Blazing Squids #01

Last Saturday, I saw a documentary about the 90s. It was cool. We the Danish people were successful in sports, there were all kinds of new music genres and we had a social demo-cratic government.Our last horde has been a kind of dark composed to this. The coolest things happen-ing from 2000-09 has been slim-fit jeans and suits, the whole retro-vintage movement and the fascination of all things kitsch and colorful from the 80s. There has also been a lot of right wing po-litical shit and the racism and capitalism has grown with it. A lot of cultural in-stitutions have been closed in that decade. (also there haven’t been really any sub-cultures appearing except for maybe some emoism but most only for kids 10 or under. It has been a fash-ion dominated decade. However some good ex-treme things in color and fit spawned outta this)

So I was really relieved when the clock turned 10:00 on N.Y.E. a few weeks ago. I had just bought a sec-ond-hand trasher magazine from ‘88 filled with pink and yellow colors, and kids with large holes in their jeans. I hope that the 10’s are gonna be a naturally bet-ter continuation of the 2000’s just as the 90’s were a natural product of some depressed years in the cold war 80’s.

Christyan

Blazing Squids #01

Created and edited by Christyan Lundblad and Igor Noronha

300 copies

Contributors: Car-men Hannibal, Saman-tha Torres, Kenneth Ladekjer, Drude Mand-gaard, Denis Chapon, Igor-Alban Chevalier, Henrik Wallmark.

Photos: Martin Bested

Contact (temporary):[email protected]

Financially supported by the Open Workshop.

Our apologies to the Vegeterrible group, that was completely forgotten in the last issue.

This magazine is freed from any political or commercial interests.

Carmen Hannibal, KAU 2009

Kenneth Ladekjer, KAU 2009

Christyan Lundblad, KAU03, OW

Samantha Torres, KAU09

Kenneth Ladekjer, KAU 2009


Drude Mangaard,KAU08

Carmen Hannibal, KAU 2009



Tell us shortly about your career so far. Did you go to art school, who have you worked for?

Been here and there, did bibs and bobs for magazines, toys, Boardgames, videogames, TV ads, TV flicks, and major Hollywood movies as a designer/sculptor/Art director.IN

TERV

IEW WITH “THE

BLACK FROG”

I’ve worked for the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop for a while and as a freelancer in the VXF industry for the past 15 years.

Was it difficult to get a green card/visa for working in the USA?

Not really, I had pre-vioulsly met the people who wanted me on my first american project in Ita-ly on another job where I was the VFX art direc-tor.

They were happy with my input, the production needed help and I went far and beyond the call of duty to make myself indispensable.

The shift from Europe to America went smoothly, they got me a work visa and I started straight away. It all goes way faster when you already have a job offer.

Where do you feel you developed the most, in school or working in the industry?

Once I was out of school, definitely.

I could be confronted to real problems, school for me was paved with frustration, most of the time having to do things I never would use in real life afterwards.

Always been a free thinker… and a bad stu-dent… or maybe a free student and a bad thinker I’m not sure which.

You real passion is comic books, as far as I under-stood. When did you begin publishing?

I find that the comic book medium is the only one allowing you to tell a sto-ry in both written and vi-sual form and being from beginning to end in com-plete creative control. You can basically do everything yourself which is rare and precious.

I started publishing il-lustrations in magazines when I was 20 and signed my first book deal in the states 7 years ago.

Was it difficult to find the publisher? Is it ma-jor label publishing or a smaller firm? ->

No, I knew a guy who was in discussion with them for his art book and I just decided to pay them a visit to show my portfolio. They liked it and we agreed on the first book the very same day.

How was it working in USA? You didn’t seem too pleased about it.

Very formative, they‘re brilliant at what they do. The Hollywood machine runs really smooth and that’s what’s beautiful about it. But working on projects so big and so expensive has also a downfall: people with money in them want to have their say, they usually get concerned or scared, they want to make sure they will get their in-vestment back and they meddle.

Invariably, by the time they get to the screen, the mov-ies are watered down so much, dulled down so much in com-parison of what they were at the start that they only join the dumb pile of all-the-same-not-much-different which everyone will soon forget.

You can only go through the process of see-ing a story being wheathered so many times before it gets to you.

What are your comics mainly about?Mhh… many things… anything really, I don’t

have a “favorite theme” I like writing about whatever I fancy on the moment.

It can be for children, or for adults, na-ïve or complex, action pact, more whimzical or surreal.I’m changing styles all the time to better suit the tales. I tend to like when there’s a bit of dream in them, when they make you travel I guess.

And the future, is there a chance that you might get to live of doing comics?

In the future yes, I calculated that af-ter 50 books I should start to be ok. Hope-fully, at the rate of 15 projects per year I should be able to reach this goal by 2014.

www.dynamografika.com

I went to the biggest com-

ic book festival in Europe

last month (28-31 Jan). I

was looking for an inter-

national publisher for an

illustration book of my own

work and I went there with

Henric Wallmark who made a

comic book featured on the

last pages of this issue.

