Rebooting Der kaiserkaputt

It's been a long long while since i posted last time, agian treating the blog as an abandoned website. 

Truth is, i've been busy rethinking the whole story for Der Kaiser ist Kaputt and Leo himself. 

I realized it could be more, that he could be more, so i followed my heart on that and i went back to square one, quite litteraly. I went back to reimaging all i could do with the Leo and all the elements i had created around him, both visually and argumentally. 

I had unintentionally created the bases for a much bigger universe than what i had originally envisioned, but i just hadn´t done it out of fear of not being interesting or creative enough, or maybe i just didn't have enough faith on my own original creation. 

Most of my ideas that could fit perfectly on Leo i kept "saving" for future stories and i was constantly struggling to create characters and plots for those ideas and elements that, i realize now, worked naturally with Leo and the story of Der Kaiser kaputt. 

Right now im in the midst of "rebooting" Leo into a real story line where he is the protagonist of a much bigger situation that will unfold as the story unfolds with al the characters that i have already hinted in my previous attempts to get the webcomic going. And i'm really liking the results. 

So far, Leo is well on his way to become what i consider a real original character with real goals, real past and, the most important part, a real future. 

Visually, the webcomic will follow the style i have already set in previous entries in the blog, but im still experimenting and revisiting the influences that helped shape my own art style. Still struggling to decide if i should draw realistic eyes or continue the cartoony blank eyes i started using for the previous entry in Der Kaiser ist Kaputt. This is where opinions from readers would be of much use... Dream on, David. 

For now, i will just say: stay tuned, great things are coming for Der Kaiser ist kaputt: cool mystical gadgets able to transport the user to different realms full of strange and interesting characters, weapons of great power, fascinating characters from places never seen by normal human eyes and in the middle of it all, Leo, facing the looming dangers and the future where decisions shall be made.

Stay tuned, for the Kaiser is kaputt, but not for long. 

Leo in 2009

Hello, everyone, DAMC here.

Yesterday i left a bit of a cliffhanger regarding the current whereabouts of Herr Leo, but since my random ass haven´t finished the number 17, im gonna have to play dumb and instead talk about the other big promise i did on yesterday's post just so i don´t get ahead of the webcomic itself. Afer all, this is supposed to be a support blog for  Der Kaiser ist kaputt (kind of, i will eventually find myself ranting about random things on here too, i know myself).

On my last post i shared the idea behind what, for a long time, was the potential number one for the fabled webcomic about Leo. I don´t know if i said it before, but the actual idea of starting a webcomic, or a comic, or even a strip on a gay paper publication has been around since, i think, 2002. Back then i used to write horror stories and i had some presence in the dark underground México city's scene. My stories were well recieved and Leo almost became a horror host back in the day.
But it wasn´t until 2009 that i drafted the first real idea to make a strip focusing on Leo happen. I was living between Victoria and Vancouver in B.C., Canada, and the time seemed right.

But before i actually show you the early sketch i found for that number 1 that never came to be, there's something else you have to see first. Before the webcomic started in kaiserkaputt.blogspot.mx in 2011, Leo had already experienced a taste of the real world in 2009 while i was living in Victoria, B.C.
Back then, people who knew me, knew Leo aswell, and they like him. I used to include Leo on cards for friends. Halloween, valentine´s, xmas, they all displayed Leo in some way or another.
It was actually in those cards that the concept of Leo accesing different worlds got materialized, and one of the most emblematic pictures of Leo was born.
Here, lay sight upon this

"Im sorry, darling, i was in my own little world."

This one i kept and i still have it with me, it's i think one of my favorite pictures of Leo, even though is not "perfect"

Now let me show you the other two cards that survived thanks to photobucket.com 

"Valentines"

I know, i know, i know... The perspective is horrible! I actually think i was really horny drawing this one. Overall i like it, and is nice to see that Leo was a happy slut.

