On the move: ANGOULÊME DAY 5 - LAST CALL

Before we head to the station and make our journey back to Denmark, here is one last picture post from moi. Enjoy.


The fair city of Angoulême

 

American cartoonist Nathan Schreiber at his workspace in Maison des Auteurs

The big head staue of Hergé had shades on this year

Crowds gathered outside the bars at night, oblivious of the cold

A poster for a TinTin movie for sale - text in Danish. Huh?

Sambre is one of my favorite French series, here depicted in a huge wall painting



The tents were packed Saturday morning




People sketching on the wall at Fluide Glaciale's booth



The show is over, the bars are empty. Me and Snejbjerg some of the only Danes left.



Time for one last sketch

 To all the artists, writers, editors and waiters I met here: Merci.

On the move: ANGOULÊME DAY 3 - HITTING THE WALL

These  posts are a delicate balance to write.

I don't want it to be look-at-me-in-fancy-places-meeting-fancy-people, I don't want it to be personal look-what-I-had-for-breakfast type posts. If I can, I will try to give a tip or two, some insights into what goes on at these places or maybe even discuss something that relates to other things, like what it is to be an artist or just a human being. So here's a more personal type of post. Don't worry, there will be plenty of name-dropping, just hang in there.

Yesterday I got up and went straight to the computer to answer e-mails and do a blogpost. An hour later, I still hadn't eaten anything or even had a glass of water and walking up the hill I had a splitting headache. Admittedly not the best start of a day. But the hangover was more of a psychological kind as I walked around the exhibition tents that were packed with comics fans in all ages and genders. I should have been thrilled to see all this interest for my field. I should have been enthused at looking at all this great art and inspired by the spirit of the festival.

Instead, it all felt overwhelming and my own role in all this seemed completely redundant.

Later on in the evening we ended up a bunch of comics guys discussing this topic. Hitting the wall. Feeling so small and useless in a sea of talent, that you just want to pack up and go home. I don't know if we broke a tabu but it seemed Danes and Americans alike lit up at the reveal that we all shared the same experience.

I don't know everything about how the creative brain works but it does seem to reach a point sometimes where it cannot process any more information and just wants to shut down. Where you can't look at any more art or meet any more interesting people. It creates a sinking feeling that I suppose is not unlike depression. I say this here, because we need to know it happens - and that it is okay. It's part of the human condition.

I hit my wall yesterday and I just wanted to go home and hug my kids. I felt like no one was even remotely interested in looking at my work and I completely understood why. It's useless! Look at all this other stuff! How can I compete, why even try?

In other words, I was being a self-centered little cry-baby.

Frustrated, I went into a crowded lunchtime café and got a soda at the bar, tried to check my e-mail but couldn't log on to their wi-fi. Double fail.

Then in the door walks Brian Azzerello.

I did promise name-dropping, right?

I've been a fan of Azarello's since his early work on Hellblazer, that was so scorchingly cynical and hardcore I'd never read anything like it. I was working on the layouts for The Devil's Concubine when 100 Bullets started coming out, and Azzarello's stark writing and Eduardo Risso's slick line art blew me away. The pages were so perfectly balanced, the blackness bled across panels and the colors were vibrant and bloody awesome. It looked exactly like my book! It was like they had plugged into my brain and pulled out the look and style that I was unable to put down on paper. Looking at Bullets, I knew how my book should be done. I tried putting it away and I tried to create my own style, but the damned thing had etched itself in my mind so permanently that The Devil's Concubine in certain places looks like - let's be brutally honest here - a rip-off.

Bumping into Azzarello like that, I had to shake his hand and thank him. I was able to fumble a book from my bag and give it to him, along with my sincere apologies. I said it with a smile and I hope he took the fact that I was so inspired by his work as a compliment. We had a nice little chat but I didn't want to outstay my welcome. I just felt honored and priviliged to be able to give something back.

As I left the café, I left my inner cry-baby behind.

Later I met US writer Joe Keatinge (see? more name-dropping) who I recently met in New York, and he was nice enough to introduce me to a couple of editors he knew. Suddenly my visit here seemed to make sense again. You can't plan things like these. But if you're not there, they certainly don't happen. When you hit that wall, you just have to wait for the sensation to pass through you. And it will.

