The deal is sealed

After a very minor modification of the contract. The deal was sealed and signed just today. If you have no clue on what I am talking about. You should first check my previous blog post HERE.

When I was just starting Kalayaan comics a few years ago. It was solely intended for local distribution only. Never in my wildest imagination that my comics would go international. I am just freaking out right now.

Let me just first introduce you to the company behind it all.

Their name is Forex DKM (Dahil Kailangang Makarating). It is an all Filipino owned company. They are a door to door delivery service that also have a small publishing company in the US. They have a newspaper called Pinoy Herald. They handle money delivery and other stuff that could fit in their box. Just like the balik bayan box of Pidro. :-)

The deal is that they will re-print issue #1 to #8 and any succeding issues of Kalayaan comics that I would make. They are actually going to give it away for FREE to their customers/clients/patrons that will use their services. They will just put a 4 pages advertisement insert in my comics. Other than that, the whole essence of my comics will be completely intact. They will not earn money from my comics because the ads that they will put is an advertisement of their own company. They could (in theory) earn money if they could find another company to advertise on my comics (which is actually included in the contract by the way, which is totally fine with me). But for the time being, my comics is just strictly for advertisement for them and not for profit.

I will be paid in royalty based of the number of copies that they will print. The more copies they print, the happier I am :D. In the contract, it is stated that Forex shall render and submit a report with regards to the number of copies printed or reproduced to me.

I also like the contract that they made for me. It has an additional protection for me and my character. Because for example, if another person or company abroad would use my character for merchandise purposes... let say t-shirt or mug ..etc. Forex company and their lawyers would come after those jerks.

The launch date of Kalayaan comics is set on March 9,2010. But before that, there will be a press release on their news paper Pinoy Herald. With a picture of me signing the contract together with the big bosses. Can you imagine that? And there will be lots of promotional posters displayed on their branch offices abroad. Aside from the many states in the US, they also have branches in Guam, Japan and Australia. I am still waiting for their secretary to send me a complete list. I will post it here once I got it.

They have choosen my comics because it has a very distict Filipino look (Pinoy na pinoy daw ang dating. Which brings me in mind of some detractors that are saying not so good things about flag based Superhero). Having a very distict Filipino Superhero look would be very ideal for the Fillipino community that are living abroad. Since my comics would be given away for free to Forex customers, which majority are Filipinos sending money and other stuff. There were no need to translate my comics to English.

Another reason that they have choosen my comics is because of it's continuity. I have already 8 issues published and still continues to publish more. They have said to me that they could not just afford to wait for the other artist to come up with the materials.

The only thing that a little bit concerns me right now is the frequency of the issues. Starting from March, Kalayaan comics would be released every two(2) moths or 6 issues a year. While it is not strictly written in the contract that I must produce a comics every two months. I just really to not want to let them down. And I also think that 2 months is a compromise frequency issues, because I do now want for the readers to wait four months or longer to read another issue.

Forex would be my publisher and distributor abroad(or outside the Philippines). I will still be the one publishing, distributing and selling Kalayaan comics locally. That is one thing that I have clarified to them very much since I am also in a process right now of talking to a book store in the Philippines that has a nationwide distribution.

The good news, is that I still have one(1) year and four(4) months head start. So after a few months of resting, I have my work cut out for me now. So I better stop writing this long blog post and start drawing now. :D

A sad day for Kevin

Kevin Yue is my favorite contestant from day one. I am so sad for him because he was recently voted out of The Biggest Loser Asia. And I am also very angry at the former blue team. Specially to David because of his arrogant remarks during the elimination table. Carlo is right when he said to David that he will vote a fellow blue team eventually.

All of the former blue team just DO NOT HAVE ANY HEART.

Just by looking at all of the contestant, it is very obvious that Kevin is the one that really needs to be there because he has so much more body fat to loose. He simply needed more to be there compared to Martha.

Carlo Miguel is the last Filipino and the last former Red Team in the game. I really hope the he wins this all the way. Just like Kevin had said to Carlo "Bring hope the bacon".

Commercial nga naman

Kung ano ano ang ang naiisip ng mga company para lang makagawa ng commerial.

My Joyce

My daughter Joyce Nicole just gave me this valentines card. She always does this when ever there is an occasion such as birthday,fathers day ..etc. That is why I love her very much.

Kalayaan goes to Summer Komikon

Kalayaan will be going to this years Summer Komikon in UP Bahay ng Alumni, UP Diliman Quezon City this April 17. I hope to see you all there.

Kalayaan site update

I just recently updated the Kalayaan Comics Official Website . I just uploaded a total of 65 Kalayaan Fanart. And I am not finished yet. I still have a lot more fan art to upload. But for now, please do check it out. And thank you very much to all that have created these fan art of my character. I very much appreciate it. :-)

Thanks also to Myke Guisinga for designing this site on the first place.