"zombies"

I remember what videogame had consumed my brain when i made this one. Did you ever played left 4 dead? It was a PC/xbox game. A shooter in first person, so incredibly awesome! I spent so many hours playing online that one, That year i was everything zombie. Fun fact about me: i'm actually really sincerely scared of zombies. The whole idea freaks me out so bad i have been facing that dumb fear since i was a teen. Proud owner of the zombie survival guide and a katana here. But back to Leo, do you noticed he has some chest hair? Yeah, that was a fetish inclusion to boost up the picture's testosterone. Leo is actually smooth on his chest. 

Anyways, moving on. Thanks to the cards and the constant exposure of my doodles and drawings, i got some comissions from friends. One in particular was really cool. This cute couple were all about pirats, so they wanted a picture of him as a pirate and i was the guy they choose to do it. Here's what they got. 

Can you see the guy holding the pirate's flag? Does he look familiar? He should, his name is Leo and he complained every second he had to hold that flag on that Costa Rica's beach. 

If they really valued this drawing, and it didnt become a blunt weapon during a fight, this framed piece still hangs on some wall in Canada, and that really is awesome, specially since i havent thought about it since then. 

I remember now that the girl actually printed a Leo´s face on  a red t shirt. I wish i had it still, that one was lost a long long long time. Oh well, eventually Leo will find his way to T-shirts again im sure. 

But what do you think of Leo's brief period of fame? Should he continue this modeling career? I think he should, but right now is time to show the first attempt to create a webcomic with Leo. 

Done in Vancouver in late 2009, sometime in August, this sketch was one of the closest to the final piece if it had been an actual final version of it. 

To be honest, i hadn't look at this one since maybe 2011, and it made me laugh how bad my anatomy dominion was. My idea of Mike steel was not really well executed, he looks just exagerated, the basics are there just not well arranged. But the real surprise was the name i had intended for the webcomic, "i was here". Isn´t that what we all strive for, to leave a mark? To let the world that will be know that in this time there was a person who felt and thought and dreamt about the time when someone whould rediscover their mark and aknowledge our eternal statement: I WAS HERE! The kind of sentence that challenge the gods and their thrones: I WAS HERE! That´s what Leo wanted, and still wants, to be remember ( however people chooses to do so).
I like it, was a cute idea... Just like that last Leo walking away resolved to get booze money posing as a homeless. Though, im glad i went back to draw Leo with long messy hair, somehow the short hair version seems incomplete, doesn´t it? At least to me. Leo always had longer hair and at some point he had long sideburns aswell.
But what do you think? I would like to hear from everyone reading this words, you know, for a couple of reasons. First, to get some needed feedback on this project, and second, well... Just so i know im not simply talking alone in the dark.

But for now, i say auf wiedersehen and until the next time.

DAMC out.

What's holding back the webcomic.

Hello, everyone, DAMC here...

Four days without posting seemed like way too much time for an emerging blog regardless of it being a support blog for another blog that tends to collect a lot of dust between posts.
When i started drawing Leo i quickly realised my biggest flaw was not really on the drawing itself, but in the time it actually took me to complete each one of them.

I don´t know if a lot of people who draw face the same problem, but i always get a quality of anxiety and fear when faced with a fresh new piece of paper to draw on it. I wanna jump into it and cover it with my art, but at the same time im overwhelmed with the responsibility to do something of worth just so the paper don´t end up wasted in some stupid doodle. This, i must blame on my mother... I know, i know, everyone always blames their mothers for this and that, but i swear she litteraly said those things to me when i was a kid and i was at the table drawing. back then she tried to instill me an ecological mind ( i hope so) by saying those things. Like, before i even drew something she would question me if i was gonna draw something worthy or just doodle, because the paper was not for that, blah, blah...

That i think is the reason why i feel more comfortable drawing on scrap paper that is already "ruined" anyways.
Im ashamed to admit most of my best drawings will never see the light because they were executed that way, and of course, never finished.
Ah, the mind and it's fragility!
So my pathetic brain freaks out when faced to a pristine sheet of paper, sets for failure and of course accomplish exactly that.
This stupid "condition" (trauma) causes me to repeat the same drawin A LOT!
Here, check this one i started for number 16 and got quickly abandoned.

The result, im probably the slowest penciler out there ( who doesn't yet delivers pieces like Frank Quitely do. God! Have you seen his work? HE IS AWESOME. Totally the kind of penciler i hope to be).

