In December, 1980, I moved to Chile, where I'd spend eight wonderful years, made many friends, and started the transit from a kid who loved drawing funny animals to being a teenager who... loved drawing funny animals. It may sound childish, I know, but I guess I've always been a rather naive person. Besides, what's wrong with being childish?

In the early 80s, probably in 1982, I saw Osamu Tezuka's Kimba for the first time on TV, and I fell in love with the series immediately. I especially liked Bucky Deer, one of Kimba's sidekicks. I probably felt more identified with him rather than with Kimba because he fitted my personality better, and I found him cuter, and more interesting, than Kimba.

I liked this character so much that I decided to "make him mine", by drawing my own version of that character, with a few changes: my version was bipedal. So, in the latter months of 1982, or starting 1983, I drew an "antelope" for the first time. I was very proud of him, even though my friends thought my character was "a coyote or something."

By 1984, when I was 12 and I was in 6th grade, my classmates knew I liked drawing funny animals. And I drew with so much enthusiasm that I contagiated some of them. My friends Mario Contreras and Pablo Candia invited me to contribute to an unofficial magazine for our classmates. We founded a publishing house named "Morsa Editorial" (literally, Walrus Editions), but it was more like a club like those kids love to organize, rather than a real publisher.

We planned zillions of things for our future magazine, including a comic featuring three animalistic kids: each one of us would create one. Mario Contreras drew a lion, named Leo, a ripoff of World Cup Willie, the mascot of 1966's soccer world cup (See his pic at the left, and click on the picture to find Mario Contreras' version). Pablo Candia, on the other hand, drew Mak, a rat directly inspired in my own antelopes. (!) And I drew Andy, an antelope.

Shortly after we created the trio, we gave a role to each character. They would be part of a soccer team, named "Morsa" too, that would feature only funny animals. You can find one of these early comics clicking here.

The magazine never was published, but I liked them enough to leave the "soccer team" idea aside and use the characters in many adventures, from wars to making them survivors of horrible tragedies (I loved disaster movies by the time), for many years to come.

And, practising with so many comics, my style started evolving from childish stuff to more sophisticated things, even if I always kept my funny animals as my favorite characters.