Gilas Bro.

GBS are a bunch of young comic book artists / comic book creators joined together that offers quality artworks at a very affordable price. Click here to view the gallery of Gilas Bros.

What we offer:

Comic Book Pencilling
Comic Book Inking
Digital Coloring
Digital Lettering
Character Designs
Character Pin-ups
Logo Creation
Storyboards
Web Designing
and the list goes on and on.

For inquiries, please contact Omi Remalante at omiremalante@gmail.com

Indie Animation

Being a Maskarado fan. I was very surprised when a friend of mine pointed me to this video which I have no idea that existed. This was done in Photoshop and edited in iMovie. Original post - > CLICK HERE.

Gener Perdina also did some motion comics with his Sandugo team. I really wish I have something similar like this with Kalayaan.

Chuck VS. Manny V.

(click image to enlarge)

Mock Election

I really commend the commission on election for having a mock election today on some parts of the metro manila. There were a lot of hiccups during the process today which is very much expected on any transition. Being a computer programmer, I had a lot of experiences about this. Most of my clients on my younger days as a programmer had to have a transition from manual (Inventory,accounting or payroll... etc.) to computerized. And those transition took many months, some others even years. So when the comelect have announced that the next election would be computerized. I was very thrilled and a little sceptical. But I know that this is the way to go. There is no turning back from technology. I am sick and tired of manual counting that took months to find out who would be the next president. And during those months of manual counting. Most of us know that there is a 'dag-dag bawas' being done.

But having a computerized election would also present many problems. And one of them is trying to familiar the majority of the people who are mostly computer illiterate to use a computerized automated voting system. So I am very much happy that today, they have conducted a mock election. I hope that everybody would learn from today's experiences and try to correct those mistakes when the time comes to do the real thing.

I also hope that there would be another mock election on a much wider scale before the May election. And I hope that they would announce it so that more people would be familiar with the system. For this is very crucial to eliminate more of the mistakes.

Oh Yeah

I was pretty optimistic on this coming year. But even I was surprised about what recently happened.

I just came from a lunch meeting with the top people behind a big company that is willing to republish my comics abroad. Yup, you heard it right (or read it right), ABROAD. As in outside the Philippines. They said that they will be starting at the east coast of America first and later on to other places. This company first took notice of my comics more than a year ago when two of the board member approached me during the U.P. Komikon 2008 (I think). After a few months from there, we had our first meeting in quezon city that went okay. But after that, I never heard from them again. Until yesterday. The secretary of the CEO told me that the big boss himself wants to talk to me personally while he is still in the country.

Before going to our lunch meeting, I already had a deal in my head. I wanted a royalty type deal. For each copy that will be printed. I will have a small share. And I also wanted to have a copy of a certified circulation report, those are the exact number of copies that will be printed. And of course, I wanted a control of what is the final printout of the comics. Since I know that they will be inserting an advertisement on it. Which is very typical.

I was so glad that all of these are very much acceptable to the chairman (which I may add a very cool dude for an old guy. :D). It is almost a done deal when he reach out his hand and shook it while saying "Can we have a deal on that?". I of course took his hand and said "Yes sir". With a big smile on my face.

They told me that hopefully next week, their lawyer would be finished with the contract for me to sign with all of my conditions listed for my protection. And it also happens that they own a local newspaper (Pinoy Herald) in the east coast that has been circulating for quite some time now. And they wanted me to be featured on that newspaper. The cool CEO even told me to send my best picture to them.

This is a HUGE opportunity for me. Not only that this will be an extra income for me and my family. It is also a big exposure for me and my comics, since it will be printed in thousands of copies and would be distributed to thousands of new readers abroad without me spending a single centavo. That is a hard deal to beat. :-)

All in all, I just want this project to push through. Just like any deal. Anything could turn out bad. That is why I always expect the worst, but always hope for the best. So, from this moment on. I am keeping my fingers crossed. :-)

Karate Hand

Kalayaan: Black Lantern

What if Kalayaan became a member of the Black Lantern?

This would be very much plausible if he would live in DC Universe, since (technically) he died in the last page of issue #4 and later on revived in issue #5. This would make him very susceptible to the black lantern/ring.

Biggest Loser Asia

Carlo Miguel
Christine White
Kevin Yue

Only these three member remains in the red team of the Biggest Loser Asia, and they are all FILIPINOS. They are going against the formidable six member blue team., which has been on a winning streak with the challenges and weigh in. The red team really has their work cut out for them. They must prove to the world that Filipinos are very resilient people.

I have been following this show since the beginning. But the last episode was just to hard for me . The Red Team almost won the weigh in if not for the colossal 10 Kilo weight loss of Tony of the blue team. It was heart breaking because all of the red team have worked their ass off. They have lost 4 Kilo each of them.

But never quit red team. I will be rooting for you. Go Pinoy. Kick those blue team asses.