Back to Switzerland

Time flew by again (or maybe I got sucked up in a temporal vortex) and somehow 2 months just happened in a blink of an eye...
To summarize, we moved to Atlanta (check), everyone survived (check) and life there was nice but here I am again in Switzerland for an undisclosed amount of time. O.o (or maybe I actually got sucked up in spatio-temporal vortex - go figure..)
Anyhow, life goes on and in the latest news Dee and I finished a short story (yay!) that is going to be printed in an anthology very soon and the whole product will kick some serious ass as some serious kick-ass artists are taking part in it! :D We shall definitely post more about it very soon.

On the other hand, I have been busy with various other non-artistic stuff but got to tour Switzerland for a couple of days with a visiting friend and suddenly re-discovered how beautiful this country is! (gasp!!)
So here are some pics to make you envious ;P
To begin with, this is the room where Einstein honed his theory of relativity

which is situated in the heart of the old town of Bern, the capital of Switzerland:

 

From there we went to the magical mountain village/town of Grindelwald where we took a train to the Top of Europe (and no, I'm not joking!) - Jungfrau joch. 

It is unfortunate that it is quite impossible to capture the beauty of the morning light in the mountains on camera in a realistic way - it looks as if paths of light steam down from the sky to the Earth, carrying mountain fairies and wind spirits in them and when you breathe it smells of life and freshness..

The view on the biggest European mountain glacier from the "Sphinx" - the high platform on the Jungfrau side was stunning - the sky was clean indigo and the immaculate snow shone with a myriad of diamond sparks - a view it is impossible to get tired of..

 

 

What is really wonderful in a mountain country is that in a matter of an hour you can go from summer to winter. From Grindelwald we traveled to Interlaken - a town between 2 lakes where we did some paragliding in the sunset... which made me miss Switzerland very cruelly ^^;

The second day we spent in Montreux - a beautiful riviera town on the Leman lake with its famous Chillion castle that inspired many artists and writers.

 

It is amazing how a trip of 2 days seems like a whole week in a completely different world. So there for a very long post! :D

Cheers!

-Tacto

moving, wicked, singapore

In 2 weeks Chris and I will be leaving the beautiful city of San Francisco to move to Atlanta. Even though I am a little sad that our West Coast time is over, I am also pretty excited about the change. I have never lived on the East Coast (and never actually been to Atlanta), so it will be a very new experience :D
So what do you you do in the last 2 weeks before a major move? Aside from packing (I spare you the photos of boxes and the general chaos of the apartment..), organizing the plane for the cats, looking for the new apartment, grinding away the work etc etc? Well you do what you always wanted to do in the city but never found the time to so far. So yesterday night we went to see the "Wicked" musical at the Orpheum theater and it was absolutely amazing. From the building (the ceiling inside is amazing) to the decors and costumes and , of course, the wonderful performance, it was a fantastic experience. If you have the possibility to go and see it, do it, it's absolutely worth it.

This also compelled me to a new resolution: when we get to Atlanta, I shall make a conscious effort to start discovering/enjoying the city from the beginning! So you'll hear about it. Finally, again, courtesy of the hectic moving, the manga/comics-related updates take longer than I wish, but bear with me, we'll be back! :D

And last but not least, if you guys enjoy travelling blogs with a sense of humor, I highly recommend checking Dee's and Al's blog where you'll get to discover Singapore, its culinary highlights and dangers! - http://aldeesg.blogspot.com

-tacto

BD and manga on the iPhone, phones and Mac/PC!

So this time, I was rather surprised to read an article in a local Genevan paper on a new site - www.ave-comics.com - which is launching now and will be providing a selection of comics and manga for reading on the phone or computer via a special viewing software they developed. The software will be downloadable for I-Phones, I-touch, Blackberry, Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones as well as PC and Mac. The originality of this digital reader is the zoom system and the reading feature that goes from panel to panel as well as the whole page by page reading (see example here: http://www.ave-comics.com/fr/avepreview/

Different comics (BD) and manga titles will be available in french, spanish and english languages and should cost less than their paper counterparts, according to the site (however, individual volumes of the first comic in the manga category - "Eat it fresh" (I say this, since it is another european/manga hybrid, created by a french team Paka) cost 1.59Euros for 19pages (roughly 2,23USD - which doesn't seem like such a great deal for the manga format to me); on the other hand, the different color BD available range from 46 to 92 pages for 4,99Euros (circa 7USD) - which is certainly much better than the paper version for around 18USD).

The categories available are Manga, Comics, Adventure, Humor and Kids, with interestingly a selection of old US comics in english in the Comics category (in french-speaking world, the term "comics" usually designates american comics, much as "manga" designates japanese comics and "BD" refers to european style/format). The current selection is pretty small, but since the site just launched we can assume that they will be expanding it gradually.

Also, Ave!Comics apparently intends to work with any publisher who would be interested and offers the adaptation of titles for their format and installation of the titles with their reader on their own website or the website of the publisher.

As I understand it, Ave!Comics is still in a very early stage of its launch and more time is needed to see how successfully they will develop and how interesting their offer will be for the readers, content and price-wise. But this is definitely an interesting enterprise to follow.

-tacto

french-speaking comic/manga scene (EDIT! :D)

Since I regularly find myself in the french-speaking part of Switzerland next to the French border, I decided to try and post regular follow-ups on the happenings in the french-speaking comics (bande dessinee)/manga world.

For those who might be unfamiliar with the french-speaking comics/manga scene, I think it's worth mentioning that french-speaking comics (aka "bande dessinee") had (and still have) a big presence and role in Europe, beginning with the world-famous TinTin. Several prestigious art-schools dedicated to sequential art exist in France, Belgium and Switzerland and have produced numerous best-selling artists.

