Miracle Animation Studios Inc.

Last August 21, Gilbert “Geebo” Vigonte our comic artist for the United Crop Circle Warriors (UCCW) e-comics emailed me asking for five sequential pages (nothing more, nothing less) of our e-comics to be shown as sample pages for this year’s Marvel Artist Hunt happening at the APCC, as it was his dream of being part of Marvel’s great comic artists.

At first, I didn’t recall what the APCC was and Geebo did not write when and where was it going to be held. So I searched the Internet and recalled that it was the AsiaPop Comicon that was held at the World Trade Center (WTC) in Manila since 2015 and for this year it will be held on August 25 – 27, 2017 at the same venue.

Later on, I emailed him if it was colored pages, he replied its all in black and white; with no colors and dialogues. Mr. C.B. Cebulski, the talent scout for Marvel and Vice President for Brand Management and Development for Asia will do the selection. Mr. Cebulski must be able to tell what is happening on the pages through the artist’s work without the dialogues. And it must be in black and white to determine if the shadings and stages are correct and appropriate for the tone of the scene. I naturally gave him the permission and wished him good luck but I did not ask which of the five sequential pages he will submit. But I did ask Geebo to send me pictures of him and Mr. Cebulski at the event which he promised.

Later on, I emailed Geebo several times as there were many details I would like to know before and after the selection event. He wrote that there were more than 150 hopefuls who passed their artwork before the said event. The deadline was on Wednesday (August 23) and the APCC was held on Friday. He was called Saturday in the afternoon and was asked to come on Sunday at 3:45 pm. He surmised that Mr. Cebulski reviewed the artworks on his arrival on Thursday before the final selection of which Geebo was one of the 10 candidates whose portfolios will still be reviewed in New York. The candidates chosen whose style ranges from Disney to animé where from indie comics for the international market. Geebo said they still have a lot of things to do before they get to pencil at Marvel. They will run test sequential like scripts from an editor of a title (X-men, Avengers, Daredevil, etc.) Doing layouts for the script and cover art for their comics. It really depends on the editors if they like his work.

Unfortunately, Geebo and his friends were not able to take some pictures of Mr. Cebulski as he was very busy at the three-day event. The interview was around 15 to 30 minutes, and Geebo was so nervous that he forgot he needed to pee at that moment!   Geebo asked Mr. Cebulski about the pages we’ve done and he said he was really impressed. There were only a few revisions that he pointed out – more on the background and panel breaking, but generally, he liked our pages very much.  Mr. Cebulski already knows what’s going on just by looking at the pages. He asked to send for other pages, but Geebo said he will ask permission from me again – which he never did anymore. Geebo was very thankful for letting him use the pages, if it wasn’t for those pages, he would never have been called. He promised to make the remaining pages on the UCCW 3 more striking.

Even without the pictures, as the publisher and co-creator of the UCCW, I am very proud and happy to have received good comments from a Marvel big boss at least about our comic drawing quality. I am also very happy that we’re helping a young man like Geebo to strive to be better to reach his goals in life.  It is rare that we receive good comments for our work; positive comments from international industry authorities serve as an impetus and inspiration to help us do better since it indicates that our work has some future or potential. The other time a good comment was given was from a DC/Warner animation producer with a 5 time Emmy under his belt for our animation in 2011 (read the blog: Seminars and Lessons Applied). He gave 3 comments on our animation; 2 of the comments were spot on ( “That’s something new.”, “There’s a formula for that.”) and the 3rd one I have not written it yet – maybe sometime in the future. 

In contrast, years ago some local keyboard bashers would give comments such as WTF (very disrespectful; what did we do to him to deserve such comment?) for our animation introduction at Youtube ; another would write panget (ugly) and another one – just another animé wannabe like Disney’s Totally Spies in our website which we did not post any more. Well, I guess the keyboard bashers don’t really understand what we’re doing, much less how hard it is to produce an original animation series, game, short video or comics. If they would do their own original stuff, they will realize that most probably they can’t do any better work – I mean the whole thing and not just a single drawing for their own idea of a comic, game, short video or animation. I’m 100% sure they are all just talk, with no products to show now and in the future. One can hardly see any original animation content in the Philippines, and if one tries to do one, it will be bashed by local keyboard critics mercilessly. 

 Geebo had his own share of keyboard bashers, that he had to lash out at those anonymous bashers on his Facebook page last year or sometime this year. I’m glad Geebo took a chance on us because we have a smaller budget compared to the more established publishers in the market. Other artists had no time to do the job or the pay was too small for them – I’m just wondering whatever happened to them. What is evident is that Geebo keeps on trying to improve his craft and the same with us, we try to improve our concept, stories, etc. as we go on doing new stuff.