We are a Mexican publishing house and creative studio founded in 1994 by Will Eisner Award winner, Oscar Gonzalez Loyo, along with his wife, Susana Romero, and his father, Oscar Gonzalez Guerrero. We're specialized in family and children-oriented comic books, contents, publicity mascots, storyboards, motion comics, graphic design, animation, scripts and edutainment products for both digital and printed platforms.

Our career includes collaborations and titles with companies such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Bongo Comics-The Simpsons, Televisa-Sesame Street, Warner Bros-Looney Tunes, Blue Demon Jr., Right Stuff Inc.-Astroboy, Bubble Gummers, Coqueta & Audaz, Disney Mexico, among many others.

Friday, December 08, 2006

MARIANA MORENO: K! 'S YOUNGEST ARTIST



Hi, now it's my turn to post in this blog, finally! ha ha!
Well, first of all, my name is Mariana Moreno and I'm the most recent member of Ka-Boom! Studio. I've been here for only three years, but I'm seriously planning to stay here for a long time, as long as it takes to reactivate the comic industry here in Mexico.



The first convention I ever participated in as an artist was UTOPIA, where I met great personalities such as Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai, Dave Thorn, Carlos Meglia, François Boucq, Tony Bancroft, Mike Kunkel, Phil Yeh, Philip Victor, amongst others. It was a wonderful experience, of which I’ll tell you in other occasion.



Though I'm very young and inexperienced, I've already worked professionally for some important companies here in our country.
My first official project was the redesigning of the characters of an important shoe-making Mexican company named "Coqueta y Audaz". As Oscar already told you in the previous posts, the artists here at Ka-boom! participate in one small internal contest so the client can choose the character design he likes the most. In that occasion, my designs were chosen, so I had to do all of the layouts and model sheets. It was a little difficult for me since it was the first time I ever did model sheets, but it was fun to learn while doing it.



Now, the characters' animation appears on TV at Cartoon Network and other channels of the Mexican TV programming.

Months later, Alex's designs were chosen for the redesign of the Bubble Gummers' characters. As we didn't have much time, Alex and I teamed up to do the first comic. While I penciled it, he inked it, and later, Tonatiuh did the colored it. Susy was in charge of the script. The difficulty of this project was the fact that I had to imitate Alex's style perfectly. That's why Ka-Boom's artists are very versatile; we can draw from a serious style to a cartoon one.



I've also been doing some illustrations for Reader's Digest's Spanish language edition, "Selecciones". I've enjoyed this work because it has given me the opportunity to draw celebrities and famous people in my own style.



I also do some color work of my own. For this year’s College Football season of the “ONEFA” league here in Mexico, Alex drew some comic pages for the sports newspaper, “Esto”, so I had to color them. Though it was sepia colored, it contained lots of light-shadow work.


Then, Alex and I worked on the second number of the Bubble Gummers’ Comic. This time it was not so difficult for me since I had already memorized Alex’s style.



Two weeks ago, I just finished the last comic I’ve done until now. It was a Social comic that the Mexican Government asked us to do. It will be used to teach family values to people with scarce resources.


Right now I’m working on some small animated features for a family farm’s website. These few days I’ve been absolutely happy because animation has always been my life’s dream. I’ve been willing to animate since I was four years old, so this first artworks mean a lot to me.



I am also accomplishing some other internal projects such as Rebeca Soriano’s fantasy comic “El Canto del Dragon” (The Dragon’s Chant), Susy’s comic adaptation for Oscar Wilde’s “The Nightingale and The Rose”, amongst other projects besides of my own, “Phylo y Sofía” (Phylo and Sophie).



It’s been all thanks to Ka-Boom!, its members and my family. It’s an honor for me to work along side with such talented and experienced people such as the Ka-Boomers.



Thank you all for giving me this great opportunity, and I hope we can share lots of experiences with our international friends.

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