Alba Glez is an illustrator for Marvel, DC, Drakoo and her own works, Laura from the Sacred Land and All the Songs I Want to Forget. She graciously took the time to discuss her entry into the industry, Webtoons, and her upcoming comic, Princesses of DC. Enjoy!
1. What drew you to art/illustration? What are your artistic influences?
Art has been all around me since the moment I was born. My father is a musician and a cartoonist, and he made sure to give my sister and myself a proper drawing education through an amazing collection of books.
2. How would you define your style?
I’m not sure I can define it. Normally other people do. My style is a mixture of 90’s-00’s animation movies, anime, BD’s, instagram artists, etc. I’ve always tried to draw as something as my younger self would watch.
3. How do you feel your art has evolved since you started?
I think my art has growth with me. It always reflects who I am inside. It’s very different from what it was in the beginning, but at some point, it keeps its essence.
4. How did you get started in the industry?
I had a good friend who extorted me to be serious about my comic projects and he explained the basics of the industry. Thanks to him, I developed my very first 16-pages-black-n-white-self-published comic, “Bestial”.
I was lucky enough to have a place on a ComicCon in my city back in 2018, where C.B Cebulsky (Marvel’s former editor in chief) and Rickey Purdin (talent relation at Marvel) found me. They liked my comic and left their card. After that I made some page samples for Marvel editors until I got my first project as part of “MARVEL’s voices: communities” in 2021.
But in the meantime, I was devoted to my own projects.
5. What was the inspiration for your graphic novel Laura from the Sacred Land?
It has many inspirations. That is a story I sketched when I was a teenager. Many years later, after reading a lot about world’s mythologies, I decided to redesign it using everything I’ve learned. It was my first graphic novel and a huge challenge that I didn’t feel I was prepared to take, but that’s what art’s about, isn’t it?
6. What prompted you to pubish on webtoons instead of traditional publisher (like Marvel)? Is the process different?
Well, being indie projects, us artists have to find a platform to be known and read. I used Webtoons for Laura from the Sacred Land and my other novel All the Songs I Want to Forget because I wanted to share my stories, but didn’t have any connections with editorial world. It’s not easy to find a publisher for indie comics, but I got to publish both in paperback through crowfunding campaigns.
7. You also have the pole-dancing/aerial arts series, how did that start?
Oh, thanks for noticing that! I practiced pole dance for about seven years or so. As you probably know, that is a very stigmatized sport. My instructor was a pole sports world champion, and she used to ask me to draw some of her figures to promote her workshops. By doing that I learned a lot about anatomy, gymnastics and the mechanics of movement. Then I decided to start this series of illustrations of pop culture heroines doing pole in order to present this discipline as a sport rather than an erotic instrument. They were pretty popular at the conventions I attended back in that day.
8. Your latest project is for Princesses of DC. How did you approach the concepts for each character?
First step was receiving the characters description from my editor, and taking references from the existing design of each. It was Maxima -the main character, the one who had the biggest transformation, for I was told to make a different version of her than the classic, but keeping just her colors and her beautiful hair -I love to draw impossible haircuts XD
I also tried to experiment with different facial features, even if they result difficult to draw for me. It’s a good challenge.
Of course I had to practice my horses. They’re beautiful and difficult animals to draw.
The last part of character design came when I finally got the final script and then I get to really know this version of our heroes and how they will interact with each other.
9. What is the collaboration process with the authors like?
Every project is different, sometimes I have a lot of communication with the author, sometimes just couple of notes on the email chains. In this project, Tilly and Susan were very enthusiastic and communicative. We add each other on Instagram right away and keep in touch in every step of the project.
10. Do you have any favorite/tricky panels?
Yes, many! Think my favorite panel is the first I post on social media right after the book was announced, but I have others. I specially like those were Maxima is being sassy or Jerry -the pegasus is searching for food.
Tricky part was designing spaceships and odd planets… I personally didn’t want to make it feel like SciFi but like fantasy in the space, you know what I mean?
11. What else is in store for you/any upcoming news?
Right now I’m working in three projects at the same time -and loosing my head in the process. None of them has been announced yet, but there will be vampires, greek folklore and spooky castles 😉
You can learn more about Alba Glez and her art on her website and on social media: https://albaglezart.artstation.com/
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