story. at that time i was also taking courses and one of the exercises was to make a girl on her bike. i ask if i could instead make my portfolio plan and the teacher (joon ahn) told me no... maybe she can become thor at some point but for now is gonna be just a girl on a bike. so i did.

I will make some tutorials in a future and show how mullins thinks and see painting, wish i think is the best way of approaching painting. people seem to like it, but specially you (the painter) enjoy it and if you like what you do you can push yourself without any effort.

I set myself 3 months to learn how to paint like craig (lol) and finish my story/portfolio. in the beginning the story was short, a cop from the future that goes agains bad guys (pirates), loses her arm, gets a new arm and fights again, and becomes worth it. my main character was selena gomez, because some of my teachers dont like to use very well known faces, and to me selena gomez looks completely not like a hero. but it has the exact same problem than the comic, she is just worth it, doesn’t make any effort, doesn’t fail just loses her arm, and i have been failing so much i want her to fail like me. I start getting some freelance jobs on the side and that was around 1/3 of the income i was making working but enough to live. so this project become my main job for the next few years. also covid started and i left l.a. and went back to live with my parents.

why am i telling you about me? cos thats her story… i just use metaphors to tell the story. but all her failures are my failures… soooo she fails a lot. my frustration with art/design/paint is her frustration on not been able to be a special forces cop and at some point she just enjoys been a regular cop and accepts her road.

Sometimes a painting takes me 3 months, sometimes 2 days, just using a round brush was super hard but is a great method to really think before you paint. and start to see mistakes on my older work so i just restart it.

The first year i was just focusing on learning how to paint, color theory (Mullins style), perspective, understating the camara views, exploring and mainly failing.

After the first year the story begin to grow alote, the main bad guy got a back story, i took reference from real life and books i have read like the illiad and how hector fights aquiles. felt the frustration of homer on telling his story and felt related to him. so i call her hectoria, that sound dumb and change it to victoria (also was a great name cos vic-thor-ia).

i needed to tell the story of hector vs aquiles also so the ending make sense and the taco guy named hector appierd. when i read again the book, i saw a detail on the story that no one have seen, hollywood usually don’t look for that cos they just focus on the “hero’s journey” and there was a perfect transition from cop to thor. the second year i was getting more comfortable with painting and writing so i try to tell the full story and end up been around 400 pages, and decide to make comic.

I finish the 8 chapters as sketches and start painting, found out that it will take me 40 years to finish to the lvl i want to finish… every time i fail like this the story gets bigger and she fails again. 9 chapters now…

Mullins told me to make it shorter and animate some frames, alberto mielgo did that and that help him paint better. sooo i decide to do that and learn how to animate. start reading books about animation, took a screenwriting course on art center, a virtual production course on gnomon and found out that u need to have reference for animating sooooo i ask a friend to help me record it as a test. here i discoverer that it can be a movie or tv show.

now the bad guys got more complex, they start to become really bad guys, not hollywood/disney bad, they start to sacrifice people tryn to awake the old gods. they are a mix now of samurais and pirates from the future that make aztec style sacrifices and their leader a giant alien/human 30ft tall that feeds from humans.

That same year i did enough money in crypto coins and stock market to be able to just focus on this proejct so i got a camara, finish a rough full script and plan out a 4 min trailer. that will require me to make around 40 animated paintings (maybe one year of work, thats like 1/3 of a comic chapter wish i have around 12 now….) and with that have material to pitch the project.

project got delay, producing a trailer got too difficult without enough money or direction credit. actors are way to hard to find for free or almost no money and if they agree, usually they cancel last minute… and a mocap suit was just too much money for my budget.
i will do a nft collection of 10k characters to be able to continue. but i will continue for sure.

Here are some examples of the frames.