Between this and the whole process of healing and diferentiation between Leo and I, number 17 has been started, sketched and redone several times already for the last few months.
I mentioned before i toyed with the idea of redone the entire webcomic entirely and give it a new vibe, look, everything. Im dying to introduce Leo's friends and begin the kind of story Leo was always meant to be.
But there's a lot of stuff  i honestly still don't know how to do digitally and technique wise, so, it made sense Der Kaiser ist Kaputt remains as a form of testimony for the constant improvement of something that had a defined beggining.

So, for number 17 there has been a lot of ideas regarding how to treat the story of Leo waking up after a couple of years of slumber.
I really, really, really don´t want to do a downer webcomic anymore.

In it's inicial concept, Leo was a bohemian artist who, when he wasn´t some guy´s boy, he was venturing into the world seeking to satisfy a  raging lust for life burning in his heart like a disease.
The very first idea for Leo´s webcomic was him and Mike Steel, his first love (another story for another time) in Vancouver's gay parade. Both wanting to drink but not having enough money. Leo, who's been carrying a coffee cup gets upset and opens his arms causing some person to drop a coin or two in his cup. Mike laughs as Leo contemplates staring at the coin at the bottom of the cup.
The punchline was Leo shoving Mike away telling him to give him some space to get them booze money.

The idea was that Leo could be easily mistaken as a homeless person in need, and him using that to his advantage. Leo didn't care, Leo didn't need social approval nor external validation, and he had Mike.
It was a good one, wasn´t it? But that idea comes from early 2009, and i wouldn't be me if i hadnt gone through some serious shit back then putting everything in perspective.
But i want to recover that part of Leo's personality... Im pretty sure i have some of those  sketches for that early beggining somwhere with me. If i find them i'll edit this post just to show them.
Leo was a bit different then, younger and bolder.
The Leo i've been drawing since 2011 has been very angry and dark for a long time already, and he is not really meant to be THAT dark and angry always. Unless he ran out of weed, then by all means, evacuate the planet.

I had not long ago an idea on where to take the story and ive been maturing it... That and the pieces i can produce now as far as drawing please me. They really do, even though i know i am far from the level i want to have. I think im ready to continue this journey of a little Kaiser called Leo who´s been away for far too long.
 But where is he been exactly? Some kind of desert? And there's, or there was snow there? Where is Leo?

And that´s exactly the question im gonna answer maybe in the next post, for now auf wiedersehen!

DAMC out.

Explanations

Hello, everyone. DAMC here...
There are so many things i want  to share here about Leo and the universe he has showed to me in all these years we've been together, but i have to control myself, this is a step by step process, right?
Right.

Yesterday i explained a little bit who Leo is and where does he come from... More or less; so today i want to talk about the webcomic itself.
Just as it happened with Leo, the webcomic came to be way before it's actual current name Der Kaiser ist kaputt. For those who don't know, that's german and translates to The Emperor is out of service... Or broken, or wasted, or exhausted... You get the drift.

This is not just a silly joke. I mean, it is, but it has a little bit more meaning than that.
I already explained Leo started life as my own alter ego, or at least that's what i choose to believe (I wouldnt be surprised if during this process of pulling him out of my head to exist in the "real" world i end up discovering he was an entirely different person all along). Although, i have toyed A LOT with the idea of rather explain him as an alter universe version of me... We'll see.
But be as it may, Leo started being me, so he was bounded to be deeply impacted and shaped by the same events that impacted and shaped me; and of course everything i learned, heard, experienced was also lived by him even after he developed his own personality paralel to mine. So, much of my appreciation of myself found fertile ground on him, and it festered instead of sprouting in a healthy way i think. Calling one self an emperor without really having an actual empire to rule is not exactly sane, but in Leo that idea became fundamental for his understanding of his place in the universe. He even has some pretty awesome supernatural evidences to back his claim to the ultimate crown. Because Leo wouldnt settle for just any throne and crown in a dark hall somewhere on a mountain. No.
 Leo was THE Supreme Emperor crowned with stars and wielding a sword of fire, master of his own destiny.

