a preview
i'm getting impatient waiting for The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard to come back from the printer in Hong Kong. I may see a copy later this month, but it will still be a while before the boxes arrive by sea mail. So here is a small excerpt to whet your appetite and keep you interested. I've cut the pages so they can be readable here on the main page (Blogger resizes things according its own logic unless you take pains to outwit the system): 
I see via my pal Dirk Deppey that I'm being discussed here. Both blogs reproduce an image I drew as part of a set of question-answers for the Powell's site two years ago as promo for Fate of the Artist (It's been linked in my sidebar for some time). They invite an author to select between six and ten questions from a bunch of twenty. The Bookseller was having a special 'graphic novel' month and somebody had the interesting idea of asking me to do my Q&A as a set of cartoons. I thought that was nuts as it would take me longer to draw it than a regular author to just type his answers. So I grudgingly did it. I wish I'd spent more time and enthusiasm on it as it turned out to be very popular for its novelty value. You can still read it here. If you click on the first image you can see it all as a slidshow.
I think a few other cartoonists drew their Q&A after that, if you want to browse around the site.
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"Men love women, women love children and children love hamsters. It's all hopeless." -Alice Thomas Ellis
Labels: Leotard
posted by Eddie Campbell at
00:00
6 Comments:
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ah, Leotard! And I've yet to get Black Diamond! Still can't find it in Manila, though the other First Second books seem to be everywhere: I got Mohican Country and one of Sfar's books for 90% off the original price in a booksale bin! Happy to see books coming out regular from you again, sir. It means a lot.
"In the Deppey TCJ interview, Campbell notes that Pete Mullins did many of the architectural backgrounds in From Hell by copying photographs "onto a background," and the results look false to me, the way rear projection in movies looks false as flesh-and-blood actors travel through flattened space."
That was quoted from the discussion eddie linked to. Ive always wondered about the illusion of reality so many people seem to regard as necessary in movies and computer games. Ive always been drawn in more when I realise it is all fake, it isn't real. Rear projection in movies looks false, remind you you are watching a movie, and in my case, make the story even more real. Theatre is more convincing then most movies, despite the falsity of the props. the first starwars movies were more convincing as movies, despite the lower technical (and therefore realistic) level of special effects. I suspect it is because they ask you to play along, use your imagination etc, and generally involve you more then movies that try to sustain the illusion of reality. I always remember a story I heard of how hitchcock would put lightbulbs inside a glass of milk, just to make it glow, all these little tricks, not to highten the reality of his movies so much as to highten the drama in a particular scene.
Thanks for the sliver of Mr. Leotard, Eddie.
I wish I'd spent more time and enthusiasm on it
Greene and Hearn's bio of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz artist W.W. Denslow has a story about 'Den' whipping his way though a last-minute ad for chewing tobacco. It turns out that the company plastered and painted his design on just about every barn and siding in New England. In an 1899 interview, Denslow said, "At first I was rather pleased . . . , but soon began to see the defects of my work. I grew to detest this particular showcard [sic]. I dreamed of it at night, I trembled least anyone should discover that my hand drew the horrible object."
There's nothing quite like being your own worst critic.
Well, actually, it does seem rather rude of the folk to ask you to draw your questions and answers. I noticed that kind of attitude a lot when I was writing for comics. I tried always to treat comic artists with more respect than that, but I'd see other people just assume it was no effort at all to ask an artist to do this thing which they could not do at all.
I'm glad you did it, though. It was very amusing.
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