Angouleme 2011
by Dash Shaw
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Le Dernier Cri had a poster hanging in the local Quick (a McDonalds-like fast food place) telling all of the families eating their burgers to “fuck off rape rape rape.” I wish I had a photo of that to share, but here are some quick Angouleme 2011 notes below…
Bastien Vives and Merwan draw their recent Pour L’Empire series (published by Dargaud) entirely on the computer with wacoms. There’s no original art. Compare a page from the book with a dedication I found online that they both drew by hand:
The computer lines are absolutely constant, no variation. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. This is probably going to become more and more common and eventually, like comics coloring, the majority of line art will also be done on the computer. I can’t help but think it’s a fundamentally different experience for the cartoonist. A lot of working on comics, for me, involves having the pages sitting around or taped on the wall and glancing at them while eating cereal or walking around the room. When it’s on the computer, you’re only seeing the pages when you’re actively working on them. They’re never drifting around in real space. Think about it: for all of the New Yorker illustrations that are colored by the computer (basically, all of them) the illustrator didn’t see that lying on their table or sitting on their desk. They didn’t decide to dab a different color on it after it caught their eye while they were doing something else. They clicked on the computer, finished it, and the only time they see it in real space is after it’s been printed.
Vives and Merwan are one of many collaborative teams in France (Ruppert and Mulot spring to mind, as well as Pommepuy and Cosset) where both members write and draw, as opposed to the one-writing-the-other-drawing collaborations found in the States. I didn’t get to talk to them very much about it, but they said it’s more like an animation studio and they work side by side. Ruppert and Mulot send scans to each other and sometimes employ third people to execute different elements of the comic. If there are collaborative comics done in the States like this, I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
I like going to Angouleme (this is my third year) just to be exposed to differences like this. Of course, there are the obvious differences, like the fact that there are no thin monthly serialized comics, they have the BDs and the elaborate dedications. But there’s also different points of reference or different interpretations of the same material. The current exhibit at the Angouleme museum this year was titled “Parody” and it was devoted to Mad magazine-type comics. I think the drawings of Mad magazine guys (like Jack Davis and Mort Drucker) have had a big influence on the French cartoonists (like Blutch and Chauzy—a “springy” line) while the sensibility of Mad is more of an influence on the Americans (like Crumb and Clowes—the snarky attitude.) Different interpretations of the same material.
Anyway, let’s cut to the chase: scans! One of my favorite comics I got at Angouleme this year looks like it was drawn entirely on the computer. It’s by Hok Tak Yeung, Qu’elle Etait Bleue Ma Vallee, published by Actes Sud. This book has bizarre, intense colors that are impossible to scan accurately, but here are a few scans of it anyway:
Another fave is Girl’s Don’t Cry by Nine Antico, published by Glenat. I heard she had a new B&W book published by L’Association, but I couldn’t get that one due to the strike. I’ve never seen such a visually striking comic that’s composed entirely of talking heads. Amazing.
And my third favorite find is Alien by Aisha Franz which is out in German from Reprodukt. She’s one of many cartoonists living in Berlin right now. I can’t read German or French (or the stack of Chinese mini-comics I got) but I just look at the pictures and Alien reads super-smoothly without the words.
Before I go, I have something for you, Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning Devil’s Cleavage star and (we’re sure!) devoted Comics Comics reader: Please consider Marc Bell, John Pham and I for 2012’s “drawing concert” (when cartoonists draw and it’s projected behind a band playing.) This year Baru, Flao and Chauzy drew with Jon Spencer’s Heavy Trash on the stage. Let the North Americans take over and show how it’s done! Frank of course wants in on this too. We will settle for any band! Just get us up there!
Labels: Angoulême, bande dessinée
“fuck off rape rape rape.”
I think that’s the slogan for their version of the McRib.
I don’t mind artists drawing on Wacoms. You don’t have to have a dead line as there are all sorts of sensitivity settings and brushes you can use to change the style of line- you could even just use the pen to select areas to fill in with a bucket if that’s what you wanted. And if you want to put stuff on a wall to look at you can always print it out.
Fwiw, there’s a translated (black and white, though) Nine Antico story up at Words Without Borders:
http://wordswithoutborders.org/graphic-lit/from-a-taste-of-paradise/
You can also use extra monitors and leave the stuff up there. But yeah, it’s a very different tool.
I’m with you, Dash, about Spiegleman getting the North Americans pushed. If anything, it’ll get them to stop asking about superhero comics in every damn interview regardless of the creator’s output. Michel Rabagliati was asked that even!?! There are superhero artists out there. Invite them! I’m sure JH Williams III would go big over there. We really need a chance on the world scale to show that were as diverse. Then again, it could also be misconstrued that the haughty Americans are just trying to take over like usually do.
