The squids are back, and they come blazing at full inkpower. Bursting with energy - the most diverse styles can be found here and in the subsequent issues. 2011 season starts now!

Break your boundaries. Ex-pand your mind. Bring the best from withing you to your art piece, and go fur-ther - amaze yourself.

This is the magazine of The Animation Workshop en-vironment - from Denmark to the world. From the world to Denmark.

Revealing new rebel souls, lighting the sparkles in creative minds around the globe - that’s our pur-pose. That’s who we are. That’s our potential.

Blazing Squids areMatt Travers, Sascha Hommer, Na-talia Marcos, Roland Seer, Kris-tina Stengaard, Christian Bøving-Andersen, Magnus Møller and John

Kenn.Edited by Igor Noronha and Chris-

tyan Lundblad.

BACKWORDS

John Kenn. TAW, Character Animation, 2003

John Kenn

Magnus Møller. CA, 2006.

ChristianBøving-Andersen,CA 08.

Kristina Stengaard, CA10.

Roland Seer, CA10.

Natalia Marcos, CA 10

Sascha HommerAn interview with

Where and when were you born?I was born in south Ger-

many in 1979.

Which art education did you choose to take?I studied fine arts for

one and a half year, but soon I realized that that was not what I wanted to do. While visiting Fu-metto, the international comic festival in Luzern (Switzerland), I found out that Anke Feuchtenberger, one of the most important German comic artists, was a professor in Hamburg.That is why I decided to move here to study illus-tration at the University of Applied Sciences.

When did you start making comics?

When I was very young. As a 3 or 4-year-old child I watched “The Jungle Book “ and “Caveman” all day long and I was a huge fan of the Asterix and Obelix comics. I decided to develop my own version of Asterix and Obelix at that time, but also adapt-ed the film Caveman to a comic book (with one pic-ture on each page). When I was able to read and write, I started to draw fantasy characters refer-ring to a German version of Dungeons & Dragons called Das Schwarze Auge. When I attended school, I started to produce and sell a peridocal which was

called KAH and contained short stories about a commissioner. I was a fan of both MAD and Clever & Smart at that time, but also liked Night Rider. KAH was a mashup of these influences. I quit doing comics when I was 15, and started again three years later. Since then, I keep on working as much as pos-sible.

How were you picked up by a publisher?

Dirk Rehm from Re-produkt saw my zines at a small fair in Hamburg. He asked me if I would like to publish a book with Re-produkt. Two years later, my debut Insekt was pub-lished.

How do you see the evolution of comics (and books in gener-al) to digital?

I think that it is a good idea to provide all cultural ressources for free. But we need a new copyright law to make this possible. When it comes to comic books, I do not see the shift from analog to digital yet.

How do you see the Ger-man comic book scene now, compared to the past?

The German comic book scene has developed to one of the most interest-ing small markets in Eu-rope dring the last 5 or 6 years. >>>

Of course it is not possible to compare this with a big mar-ket like in France. But small publishers like Reprodukt inten-sify their output each year, while circula-tion of the books is increasing. Many prom-ising young authors recently published their debuts or will during 2011.

What are your plans for the future?

Some days ago I fin-ished work on my new book Dri Chinisin. I will start to work on a book about China now.

How was the process of doing Insekt? How long did it take you to do it, and what was your biggest challenge?

What is your work you’re most proud of?

I would not say that I am “proud” of anything in my work. There are some things I like about them, and one of these things is that character design comes naturally to me.

I worked on the book Insekt for about two years. During the first year I started with two projects with which I did not succeed. The first book can be dif-ficult, if short sto-ries was all you did before. So the biggest challenge was maybe to keep going.

How much of your sto-ries are inspired on your real life? (is there a specifi c fact you’de like to tell us?)

After finishing the book “Insekt” I realized that I told the story of my younger brother in a symbolic way. My book “Vier Augen” has very strong autobiographical aspects.

Your trace is very minimalist, telling only the necessary with clever design choices. How did you come up with that style? Was it in-spired by any other artist in specifi c?

Osamu Tezuka, Charles Schulz, Chris Ware and Charles Burns have been influences in the >>>

first place. At the time I did Insekt, I was also influenced by fellow students from Hamburg like Arne Bell-storf or Moki.

How is it in the comic book industry you work in - is it more common to make a living through royalties, or paid by page? Do you get paid in advance?

It is not common to make a living with your comics at all. At the moment, I earn 20% of my money with royal-ties for comic books,

The blazing editors would like to thank Sascha for taking a bit of his time to share his

knowledge with us. We wish you the best for the future!

Now, for something slightly different...