Traditionally, a standard BD volume is published full-color, hard-cover, and has around 48pages for an average price of 20USD. In the past decade, however, french-speaking BD market has seen an enormous boom of manga titles, which was largely enabled by several french TV shows for teens that aired for several years in the late 80ties - early/mid 90ties and ran numerous cult anime series (such as Dragon Ball, Rose of Versailles, Knights of Zoodiac, Lupin the 3rd, Orange Road, Golgo 13, Galaxy Express 999, Captain Harlock, Sherlock Holmes, and a good hundred of others) with an excellent voice-dubbing, which led to the creation of a whole "Generation Manga" of hard-core anime fans who naturally enabled and devoured the paper manga boom that followed in the libraries.

Currently, every big BD publisher also has a manga-publishing line. Moreover, gradually more and more french-speaking and european artists inspired by the manga style started to create their own titles and be published in BD color format but with a heavily manga-influenced style.

One of the artists (Aurore) has just seen her first title "Pixie" (scenario by Mathieu Mariolle) licensed by Tokyopop and published in a smaller format, soft-cover, full-color in the US: http://auroreblackcat.deviantart.com/art/Pixie-USA-released-112832461.

This movement is definitely similar to the OEL movement in the US, although probably more of a blend between BD and manga than its american counterpart. So this is it for an ultra-fast introductory post! Let me know if you have specific areas/questions you would like to see covered (or if you have interesting stuff to add) :D

EDIT: Amy Kim Kibuishi, the creator of the lovely "Sorcerers and Secretaries" published by Tokyopop asked me the pertinent question of whether I had more european/manga hybrid titles to recommend.

And this definitely sparked my interest... because I don't really know much about them! So I am setting out on a crusade to discover the hybrids over Europe and bring them to light! :D

In that sense, I feel that I cannot close this post without mentioning the excellent work of Yishan Li, a chinese artist based in UK with already an impressive number of titles under her belt. I shall definitely come back to her work later on, but would just like to mention that you might well already know her, since she has taken over the "Adventures of CG!" in Cosmogirl from 2007 to 2008, the page strip started by Svetlana Chmakova: http://www.cosmogirl.com/funandgames/manga/

Cheers!

-tacto

east coast adventures

Once again, I made the now almost traditional several days stop in Boston on my way over to Geneva. Aside from putting Dee hopelessly behind on her packing for the big move to Singapore there was, of course, plotting for comics, the amazing food orgy with the now traditional coconut shrimp, a killer lemon cake, some delicious sushi and breakfast waffles etc etc. Needless to say, I was glad they don't make you pay extra on the plane for your own extra weight afterwards.... >_<;

Of course, it's impossible to sum up all the good stuff that happened but I am going to focus on 2 highlights: Onikimono pages and a flash 1,5 day trip to NYC.

Indeed, I had the immense privilege to go digging through (under the cover of packing it) Dee's original pages and illustrations for her webcomic "Onikimono,the Detectives of the Orient". Of course I already knew Dee's amazing inking and toning skills, but I have to say that seeing actual original inked pages was a very unique, moving and humbling experience. So I forced her hand a bit and made some pics for your enjoyment too - here is the first (!!!) Onikimono page evar with the traditionally applied japanese screen-tones (!!!!!) and some pages from a side story about Kamrauch's childhood (which has not been seen by anyone except the author, which is, in my view a huge shame) and finally some great backgrounds of japanese-styled houses.

I am sure that Onikimono fans will be as moved as I was and if you haven't read the story yet, do yourself a favor and go read it on Wirepop now - www.wirepop.com (but don't tell Dee I said that or she'll get mad..>.<)!!!!

Finally, on a whim of a not too bad weather we took off for a 1,5 day to go to NYC and visit the remains of the World Fair 1964 in the Corona Park in Queens. We wondered there for several hours looking for vestiges of the past, comparing the now and then and imagining stories along the way. For me, the most impressive thing was definitely the Unisphere, but the Tent and Towers of Tomorrow (see Men in Black) were very amazing too.

We had also a great meal in a very nice japanese restaurant that we discovered with the merry manga-tribe during our trip to NYCC this February (where we had to figure out a technique to eat whole grilled fish without its bones..) If you get a chance to pass by NYC, definitely try Donburi-Ya on the 47th street! :D

and a big, big highlight for me: the Vagabond mural by Takehiko Inoue in NYC Kinokunya! Gasp!!! @__@

Last but not least.... you remember I found a Spiderman on a Genevan wall? .. well, I _do_ suspect that he follows me around.. LOOK!!!! in NYC!!!! :O

So that's it for now about the Boston stop. Some missed planes and traveling hours later, comic news from Geneva will be coming up later this WE! :D

Cheers!

coffee junkee (2)

I somehow caught myself on the fact that most of my main characters are men. I wonder why is that? So now I make a conscious effort to pay more attention to my female heroes.

Have you a preference in identifying yourself in your stories? A dashing knight? A tomboy? A Teddy Bear?? :D

coffee junkee (?)

Ha! Finally a sketch on the blog! :D This is a character for one of the current 2 candidates for the short story Dee and I are going to do for an anthology. "Coffee Junkee" is the temporary title I'll go by for now (usually Dee makes fun of my ability to come up with lousy titles/names, so don't get attached to it! XD)

Actually, we have a good drawer of sketches from the project we have been working on for the past year, but after deliberation we decided to post only new fresh stuff, so here we go. Cheers! ^^