Lesson 5 Thursday April 27th

Photo referencing, tracing and redrawing get my comic in shape. The office power is out so my lightbox (well, the window I’m tracing on) becomes a sweatbox.

Séra is OK with the new simplified content and suggests some more small revisions to make it more fully realized. Nhek Sokhaleap, an illustrator from SIPAR is doing well with a wordless strip. Santapheap is doing computer comics, tres simple, almost like fumetti. Chan Nawath (Friends) is full of questions and anxious to read more foreign comics.

Other students also arrive late, with their two penciled pages for critique. Now that Khmer New Year is over we are finally getting some more participants, some from the Wat Phnom art school.

I want to redraw my last two panels. I also need some more background details, but first I’ll handle the difficult stuff with the cyclo.

Next up: inking with a nib pen. If you want to run with the professionals, I’d better use professional tools… results to follow!

Comics Workshop, Lesson 4:

April 26th
Devoted to critiques. My strip involves cyclos, cars, streets and several prominent buildings.
Sera suggests I cut the content down a bit, so it’s not an impossible task. Good call, less work!

It’s a challenge to show daily life here – I want to include as many details as possible, but I’m not sure if my technical skills are good enough. I’m completely self-trained.

We spend much of the session redrawing based on his recommendations. We also get another look at La Jetée as we draw.

Some of the new students have some Image Comics from USA, complete with plastic cover to keep it safe from harm. (If they were mine, I would do them harm.) Ugh, muscles and guns. There’s an entire library of bande dessinee upstairs, why don’t they look at that?

Bora’s disappeared, and Santapheap keeps protesting ‘Ot ceh ku roop!’ (I can’t draw.)

Cyclos are pretty hard to draw. I’m going to have to get some more reference.

Meanwhile, in France, more Cambodia memoirs are on the way from Institute Pacome and associates:

The weekend illiko
May 21, and 22 2005
“illiko” exposure meets draughtsmen authors and contemporary illustrators from the 20 to May 28, 2005 in Kingersheim www.crea-kingersheim.com

•You will note the behaviour of an exposure of Simon Hureau and Sylvain-Moizie “Two merry adventurers to Cambodia”, presenting illustrations, boards and sketch

- Simon Hureau in particular presents “OFFICE OF the PROLONGATIONS”, éd. Égo Comme X, second work on his voyage to Kampuchea.

- And Sylvain-Moizie presents his work “SEVEN MONTHS – and a week With SAUCE KHMÈRE”, work in two parts of which first fate in September 2005, éd. éd. La Boîte À Bulles.

•L’ Institut Pacôme will on the spot sell its works in the presence of ARIANE Pinel, Sylvain-Moizie, Baptist Virot, and more if interested.

Cafe Litteraire –

A walk through the exposition, lots of signing, and a half hour discussion of the book at Cafe CCF. I also borrowed the CCF video camera to shoot some video, it’s good to have a record of these things.

Sera did detailed drawings for each person who bought a book, a great way to do a signing.

Pictures and more details will follow, alas no immediate digital photos!

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?)