I decided to let myself off for the night, had wine and a huge steak dinner with Peter Snejbjerg and got drunk with the rest of the Danes, pub-crawling in the little cobbled streets of the old town centre. Today, I'll try to see the museums and buy some gifts for the family at home.

No more self-pity. Promise.
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To Peter, Brian and Joe: Thank you.

Video: AMIR AND CRAIG THOMPSON

Iranian-American Writer of "Zahra's Paradise" Amir and writer/artist Craig Thompson, creator "Blankets" and "Habibi" interviewed at Angoulême comics festival, January 2012. The interviewer speaks French and takes his sweet time, but the answers from Thompson are surprisingly interesting!

On the move: ANGOULÊME DAY 2

Yesterday I met with a few editors and forced my book upon them. Incidentally that's also the plan for today. Show up, look around, be nice, leave my book, get out. When publishers are at events like this, their minds are of course preoccupied with a million other things than looking at a stranger's comic book. But it's also very convenient to have them all in one place, so I have to overcome my natural shyness and tiredness and push on.

Last night I met a couple of Brooklyn guys, George O'Connor and Nathan Schreiber, the latter an artist in residency here in Angoulême. We hooked up with Peter Snejbjerg and Jason Little, also from Brooklyn and Nathan showed us the studio space he occupies at Maison des Auteurs. Far too many drinks later we were back at Le Chat Noir where I bumped into Nick Bertozzi from Hang Dai Studios. I went all the way to France to hang out with Americans. Good times!

I also attended a talk with two American creators who each have books aboút the Middle East out; Amir, the writer of "Zahra's Paradise" and Craig Thompson, the sole force behind the tom "Habibi". I shot a video of some of it, I'll put it up tomorrow.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go climb this hill.

Angoulême in morning fog

On the move: ANGOULÊME DAY 1

View from the top: Angoulême, Thursday afternoon.

J'arrive!

Or something. I don't really speak French. I can order a coffee ("Café Long" is regular) and pronounce Gerard Depardieu correctly, but that's about it.

Last time I was at Angoulême was in ´98 or ´99. My first comic book was on it's way but not out yet and I was very new to the whole scene. A bunch of Danish comics guys have been coming here for years, but apparently it's the Swedes, Norwegians and Fins who have been heading up the Nordic presence at the festival, with tables and everything.

My travelling buddy Peter Snejbjerg and I arrived yesterday afternoon and checked in at Appart City, a relatively new apartment style hotel just outside the old city walls, a 10 minute walk from all the action. Constructed in and around a 12th century abbey, the place is a maze of corridors and the breakfast room is obviously too small for the crowd it attracts this time of year. But it's a good deal. There's a bathroom and kitchenette in every room and it's close. Getting a hotel room around Angoulême in January can be really tough, so I can highly reccomend this place.

Walking up the hill to the centre, you instantly know you're entering comics territory. It's a wonderfully widespread festival, with expos and comics all over the city. Angoulême is very small and the narrow, winding streets are filled with comics fans and creators, going from one bar to the next, the conversation flowing freely. For a laid back pub crawl-style comics festival in an exotic location, Angoulême is certainly the place to be.

Even the buses are decorated to suit the festival. Angoulême goes all in.

After registering at the Hotel de Ville, we just had to get one of those free cognac drinks at the press lounge.

The Indie scene here is great! So much to see, exhibitions and book sales in bars and shops all over the city.

I want to get up the hill and submerge myself in comics now, but I'll be sure to let you all now what you're missing.

Tip of the day: When you order a "medium" cooked steak in France, it's bloody red. Just saying.

On the move: ANGOULÊME

Tomorrow I am off for the annual comics festival in Angoulême, France. I will bring my book The Devil's Concubine in the hopes of a sale to the French market. I'm sorry for the lack of posts on here in the past weeks where I have been insanely busy. Please come back in the next days for an inside report from the biggest comics festival in France.

So long, Adieu!