Sounds absolutely stupid, i know, but just consider the backstory for Leo. He had to grow up in a represive enviroment where god was the only one dictating your destiny. No way out if you wanted to be happy in the after life with all your loved ones. So, much of what a person can do is always mutilated by the fear of that omnipresent entity silently judging you from beyond time and space. No self respecting emperor would ever believe in such nonesense (in my head), and Leo is not just any emperor able to think for himself and realise the world does not work that way and that religion is just another one of the many systems actively operating to control masses for a greedy purpose. Leo knows more and is not afraid of death or what is beyond that point. Plus, he has full access to his amazing inner world where he could travel freely anywhere.
He tried to explain it all to the people around him kneeling in fear, but eventually he left them to their own whispers in the dark.
Now, please, dont understand this as the explanation for an egomaniac. It could sound that way, but Leo doesnt really has much of an ego in the way people usually do. Being able to see life from an outside perspective may cause a person to not really care about building an ego (in my head). The emperor title in him became a mission. He was the emperor just as naturally as he is male or has a nose. It wasnt a right or a claim, it simply was. He was meant to (somehow) rule and change the world. Yeah, that's the deranged part, you can laugh there.

Blah, blah, blah, right? But why is he kaputt?

Well, that's an s&m story involving me in Canada and a guy in México city that ended terribly for me.
The impact this dude had in my life was the equivalent to surviving a very bad bear attack. I lost so much during that disastrous story. A lot more than i  actually realised at the time.
To give you a perspective, he made such an impression on me it actually motivated Leo once and for all to show himself to the world in the fabled webcomic i always talked about. That was 2011.

His departure caused so much pain and suffering it impacted Leo and the webcomic.

Let me explain to you the webcomic's posts on kaiserkaputt.blogspot.mx:
The first five posts are meant to express who Leo is. 1, 2 and 3 show him as a stonner who sees the world as a bunch of masked people faking their best. Number 3 introduced silently a new character, MJ. Yes, she is supposed to look like a goddess/supernatural being. Yes, she is the manifestation of marihuana in Leo´s inner world. Yes, she can interact with Leo as a persoun would, and yes, she is meant to regularly appear in the strip. Here, let me show you.

This unfinished one was meant to be an alternative number 7. MJ has been redisgned now, but the wingged narwhal stuck and is still around, though im not sure if i still want it as MJ's steed, i havent decided yet.
Number 4 is a bit grim, but it was meant to show his lack of ego, considering himself next to nothing. Come to think of it, i think its also a take on the way i was dealing with the lonelyness i felt at the time... Moving on.
Number 5 is a bit of his motivations. So far Leo sounds a bit like a jerk? I hope not, but i promise you he is a good guy, in a way, sort of... When faced with the choice, he almost always picks the good thing to do. Boring, i know, meh... But he grew up alone and learned to give himself this little pep talks to keep him moving forward, so for him comes natural to do the same for everyone else, if he is not annoyed or angry or horny, that is.
The idea in number 6 was: "I'll save myself, thanks." A reflection of his past when separating himself from his family's fate, and was the first time i showed Leo with his sword and coat. That's what i wanted him to look. I was setting the stage for the real story to develop. Leo refusing to accept anyone's rules and doing his own thing. In the real world this meant i had made up my mind to leave my life in Canada to go back to México city to be with the guy i mentioned earlier. Yes, you can also laugh there.

Now, let me show you what was meant to be the post number 7:

That's what the first six posts were leading to. From then it was gonna be the adventures of Leo and V-XI, his companion/real life slave.
Shit happens, he left. I debated a lot wether or not publish this one. In the end the pain won and the webcomic changed forever. I tried to keep it afloat as it was with the unfinished MJ strip i showed before, but in reality it was futile. The story that was gonna end with Leo being actually crowned as emperor of the universe got cancelled before it started. At least that story line.
The number 7 that actually happened is, i think, the moment were the Kaiser got kaputt to the eyes of the world. the real life event happened in february 2012, i was back in México city and the references to a shrink and prozac were true.
V-XI's departure caused Leo and i to be kaputt for a long time.

