Micronation, crowdfunding and digital art
Most of the interviews with the authors of crowdfunding projects have two fatal flaws - most of them are successful projects (and sometimes moreover), and the authors themselves are usually not of the latest celebrities. But others, not so famous and successful, do wonderful things, and they also need support in their endeavors.
Therefore, although there are no special hubs for digital art on Giktaymes (which is very unfortunate, because art, unlike gadgets and social networks, allows people to break out of the “digital bubble”), I decided to talk with one of the recent authors. So to say in the footsteps of a chaotic post , in which I enjoyed reading the comments.
')
It all started by chance. Stories about strange unrecognized states have been gathering on my hard drive for quite a long time, and without a specific goal, simply because I liked them. And at some point — it was in the fall of 2011 — I sat down and began to draw the story about Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Republic of Fiume. This is one of my favorite historical episodes: the famous Italian writer became a dictator in a small Croatian city, where the majority of the population were Italians who wanted to join Italy, and life there immediately turned into a carnival with insanity, piracy, creativity, and even prohibited substances. In general, this plot, in my opinion, can not but like normal geeks :). This story is also amazing and attractive rare in such matters happy ending. I thought a lot what would happen if something like this happened in our time. Now, in 2014, we know the answer.
Returning to work on the first comic in the series “Unrecognized States”. I expressed this plot as I felt — with chaos of parts of photographs, lines, shadows, and hatching. I did not set any framework, it was a spontaneous experiment, and I got the maximum pleasure from the process. At that time I did not know that this was the beginning of a large series, and that work on it would take three years.
After the first story, I could stop. An incident intervened - I saw a report about the Russian unrecognized “state” with a pagan-nationalistic-mystical bias, about the Spiritual and Clan Power Russia . I began to read about him, and the more I learned, the more this pseudo-state amazed me. And if so, you need to draw a comic about it. There are no direct and unequivocal parallels with the events in Fiume, but it logically continued the theme of the first comic. Although the creators of this “state”, by the way, subsequently recognized as an extremist organization, and their beliefs can hardly be sympathetic, I tried not to give marks to the heroes who were in my series. It is more interesting to tell about the essence of the phenomenon, find parallels and interconnections.
So one story clung to the next one like carriages, and a series of eleven drawn stories about crazy unrecognized states came out. I had no plan. After two comics posted on the blog, I began to write friends and strangers, asking when the next story would be released, what kind of state it would be about. So gradually the series was drawn.
These eleven stories, of course, cannot (and should not) fully reveal the theme of modern micro-states, virtual and not so much. The plots that became the basis for experimental comic strips are collected in one series rather subjectively, according to my whim, and sometimes by coincidence of circumstances. The stories in the series are very different. The theme of creating an independent state has united events and people, among whom there is very little in common. The theme is one, but the motives and ideas of the participants are completely different. Therefore, it cannot be said that the “Unrecognized States. Eleven stories about separatism "only about the search for freedom, or about progress, or about the struggle of the individual with the system, or about politics. All of these topics are there, and the series is entirely more likely just about people.
Honestly, I don’t remember what I wrote about the connection between art and politics, but I certainly never contrasted them. It seems to me that it is difficult or even impossible to completely separate art from politics and place it in a special sterile place. Trying to make “pure” “art out of politics” or “ostropolitical art” for the sake of self-praise seems to me equally meaningless. If an art project is honest, then political relevance is often obtained by itself, without straining attempts to do something “sharp”.
I went to the court to make a graphic report about the high-profile political “Process of the Twelve” in order to study what was happening. Drawing court illustrations turned out to be an excellent way to immerse yourself in the atmosphere and tell people about the place and time. The last thing I wanted was to turn graphic reporting into agitation and propaganda of national-Bolshevism, even though I am its supporter. It turned out a detailed chronicle of the semi-annual process.