Bonus info: Apart from the obvious  influences from French noir in the book, the original title was actually a direct translation into Danish of MC Solaars song La Concubine de l'hémoglobine. A friend of mine dug pitched the title and something with a drug and rastafaris in it. I worked the script from there.

Working methods: MAKING TROUBLE

Here's something I picked up at the first week of Film School. Something that didn't make me feel too good about myself.

You see, storytellers are actually sadists.

As a writer, you have to want to torment your characters. You have to want to throw them to the wolves, have them bombarded with all kinds of trouble. Trouble is good. It's the only way they are ever going to change. Change is the reason we watch movies, read stories. We want to see something happen. We want to believe that things can change. Not always for the better.

If you keep your characters happy, they're never going to get off the couch. Who wants to see that?

We want to see people make the wrong choice, to want the wrong things. We fear for them and we yell at the screen: Don't go down the cellar! Don't rob the bank! Don't shoot him! But at the same time, we secretly want it to happen. It's not about right and wrong. It's about hopes and fears. Hoping they make it, fearing they won't.

Storytellers are troublemakers by trade. Let's go make some trouble.

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Thanks to Lars Detlefsen at the National Film School of Denmark.

Interviewed: DREW RAUSCH

Drew Rausch is the spooky co-creator of the subculture hit SULLENGREY and Lovecraftian Monster-Punk series, ELDRITCH!. Proof of his artistry can be seen in the pages of Boom Studios’ Cthulhu Tales and Zombie Tales, SLG's Haunted Mansion, and The Secrets of Sarah Winchester.  He has since moved to Southern California where he continues to make comics and is determined to memorize the lyrics to Dramarama's "Anything, Anything".

What comics or art projects are you working on right now?Currently I am neck deep in drawing a Lovecraftian sibling rivalry digital comic called ELDRITCH!, written by Aaron Alexovich. I also moonlight as the co creator of SULLENGREY along with writer and photographer Jocelyn Gajeway. It's a story of a town that due to a past tragic event, the inhabitants ignore everything they are afraid of causing their fears to build up and manifest.

What other artists in your field inspire you?
A better question would be, what other artists DON'T inspire me? Since it all depends on how I feel and what I'm working on, to outright name drop I feel would date this interview. Some of my strongest influences though, I would say, are guys like Tim Burton, Charles Addams, Bill Watterson, Dave McKean, John K, Jim Smith, Pierre Alary, Dan Brenton, and anyone from the German Expressionism age. Even working with Aaron has taught me tons! This could go on forever.

Do you work out of your home or do you have an office/studio space?
I work out of home right now. But someday I would love to have a studio space. That type of freedom sounds divine.
What upcoming projects are you most excited about and why?Projects that I'M going to be involved in? Well after ELDRITCH! I think there's going to be another SULLENGREY and hopefully another ELDRITCH!. Working with these characters and these worlds has been a blast. I love stories where I get to pull back the camera way back and see the whole inner workings of a town or a city. Before that though, I'm going to attempt to make homemade doughnuts. Pretty excited about that.

Outside of my own personal journeys into unknown baking territory, I really haven't kept up with what's coming out. I'm still trying to catch up on all the cool stuff I missed!

Where do you see comics heading in the next 5 years?
There will always be comics in some form or another. Whether digital becomes the norm or the Laserdisc of the comic reading format, Comics are offering something it's needed in a long time, change. It's now up to fans, new and old, to either embrace it or ignore it. It's rather exciting. I hope in 5 years, it's even more so.

See more of Drew's work at http://sullengrey.blogspot.com/ and the ELDRITCH! website: www.heartshapedskull.com/ELDRITCH

On the move: FILM SCHOOL DAY 1

Today I began my new life as a student at the National Film School of Denmark, where I will be spending a week out of every month studying screenwriting in an exclusive 6-person Master Class ending in December of this year. The goal is to produce a feature length script while learning about the craft and business of screenwriting.