40% with illustration jobs and another 40% with giving lectures, conducting workshops ect.

Where can people buy your books? Is there a way to do that online?

You can buy my books online on the page of my publisher Reprodukt! http://www.reprodukt.com/creator_info.php?creators_id=100You pay 5 Euro extra for the shipping in-side Europe, 13 Euro for shipping to other countries.

Principles ofa Poor Artist

‘It’s better to spend your time failing at some-thing you want to do than to waste your life becoming a successful nobody’ (Henry Miller)

Artists, do not be se-duced by the American Dream. It will deval-

ue your work and leave you longing for a false ideal of success. This ingenious piece of social engineering would have you believe that so long as you work hard and think positive then you have a fair shot at success: tal-ent always rises to the top and if you’re not at the top then you only have yourself to blame. Pursuing the Amer-ican Dream means accepting that the odds are stacked against you, and getting on with the business of suc-ceeding over others. It’s a reptilian mindset which is no longer confined to the Gordon Gecko’s of the busi-ness-world, but has now come to latch on to all walks of life. In the artworld, this mentality finds its equiva-lent in the artist’s obli-gation to constantly self-promote: if you believe in your own brand, then, with the right kind of network-ing, you too might share the limelight with the other ce-lebrities and live comfort-ably ever after. But rather than trying to capitalise on your insecurities by offer-ing you the glib reassurance of the marketeers, these principles are addressed to all you sick, broke, and talentless artists out there who know your potential, and still want to go on.

1) Don’t fetishize incom-pletenes

The poor artist will of-ten relish the raw and un-

finished in their work and in that of others as a means to avoid facing up to the limits of their own talent. It’s much easier to see the promise of genius in your first drafts and sketches than it is to make the fin-ishing touches to what you know will be a substandard piece of work. Abandon-ing your work at an early stage allows you to enjoy the thrill of being an art-ist without subjecting your results to the harsh gaze of others, or your own better judgment. Leaving your work unfinished also means that you won’t risk spoiling your chance achievements, and lends support to the idea that the great work descends on the artist like a cosmic lottery ticket. But there’s no solution in simple self-exposure: an artwork needs time to develop, just as an artist needs internal ten-sion to create: sharing it too soon will make you con-form to expectations. Con-sciously or not, those who share only their promise maintain their privilege over the uninitiated.

2) You’ll always fi nd time for inspiration; it’s making time for concentrated hard work that’s diffi cult.

Surely the best trick for avoiding hard work is to imagine that you’re wait-ing for artistic inspira-tion. While others work hard at improving their craft in the hope of masking their inner poverty, you’re se-cure enough in your own tal-

ents to wait patiently for that great idea to fall from the sky. But inspiration is rarely the problem, and even a poor artist can be plagued by hundreds of wild ideas. The architect Louis Kahn would maintain that ‘a good idea which isn’t done is no idea at all’, suggest-ing that an artwork cannot exist in the mind of an art-ist alone, not even a poor one: it demands realization and an audience. And while it’s true that you can ruin a good idea by rushing it to completion, you can never go wrong by setting aside plen-ty of time for the concen-trated hard work.

3) The tragedy of the work-ing classes is only articu-lated by the middle classes: don’t let them speak for you

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of reading a so-cialist newspaper, you can’t help but be struck by how terrible life must be for the poor workers, condemned to lives deprived of middle class essentials, like or-ganic food and good taste, existing only as consumer-ist dupes spiralling through shopping malls in a secular version of Dante’s Hell. But who writes these papers? The poor artist need not dwell on this: ‘The artist is respon-sible to no-one but himself. He donates to centuries to come only his own works; he stands surety for himself alone. He dies without is-sue. He was his own king, his own priest and his own God.’ One has to be as gen-erous in spirit as Charles Baudelaire to absolve all the debts of the poor.

4) Better to be an hon-est dilettante than a fake artist

Is it possible to enjoy the great works of art without also wanting to be a great artist? When faced with a masterpiece a poor artist may feel compelled to state how their own efforts have no relation to such grand works, a reaction which usu-ally goes hand in hand with the secret belief that their own works would be great if only they were discovered, and then their sense of failure is compounded with a feeling of rejection. This idea that the great artworks demand an equivalent ef-fort from their audience is like a secularised version

of the Protestant work eth-ic: whereas Original Sin was once thought to be relieved through our hard toil for God, now our pleasure in art must be repaid by becoming worthy of the great artists. The medieval peasants knew better: for them, the joy of work came not from the back-breaking labour of the day, but from the drink and for-nication of the night.

