Filipe Duarte Pina

BRK details

Writer / colors: Filipe Duarte Pina
Art: Filipe Andrade

Year: 2006 to 2009
Book format: 77 pages / soft cover
Production: 3 years
Publisher for Pedra no Charco: Jorge Machado
Publisher for Asa: Maria José
Periodical magazine publisher: BD Jornal / Pedra no Charco
Book publisher: Asa-Leya

Presentation

BRK (break) is a comic book launched in Portugal in 2009. Before that it had a 2 year periodic run from 2006 to 2008 in a bi-monthly comics magazine.
The story is about a troubled teenager called David. One day David is confronted by a girl to join an organization that promises to revolutionize the way people think, the “Slap” organization. David joins the group and quickly gets himself into trouble.

Development

Design
We wanted to make something comercial and acessible, so we decided to go with a digital and colorfull color scheme with a well defined story and characters.
This was also the first time we were making a complete comic book so naturally the quality of each page as we made them got better and better. This caused some discussions wether we should go back and redo some pages to match the quality of the later ones. Eventually we decided to leave it like it was since it is in itself a piece of our history and development as artists.

Business
Brk was the first real comic book me and Andrade worked on. In 2004 Andrade was trying to start to work on a comic book but needed a partner to help him with the story and business side of things. So we got together and decided to do it all on our own and try to sell it later to publishers.  It was a rough ride and we had lots of false starts but eventually we started working. During 2005 we planned the storyboard and prepared all the characters while at the same time I was working on TV and Andrade was attending school. By 2006, and  with a very slow page turnover, we had around one quarter of the book made. We booked meetings with the big publishers in Portugal and got rejected by everyone. Nobody wanted to publish an incomplete book and nobody believed we would finish it. Nobody but the publisher of the periodic publication “Bd Jornal”. They agreed to publish each chapter every two months. In 2008 and after two years of periodic publishing we got called in by one of the publishers who rejected us in the first place. They published the entire book in 2009.

Books 2 and 3
BRK does not end in book 1, in fact, it has 2 more books that tell the complete story.
Both stories have been written for some years now and a storyboard for book 2 exists along with details for all characters and backdrops. Unfortunately due to problems with the publisher who now owns the rights, we haven’t been able to produce the last 2 remaining books.

Team

Filipe Pina – writer / color
Filipe Andrade – art / covers
Hugo Jesus – letterer

And many thanks to everyone who helped us during the 3 year period of making BRK!

Curiosities

There are plenty of references to movies and videogames on the pages of BRK, but perhaps one of the craziest “easter eggs” is the picture of the dog of José Mourinho in the wall of one room.
The texts in the edition of “Bd Jornal” contains swearing and coarse language. This was changed in the book edition to catter to the more

Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bdbrk
Asa-Leya: http://www.wook.pt/ficha/brk/a/id/2145203