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Born in 1975, Damaso remembers that he had very early exposure to
Japanese animé and still has clear recollection of watching Voltes
V and Mazinger Z when the two animé shows first appeared on GMA
Channel 7 in 1978. “Hindi pa namin alam ang term na ‘animé’
noon, ang tawag lang namin sa Voltes V at Mazinger Z, mga cartoons
na Japanese [We don’t know the term ‘animé’ then, we just
branded Voltes V and Mazinger Z as Japanese cartoons],” he points
out. Another animé title that has become a favorite of Damaso was
Macross, then aired on RPN Channel 9. Just like other artistically
inclined kids, Damaso recalls filling the pages of his notebooks
with drawings while toiling through his elementary school years. He
eventually got weaned from animé but his interest in art lingered
on. In college, he pursued a degree in fine arts majoring in visual
communication at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.
Rekindled passion
It was during his college years when he became
thoroughly exposed to the culture of comic book
collecting—American comics specifically. He gathered these and
read voraciously The X-Men and Spiderman, which were staple
must-read for the comics aficionados of his days. “Halos maubos
ang allowance ko noon sa pagbili ng comics [I almost spent my entire
allowance then buying comics,]” Damaso recalls laughing. And then
it happened. Damaso’s love for the Japanese art, long lying
dormant inside him, was reawakened. “It all started when a friend
lent me an animé videotape,” he narrates. Now armed with more
mature sensibilities, Damaso sees the art of animé in a truly
different light.
The affinity to dark plots of the Japanese and
animé’s distinct aesthetics now appeal at another level to Damaso.
“I find animé’s artworks more visually appealing and its story
line more realistic as compared to those of Western comics,” he
explains. Among the titles that first made a strong impression on
Damaso during this period was Ghost in a Shell by Masamune Shirow.
His passion eventually leads him to manga, animé’s older twin.
Animé features are usually culled from a successful manga series.
‘Filipinized’ Manga
In 1999, Damaso with a few college buddies who
all shared a common interest in comics, decided to produce their own
manga comic book—the now defunct but legendary Culture Crash.
“We originally intended to name it Culture Shock but eventually,
we changed it to Culture Crash,” he reveals. Few Filipino Manga
buffs will argue that Culture Crash has set a very high standard in
the local manga comic scene at that time. When the comic book first
hit the newsstands, many collectors mistook it as an original
Japanese manga and only upon closer scrutiny did they learn that the
dialogues were in Pilipino. With its splendid art, witty story
lines, quality printing and high-grade paper stock, Culture Crash
has certainly developed a cult following among Filipino youth in its
five years of existence.
Damaso reminisces that the comic book was a
labor of love. “The production cycle usually starts with brain
storming where we plug in holes then the concept would be further
crystallized through thumbnails and rough sketches. The next steps
would involved penciling, inking and the adding of special effects
through the aid of a computer,” he explains. Though very popular
then, Culture Crash was not spared from the usual problem that
besieged the publishing business and that is the lack of advertising
revenue to sustain its operations. “You may not believe it,”
relates Damaso, “but it is the money from circulation and not from
advertising that kept us going through those years.”
Going global
The high level of draftsmanship Damaso developed
during his Culture Crash days eventually paid off, giving him the
confidence to slug it out internationally as a manga artist. Today,
Damaso is regularly illustrating manga titles for an international
company called Seven Seas based in Los Angeles, California.
“I’ve already done three titles for Seven Seas,” he discloses,
“the first was Unearthly, the second was Raven Skull, which made
it as a finalist in the latest International Manga Competition and
the third was Speed Racer. Damaso considers himself fortunate for
getting paid doing what he loves though he describes the work as
grueling. A common manga comic book is about 150 pages and the
illustrations alone take about six months to finish. When asked if
being a manga artist is a financially lucrative profession, Damaso
says that though the pay he receives from commissioned work from
international companies is good, freelance artists like him must
constantly deal with the problem of stretching one’s money until
the next project comes along. “This inconvenience, of course, was
eclipsed by the pleasure of working in the comfort of your own
home,” beams Damaso.
Learning path
Articulating on the education of a manga artist,
Damaso explains that though he took up fine arts in college, there
is strictly no course specifically designed for comic book
artists—at least in the Philippines. “You don’t need a degree
in fine arts to be a comic book artist,” he says, adding, “a
number of illustrators in this field learned their craft directly
from veteran industry practitioners.” Most aspiring artists who
chose this path hope that their mentors will be able to introduce
and connect them to key people in the business.
To those who yearn to become a manga superstars
someday, Damaso offers a practical and sobering advice: “Draw as
much as you can.” He also stresses that regardless of the
artist’s medium of choice, whether using traditional pencil and
pen or computers, it is wise to know and understand the rules first
before breaking them. “Learn to draw realistically in the
beginning, drawing stylized manga art is easy if you already know
how to draw the human anatomy backward and forward,” Damaso
admonishes.
Damaso is both happy and proud that he, a
Filipino, excelled in an art that is distinctly Japanese. Commenting
on how manga influenced the visual vocabulary of the artists of his
generation, he says, “Iba-ibang exposure ’yan, ’yung naunang
henerasyon sa amin ng mga comic book artists exposed sa Western
comics kaya ’yun ang naging style nila, kami naman exposed sa animé
at manga [It boils down to differences in exposure. The earlier
generation of comic book artists were exposed to Western comics
hence, it influenced their style, while our batch was more exposed
to anime and manga].”
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