I must say, when confronted with the Russian judicial system, there is always a feeling that you are in the past, or you fall into some kind of parallel dimension, or simply into a mothball bag. Tired of this scary. Progress, it seems to me, always moves in spurts and is very uneven. Therefore, from time to time you find yourself in such islands of the past. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes scary.
I would argue with the statement that the Internet today can make people do something or not do it. The Internet is only a tool thanks to which people have more influence on each other, although it seems from the outside that, on the contrary, everyone has spread out in their corners :). Therefore, I don’t even know what to say about the independence of people from each other and from the state. Now everyone will cry in the pillow, but people are likely to biorobot and perform one common program. Therefore, the idea that it is possible to separate from bad, unfree and uncreative people in their wonderful micro-state, or to create a society on new principles, to put it mildly, is untenable.
When I started the comic project about unrecognized states, I was sure that I was doing a series of small, relatively peaceful stories. No, no, I will not have a big policy, only fascinating stories, with a minimum of violence and without bloodshed. By the end of work on the eleventh comic, and this is August 2014, it suddenly became clear that the series turned out exactly what is happening right now.
I must say, by the end of the work, I looked at the events that I drew in a different way, I ended the series not at all with the mood with which I started. An example is “ Second Russia ”. I made a comic about it in February 2014, and many people wrote to me that for the first time I learned about this dusty story from my comic book. And what? Two months passed, and this suddenly became a reality. Especially so it was impossible to podgadat, of course. It just happened.
This is an example of how what existed in the form of a virtual project, or even in some kind of “unreal” form, can easily and simply at any moment become a familiar reality. And the action today is very easily transferred from the virtual world to reality and vice versa. There is actually no border between micro and macro, and, all the more, there is no “virtual reality” :). This is a very outdated concept of the surrounding world, that there is some real and unreal reality. The word "virtual" can be safely sent to the dictionary of obsolete words.
These are the brief conclusions of this project.
Before I started fundraising, I analyzed the results of fees on Bumstarter. Indeed, few people managed to collect the required amount, especially in the sphere of Russian comics. Yes, it is easy to collect large sums of already well-known writers, musicians who have their own large audience. I'm not really a celebrity at all, this is only my second book.
Why I did not go to Bumstarter or another crowdfunding platform? I objectively assessed my strength, and it seemed to me inexpedient to try to raise funds on Bumstarter. The principle of "all or nothing" did not suit me. I turned to people for help, wasting time and energy on advertising, some kind of promotion, but in the end did not get at least a little and get zero - this option did not suit me at all. From the very beginning I did not set a goal to collect one hundred percent of the money for printing a book, as it should be on all crowdfunding platforms. Anyway, I contribute a substantial part of the amount myself, although those who made the pre-order still eased my heavy financial burden.
Another option for publishing the book was print on demand - print on demand. I also refused this idea, because the cost price of the book is huge. Pre-order is now being organized by many independent authors and small publishers. This is a variant of mutually beneficial cooperation with readers: they make money before publication and get the book cheaper than in stores, and it’s much easier for the publishing house or the author to pay the printing house. I decided to try to act in the same way.
As practice shows, in any case, the rule of five percent. Those. from any number of people only 5% will do something, participate in something. The remaining 95% is ballast. Oh, it sounded somehow disparaging, in no way did I want to stab someone. This is just a harsh statistic: always and everywhere there are 5% active and 95% passive. Oh, the "passive" sounds even worse :-). How are these calculations related to fundraising for my project? Very simple. Knowing the number of your friends, subscribers, readers, you can quite accurately calculate how much money you can collect. Therefore, I knew about how much I could count. I must say that I collected this amount. By the way, the pre-order of the book is still ongoing.
In addition, it is important to understand the specifics of Russia. Many are not familiar with crowdfunding platforms, especially middle-aged people. You can not even imagine how many people write to me that they do not use Yandex-wallet. For some people, bitcoins are a familiar thing, and for many people there is no credit card. At least one third of the money collected was given to me in cash.