5) Better to be mad than

mediocreMadness is overrated.

There’s nothing more pa-thetic than an artist who acts mad in order to get no-ticed, and you can probably learn more about Van Gogh by drawing birds’ nests than by drinking the Absinthe. Of course anyone can get drunk, but putting time aside to accurately draw a birds’ nest requires a degree of commitment which is beyond most people’s scope. Yet the conjunction between art and madness is not simply a ro-mantic cliché: the artist who settles for convention is no artist at all. The duty to expand the limits of what’s conceivable means that the artist must break the chains of good sense, and madness is what happens to those who can’t find an adequate frame for their work or keep a straight face in public. Perhaps it’s easier for us when our great artists suf-fer: only then does their genius become tolerable. And don’t we also secretly hope that our sufferings might be rewarded with that great work?

6) Nothing in the artwork is accidental, even if it was put there by accident

There’s nothing wrong with trying to understand an art-work through learning about the artist; but there is a problem when the artwork gets reduced to what that artist intended. Critics who explain a work of art by re-ferring to an artist’s life-story usually do so as a means of silencing dissent, but all artworks must com-municate directly without translation, and this goes against those who would seek to understand an art work on purely formal grounds. Pure-ly formal grounds for judg-ing art simply don’t exist: at best they are descrip-tive terms for deducing the compositional elements in a work in order to launch a response; at worst, they are the means by which academic learned taste tries to pass itself off as a neutral af-fair.

7) Colours are the fl owers of the universe; leave some behind for the others

Can the lurid configura-tions of rubbish in a London gutter have as much vibrant appeal as the paintings of Matisse or Kandinsky? Per-haps, but you must already know their work before you can see their results in your own environment. Just as the richness of colour is given to all regardless of social rank, so the poor artist creates works which require no expensive mediation. As simple and as universal of

colour, the challenge of art is to tear through the web of petty interests, exposing the mysterious of life which underlie our most trivial observations.

8) Everyone’s a critic, but there is no miserable creation

A poor artist suffers from terrific self-doubt when their own achievements fail to live up to their higher ambitions. But they could take comfort in the fact that even the greatest art-ists must also have experi-enced this same self-doubt: they’re as vulnerable to critique as the rest of us. Yet their artwork stands as proof that whatever turmoil went into these creations was in the last instance overcome. Whether this tur-moil was intensified during the process of making the artwork itself, and whether this was a price worth pay-ing, is still in question. At best we can be sure that

these questions were not re-solved in advance. Perhaps the strength of an artist should be measured by their capacity to withstand these great self-doubts and still carry on.

9) It’s easy to focus on your work when all around you falls to pieces, but why sacrifi ce present happiness for the grand delusion?

It’s a truism to state that inspiration for the great artworks has more of-ten come in times of great hardship rather than in pe-riods of security and com-fort. At first this seems counter-intuitive, isn’t it easier to be creative when you have the right condi-tions for concentration? So why have artists often made their best works in times of personal crisis? Making art is rarely an easy es-cape, but it could be that the challenge of artistic creation has become easier to handle than other issues. Perhaps a better test of an artist’s commitment is not in their ability to work un-der duress, but depends on whether they are willing to sacrifice personal happi-ness for the ambivalent re-wards of making art. There’s no straightforward solution to this dilemma: sheer com-mitment does not guarantee a great work. Even the great-est artists have known when to stop. Arthur Rimbaud, the quintessential modern poet, would burn out in his mid-twenties, renouncing liter-ature entirely to settle for

a life as a colonial business entrepreneur, while Marcel Duchamp, originator of the ready-made, retires from the artworld at the height of his fame to play chess for the remaining twenty-five years of his life.

10) Constant production and accomplished technique makes a great craftsman; em-pathy with the inarticulate can make a poor artwork.

There’s something oppres-sive in the way that cer-tain artists desperately churn out work after work in a vast range of accom-plished styles and tech-niques for everyone’s ap-proval. Although certainly a mark of great self-disci-

pline, constant production also betrays a certain in-security: the artist keeps making works which can be recognised as accomplished, rather than risk doing some-thing original which might seem clumsy. But one can be unpretentious to the point of stupidity, and ridicul-ing artistic experiments is just another kind of elit-ism. Only when you realise that the artworld can be just as mean and parochial as any other, and that the artist has no privileged ac-cess to a world beyond it, only then is there a chance for the poor artist to find universal value.

- Matt Travers

Editor’s note: if you enjoyed this article, look up “Poor The-ater” or “Jerzy Grotowski” on the internet, or read his book “To-

wards a Poor Theater”. Thank you for reading, see a next time!