Yeah! It’s about time the world payed some attention to the USA!
Where is that again? Somewhere near Mexico?
hmm… Before anyone gets worked up taking offense at that, perhaps I should say that anything that promotes international recognition of the breadth, depth and potential of the comics medium, as well encouraging folk to cast their gaze far and wide and keep their eyes and minds open, seems like a good idea to me.
Well, not absolutely anything, of course, but you get the idea.
OK, peace and love, y’all, and I just loove yer accent.
Uhm, I was just teasing because Marc and John and I went to the Baru Heavy Trash one and it looked like fun. Ha ha. Ah, whatever.
I kind of figured that after I posted, but I’m just tired of the uncomfortable pigeonholing NA cartoonists seem to get. I don’t know. I’ve never been, so maybe its not as bad as I think it is.
Sarcastic “humour” aside, I actually agree. I suppose really I think that affinities of sensibility and approach/attitude between artists should be the unifying factors, rather than just what country they’re from.
Whether Dash’s idea was floated in jest or not, some trans-continental collaboration like that, especially involving artists of the calibre mentioned, would surely be stimulating for both scenes, non?
Pipe-dream or not, it’s a tantalising idea anyway.
(note to self: must start using more smiley emoticon symbols online when trying to be funny)
‘coney island baby’ is the name of the nine antico book published by l’association. i’m about halfway through it, and i’m loving it so far. i’ll send you my copy when i’m done with it if you want it.
Jordan, I got a copy on it’s way- thanks, though!
that point about drawing comics entirely on the computer is something i’ve been thinking about. most of my “inking” is done digitally lately (i lay out and pencil the page by hand, scan the pages and draw the finished linework on top of it with my wacom tablet.) it’s become the most efficient way for me to work these days
but i’m interested in people who are able to do the whole thing on the computer, even down to the thumbnails/layouts/”pencils” part. when drawing with a tablet, you generally have to work super zoomed in, so it’s impossible for me to get a good sense of space or composition that way. i still have to rough everything out in a physical space in front of me before i do the digital steps, in order to have some sense of the page as a whole.
Simon Frazer does everything digitally I believe.
Frank Quitely, too. Everything but the colors. Not sure if he does those as well now that he’s there.
Freddie E. Williams II (I think he’s on a JSA book) wrote a book about the whole process. His art is definitely no my cup of tea, but it was an interesting read.
I bought a Cintiq tablet and now do most of my “penciling” and “inking” on it in an effort to expedite my process and increase my production. Time for me is more precious and important than the purity of working with pen on paper. I also hate scanning and cleaning scans in the pre-press phase. I think that interfacing with the screen using a stylus is the future. In five years, working digitally might be the dominant technique for creating comic books, so I figured I’d try to stay ahead of the curve. I’ve been experimenting with doing every step of comic creation digitally and doing rough layouts on paper and scanning them in. I’m not sure which I prefer yet. Doing the layouts on paper allows me to work at another location from my studio, which I like being able to do. But I think I work faster going right to the screen. Overall, it’s been revelatory. I really enjoy working on the Cintiq, way more than I thought I would. I never imagined I’d be creating drawings digitally.
I read Freddie E. Williams II book, The DC Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics, which was exceptionally helpful. Freddie also provides many helpful tools on his own website along with instructional demos.
Cue Queen: “Another One Bites The Dust”
I think sometimes drawing methods, mediums develop out of a kind necessity. In the case of Qu’elle Etait Bleue Ma Vallee, I would guess that Yeung worked digitally because most people in Hong Kong lived in such tiny apartments, he possibly doesn’t have enough wall space to tape pages onto, or that there’s no space to stand far enough to look at stuff taped to the wall or something along those lines…
I think things are definitely going to go more and more this way… who wants to drop $100 on a lightbox which is awkward to carry around when you could scan at home (a $100 purchase that can be used for OTHER things!).
Truth is, I didn’t have a lightbox until last May because I was so set up with my scanner and my laptop. Yet I never could fully get into the layouts that way, like you suggest. I got the lightbox as a gift (at my request), and I really love it as a way of working.
Working digitally just opens up the ‘lightbox method’ to a slew of people that for a very long time were unaware that so much work on comics was done with one (Hergé etc). So, folks are discovering ‘working in layers.’ It’s not all that different from the lightbox. Additionally, working in photoshop opens up a printmaking methodology to folks who before had only had access to paint and pencils. I’m big on painting, but I LOVE traditional printmaking. I love laying in solid blocks of color and experimenting that way. Photoshop allows people without access to a print studio to work this way.