Number 8 was dedicated to a friend who poured all of his fear on me one night over coffee and cigs. Was horrible and i was in no shape to comfort him enough, so that Leo's picture happened, his "pick you up" attitude. Completely strange and out of place for what was trully going on in both worlds, Leo's and mine.

Since Leo was out, i couldn´t really pull him back into my head and forget about everything, but the story had changed, and i hadnt explained the "why" it changed so drastically from vanilla cute to bleak downer. I just used the pain and continued drawing. Leo simply tagged along, and that's exactly what´s happening in numbers 9 and 10.
In number 11 the  focus goes back to his world and the characters in it. As usual with me, things happen way before their names. The inner world is now known as the Memory shop, where Leo is currently in, but i will talk about that later. The internal demons have been redesigned as it can be seen in number 14 and have names that wont be revealed just yet.

Numbers 12 and 13 were supposed to explore Leo's interactions with people in the real world and i thought they were showing improvement both for Leo and i, but i actually realise just now they were my farewell posts for Leo. If you wonder why both posts are so sexual, it is because thats exactly what was going on in my life at the time before i decided to simply move on from all the pain and bullshit and started enjoying life again.

Sadly, back then, for me moving on meant leaving Leo behind.
Im ashamed to admit i actually abandoned Leo on the curve like a motherfucker son of a bitch and i litteraly took my sorry ass to the beach to get wasted.
Two years went by. Healing, maturing, growing and life took me to the man who is now my husband, my light. It is really thanks to him that Leo actually came back. No kidding, he really resurrected him.
Number 14 was an attempt to revive the old story line where i left it in 2013, but i quickly changed my mind on that idea. It felt unnecesary to keep dragging the stuff i had dealt with already, and Leo wasn't a tool to heal anymore, that thought was percived as disrespectful. But the introduction of characters from Leo´s internal world was something i wanted to do anyways. I should say that even though im usually "ok" with the designs i post, sometimes i see they need improvement, or maybe i just simply grow older and more appreciative of what the fuck i am actually doing. MJ and Death's characters have been redesigned, MJ needed that so badly! But Leo im pretty sure is gonna stay as we see him now in number 15 and 16. That's Leo. And that's the beggining of his new story.

In my eyes, number 15 is number one of Der Kaiser ist kaputt, and i would like for everyone to pretend the same with me, seriously. That would mean Der Kaiser ist kaputt is book two of Leo's story, and while the previous posts in the blog may not end up being part of book one, the reason for the title is no longer the broken heart that caused them and Leo to be in that specific blog.

I could have started a new one, and sometimes i still think i should redo the whole thing all over again, start a new blog, delete the previous posts on fb and start from scratch with an upbeat tone; call it something not downer, pretend all this 16 posts never happened and keep explaining Leo as my alter ego and nothing more.
But i have finally accepted that even though those 16 (17 if you count the apocryphal number 7 that will never ever ever ever ever be shown again) strips are part of Leo's graphic history and visual evolution. They may not be part of his storyline anymore, but there they are as a testimony of Leo's roots within myself as much more than just a made up dude. To be honest, im also not very sure what his ultimate intentions are, but i trust him enough to agree to draw him and write him for as long as it takes to tell his story... I wouldnt be writing this damn much if i hadn't right?
Right.

So, why Der Kaiser ist kaputt then? It really is now a metaphore for being a jaded idealist who embraced nihilism, but  i think the real answer will be found somewhere along the way. For now i think it's enough. Im hungry.

DAMC out.

Trivia fact: For a little while, the webcomic was named Die schlampe ist kaputt, which in german means something like the slut is exhausted, or broken, but due to german censorship and the fact that i realised schlampe is writen with a femenine article i choose to abandon that joke. I think in the end i was really the only one who found the whole sentence hilarious, but it really had no place being associated with Leo, at least not as his main title.