He also was looking for a

publisher.We arrived on the 27th,

2 or 3 hours later than ex-

pected. The French train

system is having a hard

time in the winter season.

We had booked some beds at

a private couple’s bed and

breakfast place. They were

very friendly and gave us

food and drove us around-

town so we could see all

the locations we needed to

visit the next day.The Festival is basi-

cally a lot of huge tents

spread all over town, and

inside them all kinds of

publishers had booths.

The town itself is total-

ly infiltrated with comic

book culture. The streets

are named after artists

such as Hergé and Goscinny

and the walls and burger

bars are ornamented with

comic book art. Even the

museums have comic book art

exhibited.

Trip to Angouléme

Day 1

We went to an area called New York place. We went there early to be there when the pub-lishers would still be fresh in their heads. New York place was the tent where all the little indie publishers, art zines and D.I.Y. people had booths. I was a bit shy in the beginning but as we went further in to the tents I started talking to every new booth I went to. I had with me 50 test copies of my book and I gave it out if people seemed interested. We spent most of the day in there.Of deals I made that day I made an agreement to do a poster for one mag, talked about printing possibilities with a Croatian zine plus a lot of maybes from smaller or larger publishers.

Day 2

The next day we went to some other tents. They were major label publishers most-ly, with some famous artists sitting at the booths with a row of fans in front of them, wanting the artist to sign their private copy with a drawing.

Henric and I decided this was not where we would get our first release done. These people were big well-estab-lished people.I talked to a Parisian guy who had a publishing compa-ny where everybody could up-

load comics. People could vote on them and the best ones would be printed and released. They were called manolosanctis.com, check it out.We went back to NY Place and I got an agreement to contribute with some of my work to some Bruxelles-based art zines. Among them was lazer.beIn general this was very much a comic book event and only very few were inter-ested in illustrations or other work that was only “one-frame-art”. “Do a com-ic and we’ll look into it”, they said. Also, they have a tendency to want artists that fit into their specif-ic style or image.

When we came back to the bed and breakfast, a Belgium guy had moved in. He was a concept artist who released comics through a publisher but he didn’t make enough to make a living out of it, so he did freelance concept art to get money. He had worked at big companies in the US. He didn’t seem too pleased about it though. I interviewed him later about it.

Day 3

On the third day we went around town to some museums. I went to the Marvel tent, a big show tent with loud music and all sorts of fans wearing red and black. On this day all of the tents were super crowded. Peo-ple went around 5 cm from each other. Suddenly at NY Place a 12 year-old kid ran around with my passport in his hand. I said “Hey kid, c’est moi!” he gave it back to me.

Later Morten Thorning came to town, all confused and we showed him around and he gave us a cup of tea at a cafe and later came Cav Bøgelund (for-mer student of TAW and Film School).

Day 4

The next day I went home. I was so filled with new in-formation I had to just stare into the train seat in front of me without thinking. I had gained a bunch of maybe cards from various publishers. Hen-ric didn’t get a direct agree-ment either, but he didn’t ex-pect to anyways. And even if I don’t get my book out straight away, I got some cool jobs for small art zines. And that was really cool and worth the whole trip.

Christyan

THE GUEST.Director: Henrik Malmgren

Open Workshop

Congratulation, Henrik! Now yo can retire with style :D

BARBATUQUES-1 .They play body

percussion-based music. Which means that they use their body not to perse-cute some poor drums who didn’t behave but to hit themselves. Obviously, that technique comes from the cave age. There is a whole movement around it, now practiced in ghetto’s music with afro-american beats.

-2 .They are from Brazil (Igor’s note: won-derful country). The great idea of that band is to combine that technique with Brazilian rhythms. An internet video shows one of the band’s mem-ber explaining that those rhythms are basically built on only 3 differ-ent sounds : A hit on the chest (=bom), A clap-your-

hands (=Clap), and a snap-your-fingers-baby (=snip snap). And then, on top, they build advanced rhythm, with a crazy diverity of body sounds.

-3 .The story.He’s also explaining how he came to that kind of music: it was through a period when he had to walk a lot. Because he found himself whistling and chanting. And

When Christyan said “I have a magazine”, I asked: -“Can I have a … you know … how do you call that in Eng-lish, you know a kind of article in a news paper … you know that comes back every time … we call it “rubrique” in French.-Ja ja, “rubrik” in Danish. -Yeah that ! So can I have a “rubrique” about music ?-Yes, I have one already about music.”

So, even tho I like his taste (in music, not in food … i’m still a bit french), I will just try to be different. Story of my life … And for this time, in my music library, I found THEM :

after a while adding the percussions to that felt natural. But you’re not always walking around with a whole drum set. I very much identify with the guy.