I learn marketing on personal experience, by typing and by stuffing cones. I have no cunning self-promotion strategy. Whether I learned or not, we’ll check on my next book I’m working on. I tried to write regularly about the progress of my work on the series “Unrecognized States”, to show sketches, beautiful fragments, and pieces of layout. I use many of the advice of the artist and writer Austin Cleon from the book "Show Your Work." This is a book about how an artist to show their work in the modern world. Cleon says that the “creator” in the ivory tower is a myth, in fact always, and in the pre-digital period, and now, there were groups of creative people, within which new ideas, new styles and trends were created. Those. Creativity has always been a collective process, a mutual exchange. Probably, this is the most important advice - not to lose touch with the world, to watch what others are doing, and to show what you are doing, including sketches, the process of work, even unsuccessful options. And then you will easily find you who might be interested. And no more tricks.
The book "Unrecognized States. Eleven stories about separatism ”received ISBN, UDC, BBK, barcode. This is, of course, a formality, it is very easy to get them, and anyone can do it, even if he is a crazy graphomaniac. A bar code is needed for a book only so that it can be sold in “official” stores, with checks and a cash register. In my previous book, The Process of Twelve, the circulation was very small, only one hundred copies, for "their" and a narrow circle of interested parties. The circulation of “Unrecognized States” will be much larger, therefore, without the participation of “normal” bookstores is not enough.
I am pleased with the decision to collect money on my own, there were even more pre-orders than I expected, people from different cities are ordering the book, most of those who ordered it are unfamiliar to me.
I would love to build a schedule of pre-orders, but I don’t have any intelligible statistics, pre-orders come randomly, now thickly, now empty, and it’s difficult to identify a clear link to publications on some third-party resources. What is really very important is to regularly write posts in your blog or public, after each entry, there are more pre-orders immediately. Apparently, if a person who wants a book goes and makes money, a reminder about this should flash a number of times before his eyes, only then will he not forget.
If it were not for the publication of the project in the network, these people could never know about it. During all three years while I was working on this series, I published each new story on my blog. And many people asked, and still ask, am I afraid of thieves or that everyone reads everything online, and no one will buy the book. In fact, there is no reason for fear. “Unrecognized States” is, first of all, an artistic project, and in the plot there is no intricate intrigue that must be hidden from the reader to the last pages, something in the spirit of “the killer is a gardener”. But there are many details that can be considered for a long time. It is desirable in the crib :). Simply, there is a big difference between, for example, web comics, short and witty, but often with fairly simple graphics, and what is created for printing on paper. On paper, it is necessary to read it, in the form of a book, beautifully laid out, printed in high quality, in which all the stories are arranged in the right order. A number of pages posted on the Internet can only give a general, quick and superficial, idea of ​​a project. They will truly see the project “Unrecognized states. Eleven stories of separatism "only those who read the book.
This is a sore point. In Europe and America they live on it, in Russia these are still isolated cases. The sphere of Russian author's comics is held by amateurs and fanatics.
The collage has a long history, just mention the surrealistic Max Ernst series “The Week of Kindness ”, as well as the collages of Richard Hamilton , James Rosenquist or Jan van Toorn . If at the beginning of the last century a semi-abstract collage could be considered a challenge to realistic academic traditions, today it has become a tradition itself. Rebellion in the use of collage no more than in drawing with a brush on canvas. Somehow I can’t even think of what form of art can be called rebellious today. It seems no one can.
As for my series, the use of collage is primarily related to the plot of the stories and how I tell these stories. The collage is very natural, as if by itself, arose when working on the first story, and then I repeated a number of techniques in the remaining ten stories in order to keep the entire series within tight boundaries. I tried to find an adequate visual form to show how one layer of information layered on another, how they are combined into absurd and sometimes insane events. As in sad and even tragic events, absurdity and irony inevitably penetrate.
