I know I may sound stereotypical, but, to be honest, I've been a little different than my friends since I was a kid. I didn't have dreams of being mighty and powerful. I didn't want to be a leader. I didn't have any interest for violence. I didn't want to be the kid with the best shoes, the best clothes or the best toys. I didn't want to compete to show my superiority. And, of course, I never engaged on a fight with anybody.

All I wanted was being happy with what I had. Since I was a little kid, what I wanted was to find my place in this world, and investigate it, learn how things work, why this is like it is, why that works like that. I admit I've been a geek all my life, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Under other circumstances, and on a culture different than the one I grew on, like, for instance, the United States, I would have been a sitting duck for bullies. However, I grew on Chile. And, you know, my classmates in Chile, even those stronger than me, wouldn't only respect me, but admired me for being the way I was. The Chilean approach to education, at least on the time I was there, was to enforce cooperation among students, rather than forcing them to compete against each other.

I'm very proud of the way I am nowadays, and owe much of it to my teachers, my older classmates and, of course, my parents. And, this way of thinking, this... doctrine, to call it some way, is one of the ways I draw the way I do.

The other thing that defined my style was my afition for cartoons and comics. When I was a kid, I spent HOURS watching the TV and reading comics. But not super-hero comics, but European comics, like Mortadelo y Filemón (AKA Clever & Smart on the rest of Europe), Zipi y Zape (Spanish version of the Katzenjammer Kids), Tin-Tin, Astérix and the ocassional "Spirou". Those comics had a... let's say, different ideological load than most super-heroes I've seen. They were either silly slapstick stories, adventures the characters would solve thanks to their cunning, or other things, very stimulating for the imagination of a child.

I also was fond of funny animals cartoons. Chilean TV filled my afternoons with hours and hours of cartoon animals, from Kimba to the syndicated Hanna-Barbera series from the 60s and 70s, probably because they were cheaper to get than more actual series. However, even for 9 or 10 year old kid, those cartoons were not very well executed. I thought that, if I wanted, I could do it better... and have been trying to do it all these years, using the same general outlines and premises but also trying not to fall on the same mistakes I perceived on these series.