A little about myself

My real name is Jessica M. Vázquez, a 20-year-old Puerto Rican with many aspirations in life. Too many to count. Maybe she dreams too much. Hm... In fact, she does dream too much...

My manga experiences

Ahem... Back to first person! I love Japanese manga since I turned 11 or 12. I watch anime even before knowing the meaning of the word 'anime'. And I draw since I learned to hold a pencil... wrong, by the way. Because, believe me or not, I never learned to hold the pencil like the rest of the people do. I am left handed, and my teacher had issues teaching left handed kids how to hold a pencil. I never got it right, and well... I stayed that way. But that has not affected me at all, or so I think. I draw and write like everyone else, and even won a prize for best cursive calligraphy in second grade!

Comics in my life

My interest for comics started when... Well, I am not sure. I just love comics, especially those with great stories and super awesome characters! Character development is my favorite part. Every character I draw needs a story. And for some reason, I started drawing all my characters with sad eyes. Maybe that is how I felt... maybe for too long. But that is a story of its own. Now I try to vary and draw each character differently; depending on their personality and appearance, of course. I think I am improving. Slowly, but I am.

My page-making process

I got a BambooFun tablet from WACOM by the last months of 2007. It's not the best one, but I suppose it's enough for now. I couldn't afford more. So my tools are: the tablet and its pen, Adobe Photoshop 7 or The GIMP (depends on the task), Easy Paint Tool SAI, Inkscape, and... my imagination! In each program, I usually just use brushes. That was the point in getting a tablet. For most illustrations, I draw the lines in SAI, or Inkscape if it's in vectors. For the pages, I do it all in Photoshop or GIMP: lay out the page, add shading, toning, text, and all those nice effects that make a decent comic page.

More...

If you want to know me better, visit my website at ARWYM.COM!

- Arwym Starlight