Introductions

 Hello, everyone.
Welcome to the first post of From the Brain of DAMC. I'm David Antonio Morales Castillo (DAMC), and im the creator of Leo, the protagonist of the webcomic Der Kaiser ist kaputt (kaiserkaputt.blogspot.mx, and @kaiserkaputt on facebook).
Oh... You have no idea who Leo is? Yeah... I know. Mostly is my own fault that Leo hasn't reached success in all this years, but if i may, i can explain a little bit about who he is.

First of all, let me show you a picture of him:

 Leo is mexican, born in México city on April the 1st of 1989. He has brown eyes, blackish hair and is 1.87mts tall. He is gay, single and rabidly free.
His childhood wasn´t the best, being raised by his maternal aunts after his parents death on a car accident when he was 7.
Despite the represive, catholic enviroment and the fact of him being the only man among four mature women and one girl 8 months younger, his cousin, the nameless Bitch (as he chooses to remember her due to her betrayal against him when they were 15 years old), he was always confident on his gender and sexuality. He was born a male homosexual who craved freedom and was in no way sold to any religion or superstition. However, he does have a system of beliefs backed on his own experiences... But that's a story for another time.
Leo parted ways with his remaining family by the time he turned 16 and since then he commited to seek, own and explode all of his pleassures and the fabled freedom he heard about all through out his childhood.

 That paints a rather dull image of him, doesn't it? Just a regular whoever with a downer backstory, but that's because you don't know about the other side of Leo. See, he was born knowing things. It would be long to list the ammount of things he knew from the start, but sufficient to say he understands the different levels of existence and the way they interact. He knows the things roaming the world that humans ignore. And he has dominion on areas of the mind accesible only to those who have left their bodies behind.
But i wont spoil it, the true nature of who and what Leo is will be widely explored in Der Kaiser ist kaputt.

 But i can tell you how Leo came to be. You see, i always drew, since i was very little. My parents had the good idea of exposing me to art and comic books in my early years, and i was forever sold to the world of art, and from it, the closest to me was always drawing. I never really took proper lessons, other than whatever petty instructions on how to use a piece of paper and a pencil you get in kinder garten; i simply liked to let my mind run wild and command my arm and hand to translate on paper my daydreams.
 With elementary school came the tons of requests from classmates to draw he-mans, Lion-o's and Batmans. A lot of fun to do, and sometimes even paid, but i always came back to my daydreams and castles when i was alone, but i started noticing around 1989 that i started drawing the same person in all of my daydreams. A guy, scruffy looking, slim with thick eyebrows.
That was Leo, and soon i realised he was a proyection of myself, an alter ego, or an avatar to live in the world that was mine entirely and nobody else's.
As the years went by, the focus of my drawings became that odd guy, and before i knew, i started building little stories around him. I made jokes and dialogues with him, mostly on my friends' notebooks or birthday cards.
When i was 16, this guy and i had our first disagreements. Somehow he had developed his own personality paralel to mine. So i kept him alive out of respect and admiration, my own little creation, alive!
 The name came many years later in a hushed encounter in a dark room in Mexico city. It was 2002, i think. I was bored and about to leave the club when i spotted the guy, handsome, with dark hair and deep eyes like ive never seen before. I followed him and caught him... And it happened of course.
Being with him felt neccesary, in my gut i knew this guy was gonna give me something of value.
In all honesty, just the sex could have been good enough, but right after, he whispered in my ear: I'm Leo, and walked out.
 I followed him, but i couldnt find him again, weird, but typical in the gay scene. However, what he said stuck with me. I know he was just stating his name, probably, but to me it sounded much more profound than that. Leonardo is a name i always respected and liked, being that i tend to acquire my knowledge and skills on my own like the fabled DaVinci did in his time.
What happened next is easy to guess. I went home dazzed and hoping for an answer that arrived in the form of an old drawing of "my guy".
 And that's the story, that's how Leo got his name.There is a last name, of course, he is not a dog, but just like much of his story, it will be revealed in the pages of Der Kaiser, if i feel like revealing it, thats it.

So, yeah, i think this is good enough for the first post.
Needless to say, this blog will be mostly (mostly) dedicated to Leo and his universe ( which i promise is really cool and vast), but every now and then i will show off other projects and works related to this amazing world of the webcomic creation.

DAMC out.