Yeah, I’ve got one of those old hardback Judge Dredd annuals (1989?’88? Haven’t looked at it in a looong time) where Brian Bolland’s talking about this (relatively) convoluted process that Kevin O’Neill used to do Marshall Law, with the sponge-applied mottled watercolour n’ markers and then at the end he goes: “I’m old fashioned. I just use a brush”. And now Bolland’s completely digital! And I think it shows, his line looks “deader”…I’ve yet to see a book inked digitally that’s “fooled” me into thinking it was drawn “traditionally”–and no that’s not some sort of weird boast, I think you can just TELL….I dunno.
I can’t say I’m interested in Brian Bolland, I don’t own anything he’s done, but my impression was he’s a guy known for linework, sort of a British Dave Steven’s, and it surprised me when reading vollstick’s post to see Bolland has gone digital.
Looking at his web page that proves to be the case, and Bolland has a very long explaination of his tedious sounding digital methods:
http://www.brianbolland.net/lessons/gotham_nights_37/gotham_nights_introduction.html
As Bolland explains it you have to wonder how the process saves him time or results in better looking work.
The other thing which always occurs to me is, what about the lack of original art?
Isn’t the sale of original art potentially very lucrative? And Bolland is just the sort of “high polish” artist many original art collectors seek out, but Bolland’s digital method leaves him with no originals to sell.
Ironically Bolland mentions on his site that the amount of original art he has for sale is shrinking rapidly.
i heard another reason bolland went digital was the ability to zoom in and edit work which would save him the eye strain of working on paper.
Looking at a computer screen to battle eye strain?
I thought the “British Dave Stevens” was a pretty good comparison, never thought of Bolland in that way before!
with failing eye sight the ability to zoom right in on computer was part of the appeal for bolland to switch from paper
I happen to love Bolland’s work (he’s also the main influence on one of my other favorite comic artists Ethan Van Sciver, who’s been conspicuously absent from the funny pages recently) and was shocked to learn he’d been drawing digitally since the mid-to-late 90s (he wrote the intro to William’s DC-Guide book). He totally fooled me. I was also completely fooled by DeForge. I thought he did traditional inks when I initially encountered his work. But now I can see the digital-ness in it, I think.
But I guess it comes down to taste since I happen to love “dead,” generic, sterile line art. For some reason it has more personality to me. I like awkwardly self-conscious amateur stuff more than professional stuff from an artist who’s figured everything out. I’ll take Eric J’s work on Rex Mundi over any Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid. But I’m way in the minority. Probably the same for my attitudes toward digital drawing/inking.
I also wonder, since every page goes into and comes out of a computer at some point in the publishing process, all the artwork is being converted into “1s” and “0s” now, isn’t the result that everything is digital? Dash brings up a good point though about the occupation of space when you’re interfacing with the page during the drawing/creation process. When you’re working digitally the process takes place in you mind/imagination and in the illusion of ideas the screen presents you. Your forced to imagine elements’ relationships on the page. There are things I took for granted working traditionally like the subconscious consideration of a page’s natural borders and how that affected my spacial relationships on the page, within the panels. Now, working digitally, there are no borders. I work in PhotoShop for nearly eight hours a day for my job, so making the leap to thinking digitally made the leap easier I think.
The lack-of-original-art factor is a serious consideration. I know Williams will print out some choice, blue-line, digitally “pecilled” pages to ink traditionally and sell. I was thinking of getting a nice printer and selling archival prints of pages and coloring them with markers, making them each unique. Over time that course might bring in more dough than selling an original page one time. Just in the idea phase. I have no hard numbers.
I really liked Eric J’s art on the early Rex Mundi. I lost interest when they went with a “better” artist.
I don’t think it was a “better” artist, only a faster artist. Rex Mundi was well behind schedule when the artist switch happened.
So were the first three issues of “Night Business” drawn “traditionally” or digitally, Mr. Marra?
“Dead line”
does this just refer to lack of variation in line-weight, as also found in wire-line art done with tech-pens such as rapidographs, or are people noticing a kind of frictionless interaction between the sylus and the “paper” as well?
Or, some other kind of dead-ness?
I think that whatever the artist uses, if they manage to get something out of it: expression; elan; personality; affect/effect; whatever, then i’m going to have respect for it.
Still, I can’t help having a lot of affection for inky approaches, probably because my sensitivity to them has built up for longer.
A mechanical approach to colour doesn’t seem to be contraversial at all, just something that’s embedded in the tradition therefore worth clinging on to, or at least forgiven for its limitations, like a stubborn old friend.
“Dead” line usually (and in this context) refers to a line with no variation in width. Usually tech pens or stiff nib pens that don’t flex to produce thicker lines.
I’m gunna have to agree with Deforge on this one, maybe it’s just because I don’t have enough experience with tablets, but I find it incredibly hard to sketch rough layouts with them. I think the illustrations in that “Alien” book are really appealing. I like how the artist drew the version of a car that was in her head instead of using a reference. It would be cool to see you guys draw to crazy Animal Collective songs.
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