Photos for the collage are taken from my family archive. This subjective associative array is an attempt to find a balance between personal and common, between large and small, I wanted to show one through the other. Well, at some point I had to include in the series the state that my brother and I created as a child at the dacha. Without it, the project would be incomplete.
It is more correct to say that I have a “digital collage” - cutting and overlaying parts of the photos is done in Photoshop, the originals of the photos remain intact, they are old and very valuable. I combined parts of scanned old photographs, a handwritten font, graphics drawn with a pen or brush, with hard, frankly “computer” elements. I am a designer by training and used many techniques from graphic design.
Of course, a computer is only a tool that can fall into different hands, and different heads are still attached to the hands. The result still depends on the person. It is hardly possible to divide the tools into "noble", "real" and "computer", "artificial". The fact that the oil painting is “alive” and “breathing”, and digital painting is necessarily “dead” - this is such a boring statement that it is even too lazy to argue with him seriously. Many still believe that everything that exists only on the monitor is not real. "Well, he really is not." These are representations of the last century, and, unfortunately, many still live there.
On the other hand, it is possible to understand why digital work often causes rejection. Any material and tool has its own specifics that need to be understood and felt, and to learn to interact with it, and not to hide it, as if it is something bad. If you try to disguise digital painting under the oil, drawing under the photo, photo under the drawing - then it turns out a disgusting "fake". Works that cause internal protest and hostility with their fake, even if they are technically executed masterfully.
Beautiful things, including mobile applications, interfaces can be called art in form. But in terms of content ... Still, beauty is not the main goal of art. There is a fundamental difference between simply creating beauty around and art as a way to explore the world. Art is not obliged to bear any practical use, it expresses sensations and asks questions. In any case, should ask them and look for an answer.
Documentary graphic novel "The Photographer " by Emmanuel Giber, Didier Lefebvre and Frederick Lemercier. If you do not know anything about comics, feel free to start with the "Photographer". Or change your mind about comics by reading "The Photographer."
But in general, what to be shy about, I am working on a new long drawn story, again based on real events. Follow her creation, it will be sad, but interesting.
Thanks for answers.
Therefore, although there are no special hubs for digital art on Giktaymes (which is very unfortunate, because art, unlike gadgets and social networks, allows people to break out of the “digital bubble”), I decided to talk with one of the recent authors. So to say in the footsteps of a chaotic post , in which I enjoyed reading the comments.
')
⌛ When I first saw works from the project “ Unrecognized States ”, I immediately remembered a quote from the novel “80 days around the world”, which is known about the impact of progress on our lives. Here is this quote:
“Passports are designed to interfere with honest people and help fraudsters”
⌛ Please tell us how the idea of ​​the project appeared. Why is the story of Fiume in the experimental comic?
It all started by chance. Stories about strange unrecognized states have been gathering on my hard drive for quite a long time, and without a specific goal, simply because I liked them. And at some point — it was in the fall of 2011 — I sat down and began to draw the story about Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Republic of Fiume. This is one of my favorite historical episodes: the famous Italian writer became a dictator in a small Croatian city, where the majority of the population were Italians who wanted to join Italy, and life there immediately turned into a carnival with insanity, piracy, creativity, and even prohibited substances. In general, this plot, in my opinion, can not but like normal geeks :). This story is also amazing and attractive rare in such matters happy ending. I thought a lot what would happen if something like this happened in our time. Now, in 2014, we know the answer.
Returning to work on the first comic in the series “Unrecognized States”. I expressed this plot as I felt — with chaos of parts of photographs, lines, shadows, and hatching. I did not set any framework, it was a spontaneous experiment, and I got the maximum pleasure from the process. At that time I did not know that this was the beginning of a large series, and that work on it would take three years.
