TDKPH Artist of Month August 2016: Dexter Soy



Photo taken from Comic Odyssey Red Hood and the Outlaws signing event

TDKPH Artist of the month Dexter Soy (Red Hood and the Outlaws Rebirth)

Growing up with comics has certainly developed my imagination. When I was a kid, I used to write and draw my own comic books. My friends and I created these little stapled books and swapped them around criticizing each other’s work. It was a fun thing to do, but eventually we grew up.

It is a great joy for me to see artists doing amazing things in comic books today and Filipino artists are no exception. Dexter Soy has already made a name for himself illustrating Marvel and DC characters from Spiderman to Batman. With the recent launch of Red Hood and the Outlaws we have another Filipino artist helming the DC Comics Rebirth.

August last year we launched our very first artist of the month with Trese’s Kajo Baldisimo this year TDKPH is fortunate to have an exclusive interview with Filipino International Artist Dexter Soy to share his experiences and thoughts.

Here we go.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you start as an artist? There are some people who have a goal in mind and others who started with a passion and let their career grow organically. Which one are you? 

I’m the guy who is always drawing in class during my elementary and high school days with some of my classmates. I became more interested (specifically comic art) during my college days when I first purchased an international comic issue titled uncanny x-men by Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira.

It looks like I'm the type that lets his career grow on its own. I'm not fond of setting goals. It's not that I'm afraid of disappointments, but it is easier to accept things at times. Why give in to pressure when I can just chip my way into improving my work, and if things go wrong it's still a good way to learn a lesson. I maybe wrong, but anybody can land a job as a professional artist nowadays--there's a tremendous amount of talent out there.  

2. I saw your feature on GMA about your big break that started with a Marvel Thor sketch that was retweeted by Trese’s Budjette Tan that ended with a message by C B Cebulski, Marvel SVP of Creative and Creator Development. What was your initial reaction when your received that message? How did it feel?

It was surprising of course. It felt surreal and I was actually nervous since I only had few experiences doing comic pages. So I started to study comic pages seriously again before I started with my first job from Marvel.

3. We see a lot of Filipinos making it in the comic industry. What do you think is the edge of Filipino artist compared to international artists?  What is your advice to new Filipino artists who wants to enter this industry successfully?

I thought we have an incredible amount of talent here in our country. Not just in comic art form but as well as other industries like game productions, having a good amount of artists working on big publishers is enough of an edge that we can be proud of, knowing it's not easy to break in from the amount of talent out there from the other countries. 

My advice is for them to do their thing out of passion, enjoy it and do it for fun. Making money out of it while doing what you love is the bonus. But this may not work for everyone but you can still least find something that can work for you.

4. You drew a lot of characters already. My personal favorite was your run on Batman Beyond. What particular character or project that you haven't drawn yet do you wish to be a part of? If given a chance would you do a project other than the big two? A creator owned Image, Dark Horse or even Valiant?

Anything that has Daredevil or Batman in it I guess. Yes, I'd like to work on something that's out of the mainstream titles--from Image or Dark Horse-- that would be exciting. 

5. We are The Dark Knight PH group and we want a Filipino to helm a Batman book in the near future! If given a chance to draw and also write a story about Batman, can you give us a brief glimpse of how you would do it?

I don't know, but If you see the titles I worked on like Arkham Knight Genesis and this Red Hood Rebirth-- I think it's already a tease of what I'd like to do visually if ever I would be given a Batman title.