How did I get to know them? I happened to have only one song in my mu-sic library, you know that kind of mp3 that you have absolutely NO IDEA how it arrived, but YOU F**KING LOVE IT, pardon my French. That file was called

If you use Itunes, you can

listen to my whole library

thru the network. It’s called :

Bibliothèque de« DJ Fromage »

‘Baião Destemperado’ with ‘Publicità NIKE’ as the artist name. I had that song for years before the idea came to purchasing the real artist’s name. One day, I wikipediated them, and about 30 min later I had ordered a the record online.

If you enter “Bar-batuques Chants de Marins” on YouTube, the first video is the one I talked about.

Damned, Damned, Damnedby The Damned(Stiff 1979)

This is the debut album by The Damned, a British punk rock act from the 70s. In my book (and you ARE reading my magazine) this is the best punk record EVER.

It sounds so fresh and en-ergetic as if punk had just been invented last week.

This is their first al-bum and they didn’t really do anything later that could measure up to this one. “Machine Gun Eti-quette” had some good songs on it but it is a different kind of goodness and not at all comparable to “Damned, Damned, Damned”, neither in energy nor effectiveness.

The Damned signed to stiff records in ‘76, a label whose idea was to be a conduit for people who couldn’t find the music business any other way.

When they recorded this album, they treated the recording session like a live gig.

Nick “Basher” Lowe, the “producer”, was nicknamed like this because this was his fa-

vorite recording method at the time.

The first 3000 copies were issued with a picture of Eddie and the Hot Rods on the

backsleeve by “mistake”. This was how many they needed to sell to recoup the recording

expenses also. Stiff records knew it would appeal to the collector’s market.

Anyways enough backstory. This album will probably change your life if you love

rock as much as I do. I personally like to listen to this record in the morning while

I’m still only wearing my underwear. It’s a kickass start on a good day.

Songs like “Fish”, “New Rose”, and “So Messed Up” will blow you away but a song

like “I Feel Alright” (a Stooges cover) will instantly kill and ressurrect you in less

than 7 seconds. It feels good. Believe me.

Christyan

funky versions at Hendrix’ “Fire” and the Doors’ “Light My Fire”.He finishes, we clap polite-ly, he leaves.

Then I go on stage to ask a technician about a guitar, a guy hands me one. I play a non-chord tune I made up and sang while Anders the drum-mer (a regular guest at these Jams) did the drumming.After that, I went back to the sitting audience. It’s good to just go up there on stage just to break the ice. To remake the boundaries. Af-ter that I was free to move all over the room and could go on stage whenever I want-ed to.

After this, some regular jamming went on funkthings and Beatles songs and so on. Schooly stuff. Then a local teenage act started jamming with no passion at all. Then a folk guy who was quite good until he forgot his own songs.

A Swedish band also from the next door concert came and played a nice 50’s sound-ing tune. They were way more respectful than this arro-gant Copenhagen guy from be-fore. And very well-dressed too. It gave a nice good mood to the jam.

CGA08 boys Adrian, Lasse and Malte came up claiming they were not a real band and played the most consis-tent jam of the evening. It was a Melvins/Shellac-like style, it really got the en-ergy going, some thing that this evening needed. It was really cool.

I arrived around 20:40. People were sitting down Eagles of Death Metal were on the loudspeakers. Bar in the corner.

There were no guitars on stage so people were a bit hesitant, no one seemed to wanna go up there alone.

Around 21:00 this guy from a band playing next door comes on stage saying that he came all the way from CPH just to play in Viborg, asking us to go see his band instead of being there. He tries to say some nice things about Viborg, but he just comes across as arrogant. Then he sits down starting to play the drums and the bass and singing

Jam sessions inViborgPaletten, 5/February

16 min later us Open Workshoppers executed a three song improvised set with me screaming and los-ing my shirt. People were into it. This was to me the climax of the evening.

Then a hardcore act started playing some seri-ously gloomy metal. Denis went up there and started singing about the devil. It gave the song a nice irony to it and it was so much more fun to watch.

The night ended with the OW band and røde Mads on drums doing a quiet al-ternative style song with the lyrics goin’ “New Day Rising”. After this, they turned on the lights and the jam was over.

It was the first jam at Paletten. In general, it

seemed as if people found together there had been re-hearsing together on their own.

I felt more togeth-er like than the previ-ous ones. In general po-ple were entertained its a nice development and it’s gonna be exciting to see what it evolves into the next year.

“True Story”. Director: Alexei Alexeev

Animation directors from all over come to TAW to make 1-week films with the students! Some of them were:

Animation Jam!

“1923”. Director: Max Hattler

“The Outsider”. Director: Jamie Caliri

Congratulations to everyone involved!- the Blazing Squids Team

Animation Jam!

“1923”. Director: Max Hattler

“Lucia in the Sky with Diamonds” Director: Pritt Tender

“But there has to be more!” by Hankataks

Documents

Blazing Squids #01