June 14th, 2010
I had another terrible week. A week where I had no time ad all the wonderfully superfluous things like, among others, updating my blog. Maybe I have to accept the things as they are and renounce one and for all to the idea of posting here regularly… but whatever…
It’s no news that I don’t read a lot of comics anymore. I prefer to inspire myself with other media, like for example novels. I’ve stumbled over a couple of really interesting readings lalely, which I’d like to talk about here.
The first one is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a book that take the original novel by Jane Austen and turns it into something you’d actually want to read (as the book itself states). Apart from the illustrations, which are just plain lousy (why do they pay people like that to illustrate a book, while talented people have a hard time getting commissions?) and the fact that the book is no easy reading, it’s a great experiment and great fun to read most of the time. The author keeps the original plot and linguistic style, adddins a bit of zombies, gore and martial arts here and there. While this novel is not perfect (sometimes it can be tiresome to read, due to the old fashioned language, and the there’s some problems with the storyline here and there) I highly recomend it!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies
Another book I’d like to talk about it In Cuniculum by Lapin. Unfortunately this one’s only available in English, but since It contains several illustratins by me, (attention: subliminal advertising) I though I’d talk about it anyway. Lapin has a highly imaginative and surreal way of writing, the short stories that make up In Cuniculum are sometimes shocking, sometimes fascinating. One way or the other, Lapin knows how to surprise you and the book is a great read I hope he’ll get it translated in the future!
www.lacarmelinaedizioni.it
January 15th, 2010
Jazz Friday talks about music, art and probably a lot about my latest comic Gietz. Jazz Friday will be published weekly, each Friday. Jazz Friday will feature “making of” and “behind the scenes” content, as well as some tutorials. Jazz Friday is something I have been wanting to do for some time now… And now… let’s get on with it!
Gietz, the origins, or… why did I accept to do this in the first place?
First sketch I made of the protagonist, Nico
Sometimes I still ask myself, why did I accept to work on this comic? I was already sick of historical stuff, of stories dealing with reality, of documentaries and documentation. Round and Round had proved that, this was not the type of comics I wanted to be working on. So why draw Gietz? The answer is: there’s nothing I like more than a good challenge… and Gietz was a huge challenge for me. Fortunately it wasn’t a real historical comic. Though the story is set in a precise time (the fifties in Italy) the plot and the main characters are all fictional. For me the challenge was to work on something bigger than what I had done until then (the longest story I drew was 33 pages). The 130 pages of Gietz looked like a good exercise, and in fact they were. 
I’ve learned a lot of things from this work. First of all I refined my techniques, I learned to keep on fighting even when I could no more. I have become a lot better in evaluating and managing my time and I have developed a lot of tricks to make work easier and quicker (tricks I will be talking about soon!) This will probably be the last comic of this kind I will be working on for some time, from now on I want to focus more on my deformed, grotesque style, but forcing myself to draw this way has been very important. 
The other reason why I have accepted to work on this project is certainly my interest for the relationship between music and comics. I have always found it to be a really fascinating one. Not only because I love music, as I love comics, but because I think that these two languages somehow complement each other well. So, while Gietz might be the last comic of this kind for me, I’m really glad I had the chance to be working on it!
November 20th, 2009
Sometimes the forgotten past comes into your life like an unexpected visitor and sometimes you re-discover parts of yourself through it…
A couple of weeks ago me and Elisabeth went with my mother up the mountains, to the village where she was born, to visit our relatives. At one point we took a walk through the woods and I discovered this really weird “pietà” sculpture (a Madonna holding a dying Christ, which you can’t really see in the picture above). What I like about it is, that the face is completely white and the eyes look more like empty holes giving it a pretty unsettling effect. The figure looks more like a ghost or a vampire, than the grieving mother we are used to see.
According to my mother this sculpture was made by a granduncle of mine called Joseph Ploner, better known in the village as “Weber Våter”, who got into wood sculpture when he was 80. Somehow it makes me think that a certain interest for the macabre and the unsettling might have its root in the family… at least on a latent, unconscious level. Now that I think of it, many of the old iron crosses in the village’s cemetery where made by my grandfather (should take pictures of those too, there were just too many people in the cemetery last time).
The unexpected visitor might have opened a door I had forgotten.
July 9th, 2009
A self portrait I made for my profile on deviantart. The being on my back is called Octoskull and it’s my new pet.
