Juanpablo Castromora

The story behind the puzzle

Juanpablo has been drawing for as long as he can remember. "I've been drawing since I can remember. All my life. I used to make drawings for my father and mother." For a shy kid, a pencil was also a place to hide. "When I felt like I needed to hide myself from people, I began to draw, and then everyone would be more focused on the fact that I was drawing." Then one day in high school his dad handed him a newspaper ad for a film school that taught digital animation, and that was it: "this is what I should do with my life, because drawing, acting, and storytelling are involved." He became one of the first generations of animation students in Costa Rica.

Beyond the Kelp was one of the three puzzles in Odd Pieces' very first series. It started as a simple seed, an underwater world where everyone lives a slow, gray life until something changes everything. Juanpablo didn't want the box picture to be dull, so he dreamed up a whole town: "kind of like The Flintstones, but underwater," a Wild West town with a sheriff, a teacher, kids, a mom, an old man and even a jail.

Then the story found its heart. Every character starts out a little stuck, a little lonely, searching for something. And Juanpablo protected what mattered to him the whole way through, down to single lines in the comic. When a line didn't feel true to him, he wrote his own: "Some overcome their fears." It has, in his words, "much more to do with me as a person and an artist."

The artwork took over 250 hours to draw. He went back and forth on the scale of every character and every color, building his first ever before-and-after world. And there's a little secret inside it: every character in the town is Juanpablo at some point in his life. Can you guess which is which?

"The idea of getting past the things that are not so good for us in life, in a positive way. Acknowledging that not everything is cool or bright, but finding the good side."

— Juanpablo Castromora

Inside the artwork

• Find the lonely jellyfish, still looking for its other half. Like everyone in this town, it's waiting for something to change.
• Spot the climber, with his girlfriend below cheering him on and ready with her camera. For Juanpablo, "it's more about the support she gives than about him achieving his ambition."
• Watch the master and apprentice sparring. He insisted on keeping "the small guy teaching a lesson to the big one, because it's important for me to leave it there."
• Find the families riding the eel train, and the one guy sitting all by himself.
• Look for the painter at his easel, and someone tossing a coin into a well.

How he works

• Even an impossible world needs rules. "We need to define rules that give this world an identity. It may seem random, but it's not as random as it looks."
• He sketches everything clearly first, then makes it beautiful, because "making changes on final art is expensive."
• He paints fully digitally in Photoshop at high resolution, and he even loves the quiet, fiddly parts, like building color gradients.
• Bright colors were his personal challenge on this one.
• He made himself a soundtrack while he worked: "I had certain music as I was creating the world."

Interview

What do you love to draw?

Juanpablo: "I don't care if it's drawing a flower or a portrait of me or a camera, a cloud, my dog. I love to see details in things and to understand them. I just love the feeling of drawing."

Who's your favorite character?

Juanpablo: "The octopus, because I relate a lot to him. I see him as a hard worker, willing to give something to everyone if that will make them happy."

What do you think people will like most about the puzzle?

Juanpablo: "The colors and the message within the puzzle. I hope it'll bring a smile to those who build it. It's a message of seeing positivity in everything."

Any advice for builders?

Juanpablo: "Let your imagination flow with the image and the story. Whatever you think is there, it is there. It's your story and your puzzle. I left it open on purpose, so you'll find things you didn't even know were there."