papernoise blackbook

My cover and artwork for the music EP It’s the End was just published on the illustration portal IllustrationServed, you can check it out here: www.illustrationserved.com/gallery/Its-the-End-EP-Artwork

War: The Human Cost is a comic anthology and CD recently released by UK indie pubblisher Paper Tiger Comix. The Book has been in production for several years now, facing different challenges such as fundraising. I’m really glad they now made it into the public!

The book contains one of my really old stories, titled The Hunter, a story I made when the second Irak war broke out.

For more info look here: http://www.facebook.com/sean.tiger or here http://www.myspace.com/paper_tiger_comix

Some more material from my summer sketchbook.

I’ve spent 3 years working on a graphic novel about jazz music, and this made me discover and appreciate many musicians I didn’t know (or didn’t know well) before. Still I can’t say that I’m a Jazz addict, even while drawing Gietz!, most of the time I would listen to completely different music, like The Cure or some chiptunes. At one point I felt the need to find some flavour of contemporary Jazz that was somehow more in line with my taste. I dicovered a whole new world!

There’s this current in Jazz which is called Dark Jazz, or Doom Jazz which is a mix of dark athmospheres, weird soundscapes and e-piano. There’s two great bands I would recomend: Bohren and the Club of Gore and The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble. Check out the videos below:

Another great band I would recommend is Movits! Those Swedish guys created the perfect mix between Django Reinhard, Swing and Hip Hop. I’ve been listening to this a lot while drawing Gietz! It perfectly fitted with the mood of the comic, and was energetic enough to fuel my motivation!

Short comic created for the anthology Antologia illustrata del frastuono più atroce (Lamette).

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

Détective Noir et La Trapèze by Ryan Licata

He awoke tied ten feet off the ground to one of the poles in her act, his head aching, and, the worst of it, his coat missing. A spotlight came on, blinding him. Shielding his eyes he spotted her, in penumbra, a tightrope away, her long, shapely legs glitzy in tights stretching out from under his coat. Then the spotlight took to her completely. And she stepped out, onto the rope, her balance out-of-this-world, loosening a button with every step she made, until, by the middle of her act, she was done with it. He marvelled, as his coat fell.

IL giorno dell oca by Scoiattolazzo

Libellule polacche strozzate dal gas.
Cigni ungheresi morti di inedia.
I forti tori dell est, decimati.

C’e’ puzza, ed un vento abominevole, mentre l oca dagli anfibi neri fa il verso all acquila.
E nell anfratto schifoso e osceno dove medita, anche il diavolo distoglie lo sguardo davanti all orrore.
Anni dopo a  Norimberga, 17 oche vengono giudicate, impiccate,  fatte a pezzi e bruciate nei loro stessi forni.
Vittime… carnefici….specchi distorti.
C’e’ gente che giura che tra una sentenza e l altra si e’ sentito piu’ di un quack, provenire da dei giudici dal becco giallo.

Note

The hundred word stories are back! There have been time when I thought that never again I would find the strength to draw a line. But probably I just needed to focus on something completely different (like synths and making some music) Giètz! has put my mind and body to great fatigue. Drawing a graphic novel is alway hard, but when the product of your efforts feels like something alien, it’s even worse. I still think that in the end I did a decent work, and that Giètz! is an interesting project, worth being made, and that I needed to be working on it. It’s been a great experience. Nonetheless, now more than ever, I know what path I want to be travelling on, so it’s great to see that my lust for drawing is coming back again!

Détective Noir by Ryan Licata

From his ninth storey window the city lights, on and off, created a mosaic against the night. He swigged neat whiskey from a tumbler, staring in at all those well-lit apartments. In rooms and kitchens, against curtains drawn, he could see the cut-out silhouettes of people having their parties. Women, their necks thrown back, mouths agape, laughing their heads off; and men, hanging up their dinner jackets, loosening their neckties, smoking short-cropped cigars. He smoked one himself, raised his drink. Let them have their fun with the lights on, for later, in the dark, he knew it would be murder.

Notes

This is the first Detective Noir story by Ryan Licata, the first one he wrote, (I had published the second one, Detective Noir et la Chatte, already some time ago here). It was his idea that the detective should looks somehow like me. I will do the whole bunch in the next weeks, they make up a nice little series inside his hundred word stories.