Lesson 3(and a quick writeup because I need to do some more visual reference).

With our simple sketches in hand, Séra takes a look and critiques them for both form and content.

- One interesting observation: idealism can be dangerous – it was a weapon of both the KR and fascist governments. If we incorporate idealism into our works, what is it in the service of? What is our intent? Is it just a lazy shortcut?

Quote for the day: (as best as I can translate) “The first job of an illustrator is always to look.”
We discuss visual techniques for memory and nostalgia: Wong Kar Wei uses a blue tint for his ‘Days of Being Wild’, while his Chung King Express uses a blue tint to indicate night time, neon, cities. ‘CKE’ also has a good setup and example of subjective vision.

Student Chan Nawath (art teacher from Mit Samlanh) takes great interest in this as well as the use of color in depicting the past in ‘Impasse et Rouge and ‘Water and Earth’. He’s a big fan of Bilal, I must bring in my copy of ‘Immortel‘.

We move on to Katsuhiro Otomo’s ‘Memories’, a masterful work. Discussion continues on depicting history – alternative history, (i.e.) ‘Cannon Fodder’ and Séra notes a citation in his own work of Jaques Tardi, another classic artist who weaves his narrative around historical frameworks.

(I doubt that a Anglophone class would have such an emphasis on cinema, which I don’t mind at all. It raises another question for me: why is there such an Anglophone/Francophone comics divide?)