Kajo Baldisimo, the illustrator of “The Hunters,” is the same artist behind the hit Filipino comic book series “Trese” written by Budjette Tan. He has yet to meet Zayden “Z” Ramos, the author.
I met with Miguel, Z’s father, and he told me the kinds of books and animations Z was into at the time, and I incorporated some of those ingredients when I started cooking the visuals.
It took me about five to seven weeks to finish the illustrations for the book. I had to sneak it into my day job and “Trese,” but it was a lot of fun. The whole process of designing all the characters, vehicles and environments, laying out shots, inking and choosing kid-friendly colors was an awesome experience. Everything was done entirely by computer.
My style is a mixed bag of influences from classic Filipino komiks to modern Western comics and Japanese manga and animé.
In “The Hunters,” most times, I was channeling Alex Niño and Bruce Timm. Sometimes, it was Wally Wood and Shirow Masamune. It depended on what I was feeling at that moment when I was staring at the blank page.
I was 14 years old when I got my first komiks illustration gig from a local publishing house in Quezon City. I was paid a whopping P75 per page for four pages. I’m not being sarcastic when I say that. I was in high school then and that was a big deal of money for me. I was able to afford a few comics and some video game tokens.
My favorite “Hunters” character is the Australian martial artist, Jean. She has this wild yellow hair that I loved to draw. The others were fun, too, but I just love Jean’s yellow head for some reason.
I had a bit of a challenge drawing the buildings because I’m not very fond of dealing with straight lines.
I used to be with an international talent agency, the Glasshouse Graphics. It was a great group to be with at the time. They gave me the opportunities [to do the art for comic book character “The Defuser” and comic book series “Star Wars Legacy”].
Along the way, though, I realized that my style is not very American—or should I say Western mainstream? So I’m not sure if I’ll be working on any international comics any time soon. It would be nice to draw a Batman or a Wolverine some day but, right now, Alexandra Trese owns my soul.
Some six or eight years ago, I was doing a comic book with my friends. We were writing and drawing our own stuff then. I also did a 20-page photocopy comic I called “NWA” some years ago. A tiny comic strip of that was featured monthly in MTV INK but my own xeroxed series only came to about seven issues because writing and drawing your own stuff is very, very hard, especially when you have a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. job. It was fun though, so I hope to go and do it all over again in some ways I haven’t figured out yet.