Our teachers introduced us to the school and some of the methods taught there. One was the Hollywood versus the Polish version of your script, where you write to alternative versions of your screenplay; One a cheesy, over-the-top happy-ending version, the other a drab, dreary and depressing version, supposedly made to be filmed in Poland. Which of course ends badly. The idea is to free yourself from the pressure of writing the PERFECT version, and then later pillage from your own purposefully bad versions in order to gain insight and ideas you never would have put in your "right" script. The method reminded me of what I often do when making comics, where I sketch on scraps of paper or crappy printed-outs instead of on the board, where anything less than perfect tends to scream in my face.

The day ended with us meeting the script consultant who'll be following our individual progress throughout the year. Luckily my guy liked the pitch I gave and had some really helpful input.

I'm really excited about this course and looking forward to the rest of the week. If art posts are few and far between these days, well, now you know why.

Interviewed: AARON ALEXOVICH

Whoa, 2012 already?! Don't know how that happened. Happy New Year everybody!

As you know I've been posting little 5 question interviews with artist and writers in the US comics industry this past year or so, trying to promote some talent you may not have seen and learn from other pros. At Comic Con in San Diego I met two gifted gentlemen who were really fast to reply, but it has taken me forever to publish the interviews - Sorry about that!

Anyway, alphabetically, here's the first of the two interviews.
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Aaron Alexovich is a comic book artist, writer, animation character designer and non-graduate of the prestigious California Institute of the Arts. Born and raised in Chicago, Aaron moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in moving pictures, but wound up in the much more comfortable world of non-moving pictures instead. He's worked as a character designer on Jhonen Vasquez' Invader Zim, Avatar: The Last Airbender, hordes of TV pilots and video games, and as a comic artist on Fables, Lucifer, Disney's Haunted Mansion, Kimmie66 and his own creator-owned horror/comedy series Serenity Rose.

Aaron's home on the internet is www.HeartShapedSkull.com

What comics or art projects are you working on right now?

Right now I'm just wrapping up work on a new Lovecraft-ish monster/punk series called ELDRITCH!, with artwork by Drew Rausch. I wrote it, Drew and I collaborated on the page layouts and character designs, he did all the heavy artistic lifting. We're self-publishing it on the web as a super high-tech futuristic digital download right now, and that's been a really interesting experience... We feel we're really on the cutting edge with these ancient, antediluvian terrors of ours.

What other artists in your field inspire you?
Like every other artist, I could go on for like 300 pages just listing all my favorite artists. I'd say my art style comes mostly from Bill Watterson, Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki, and the old EC Comics guys, particularly Jack Davis. Jill Thompson, Bernie Wrightson, Dave McKean, Charles Burns, and all the classic Disney animators are all big influences, as well. I like work that has a lot of energy and emotion. Art is all about mood, I think, and these guys really know how to work a mood. I look for the same thing in writing, too. Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Dan Clowes, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, and filmmakers like the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino are all really important to me. Again, it's all about their ability to capture a specific mood. I want to get lost in a world when someone's telling me a story. I'd rather not be aware of technique at all.

 Do you work out of your home or do you have an office/studio space?
I work at home. In fact, I work in my living room. I really like working from my own home, but a couple extra walls would be nice!

What upcoming projects are you most excited about and why?

I'm starting in on Volume 3 of my Serenity Rose series right now. It's a series I started on the web way back in 2002, about a massively social-phobic witch living in a small town that survives on supernatural tourism. Kind of an occult Disneyland, I guess. It's mostly tongue-in-cheek, but with moments of real, awful horror mixed in. It's a really personal project to me... If I had my way, I'd spend the rest of my life building up Serenity's little witching world.

Where do you see comics heading in the next 5 years?
More and more online, I'd say. Lots of self-published digital comics. There isn't a huge amount of money in comics, and it seems like publishers are offering less and less as time goes by, so the incentive for artists to hand over their creative rights just isn't there anymore. Even properly promoting a new artist's work seems out of most publishers' range these days. It's sort of a cliche to say so, but the internet really has changed the whole landscape. If, as an artist, you can get your own personal, creator-owned work out to hundreds of thousands - even millions - of people without ever signing a contract... that certainly has a lot of appeal. I think you're going to see more and more artists striking out on their own as digital publishing continues to expand and devour the earth. Terrifying and exciting at the same time!