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When My Brain Hit Critical Mass

Published Sat, 11 Nov 2017 09:00:59 -0600

Bruno Oliveira writes,

(Read all the way down to find out about a little gift to Bleeding Cool readers)

"Less Brains, More Balls." I woke up a few months ago with that phrase on my mind.

It sounded so cool and it almost felt like there was a rhythm to it. I thought it might have been a song that came from outside the apartment and I heard it in my sleep.

Maybe it was from a movie?

I started work as usual – I had almost 4 pages to ink that day.

No matter how hard I tried to focus and get the work done, I kept getting distracted by stupid things like a little black spot on my eraser, or the one key that keeps getting stuck on my keyboard.

Usually when I cannot concentrate on the job, it's because I forgot to do something important.

I scanned my brain but I couldn't remember anything I needed to do. So I tried to soldier on.

My mistake was saying to myself: "just be quiet and do your work".

The second I thought that, my brain hit critical mass. I could not stay quiet.

It was an aggressive reaction.

Less brains. More balls" invaded my mind like the chorus of a bad song. It was loud and annoying.

I decided to listen.

I opened an old folder I have on my computer filled with short stories I've written over the years.

I knew I would never really get to draw them. Short stories about funny things that happened to me, tragic things that happened to me (which, surprisingly, became very funny once I wrote them down).

When your work is your dream job, you try not to be ungrateful to the point of thinking for too long about doing your creator owned stuff. I mean, who would want to draw themselves when they're drawing Spider-Man for Marvel?

But, every now and then I would open these scripts and write for a few minutes just to shut my mind up.

It didn't work this time. It actually had the opposite effect. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write, to think about it and to spend my time doing it.

After I finished writing, I had missed my deadline and it was dark outside. Still, I went back and read everything I wrote. And everything I've written before that I kept hidden from myself for so long.

I haven't felt that in a long time…sick, but excited.

Could I do this?"

It was like I couldn't even bring myself to think it, let alone say it out loud.

And once again I was bombarded.

Less brains. More balls"

Was that it?

I mean, I've heard the "Just do it" speech in several ways, from several sources. In the old days they came with a piano song in a Powerpoint presentation. Currently, it comes from videos of famous people speaking at college graduations.

I could see my whole life up to this point. All the times I thought about doing something great, but stopped before I could think about trying. Why was that? Afraid of being ungrateful? Afraid of failure? Something was different this time, and I wasn't afraid.

So I'm doing it.

I'm launching a kickstarter campaign to finally do my creator owned project. I'm writing, drawing, inking, coloring and lettering the 64-page book myself. Telling my story as a comic book artist while having a relationship with my girlfriend, in comic book form, with hopefully a lot of humor and some inspirational stuff.

Here's the link to the campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1339629149/what-now-bruno

I realize this looks like a sappy Facebook revelation post, and it sort of is.

But, It's important for me to reach out while I'm doing this, because I don't know how this project is going to turn out. I'm hoping it's more honest.

And if it turns out that it's true. If it turns out that all I needed to make it was to do it, I'll come back with a comically large bazooka forcing you to heed my words: "Less brains. More balls."

Bruno Oliveira

PS: I bet you thought I forgot about the gift I mentioned under the title. Here it is: If you support any of the physical rewards (by that I mean any of the rewards that that need to be shipped to you) and write me an email (bbrunoliveira@gmail.com) with the subject line "Bleeding Cool brought me here" you'll get an exclusive print to go along with your reward!

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