Instagrammers-in-Residence: Jordi Castells
Hi all! As announced last week, we have launched our new Instagrammers-in-Residence campaign (@actualpants). Every week, we’ll be featuring a new person, publication, or organization from the literary community, from all over the world. This past week we featured illustrator Jordi Castells:
Jordi Castells was born in Mexico City in 1982 and has since moved over 15 times throughout San Antonio TX, Miami FL, Pachuca, and Atlanta GA. He began drawing as soon as he could pick up a pencil, started a rock band at 16, studied film at 19, illustrated a world-wide published novel at 22, majored in Graphic Design at 23, and started a media company at 29. Currently, he is co-producing a feature documentary about music in prisons and adapting and illustrating his first graphic novel “A Lupita le gustaba planchar”. He also enjoys playing the guitar while balancing on his IndoBoard.
My name is Jordi Castells and I’m adapting Laura Esquivel’s latest novel “Lupita liked to Iron” into a graphic novel. I will be posting pics of my creativeprocess and inspiration all week!
@jcastells9 back with day 2 of my creative process. The first step after reading the novel was to write a script. Comic scripts are very similar to a screenplay but unique to the medium. My final graphic novel script had the same amount of pages as the prose novel! This process took about 6 weeks.
@jcastells9 with day 3 of my creative process. After identifying all the characters, I did character studies and designed their final versions. This is just a peek but I did several versions of each one, full body dimensions, etc.
@jcastells9 with day 4 of my creative process. After having all my character designs, the next step is to use my script to layout rough thumbnails to get a feel of page, composition and pacing.
@jcastells9 with day 5 of my creative process! The next step is to layout the page in Photoshop and sketch out the panels. I alternate between very loose or very tight pencils, depending on the scene and how I’m feeling that day.
@jcastells9 day 6 of my creative process. This is what a finished page looks like inked. The final step will be to add dialogue bubbles!
@jcastells9 last day of my creative process – thanks for sticking around! #todossomoslupita
Natalia Castells-Esquivel is a writer from Mexico based in Atlanta. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published in places like Santo y Seña, Loose Change, and Thought Catalog. She is currently a copywriter, Editor of Community Engagement for RealPants, and cofounder of StoryDrop, a city-wide literature collaboration. Also, she makes really good scrambled eggs. Really.
Latest posts by Natalia Castells-Esquivel (see all)
- Instagrammers-in-Residence: Alban Fischer - October 6, 2015
- Instagrammers-in-Residence: Jarod Roselló - September 30, 2015
- Instagrammers-in-Residence: Edward Mullany - September 21, 2015