After the first story, I could stop. An incident intervened - I saw a report about the Russian unrecognized “state” with a pagan-nationalistic-mystical bias, about the Spiritual and Clan Power Russia . I began to read about him, and the more I learned, the more this pseudo-state amazed me. And if so, you need to draw a comic about it. There are no direct and unequivocal parallels with the events in Fiume, but it logically continued the theme of the first comic. Although the creators of this “state”, by the way, subsequently recognized as an extremist organization, and their beliefs can hardly be sympathetic, I tried not to give marks to the heroes who were in my series. It is more interesting to tell about the essence of the phenomenon, find parallels and interconnections.
So one story clung to the next one like carriages, and a series of eleven drawn stories about crazy unrecognized states came out. I had no plan. After two comics posted on the blog, I began to write friends and strangers, asking when the next story would be released, what kind of state it would be about. So gradually the series was drawn.
These eleven stories, of course, cannot (and should not) fully reveal the theme of modern micro-states, virtual and not so much. The plots that became the basis for experimental comic strips are collected in one series rather subjectively, according to my whim, and sometimes by coincidence of circumstances. The stories in the series are very different. The theme of creating an independent state has united events and people, among whom there is very little in common. The theme is one, but the motives and ideas of the participants are completely different. Therefore, it cannot be said that the “Unrecognized States. Eleven stories about separatism "only about the search for freedom, or about progress, or about the struggle of the individual with the system, or about politics. All of these topics are there, and the series is entirely more likely just about people.
⌛ In general, the topic of dependence (and independence) of a person from the state is very relevant. The states of the world are trying to regulate the Internet, which at the same time can make people stay at home more and start a revolution, forcing the same people to take to the streets. A simple person can now print a gun on a 3D printer right at home, or nip Bitcoins at home, which not all countries of the world recognize in currency.
Yes, and you yourself are not the first time talking about your work about freedom - the project “Drawing the Court” was also very cool, you, it seems, even had a great post about the connection between art and, conditionally, politics.
Honestly, I don’t remember what I wrote about the connection between art and politics, but I certainly never contrasted them. It seems to me that it is difficult or even impossible to completely separate art from politics and place it in a special sterile place. Trying to make “pure” “art out of politics” or “ostropolitical art” for the sake of self-praise seems to me equally meaningless. If an art project is honest, then political relevance is often obtained by itself, without straining attempts to do something “sharp”.
“The border between the virtual and the real is becoming more transparent and will soon disappear completely. Something that seemed powerful and unshakable, suddenly splits into atoms, and an insane, delusional, idiotic plan, covered with a layer of dust, can suddenly materialize. The term “virtual” can be safely sent to the dictionary of obsolete words. What other conclusion from all this? You have to be damn careful in your fantasies and virtual projects. They may suddenly come to visit you. ”
I went to the court to make a graphic report about the high-profile political “Process of the Twelve” in order to study what was happening. Drawing court illustrations turned out to be an excellent way to immerse yourself in the atmosphere and tell people about the place and time. The last thing I wanted was to turn graphic reporting into agitation and propaganda of national-Bolshevism, even though I am its supporter. It turned out a detailed chronicle of the semi-annual process.
What do you think about progress and its collision with reality?
I must say, when confronted with the Russian judicial system, there is always a feeling that you are in the past, or you fall into some kind of parallel dimension, or simply into a mothball bag. Tired of this scary. Progress, it seems to me, always moves in spurts and is very uneven. Therefore, from time to time you find yourself in such islands of the past. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes scary.
I would argue with the statement that the Internet today can make people do something or not do it. The Internet is only a tool thanks to which people have more influence on each other, although it seems from the outside that, on the contrary, everyone has spread out in their corners :). Therefore, I don’t even know what to say about the independence of people from each other and from the state. Now everyone will cry in the pillow, but people are likely to biorobot and perform one common program. Therefore, the idea that it is possible to separate from bad, unfree and uncreative people in their wonderful micro-state, or to create a society on new principles, to put it mildly, is untenable.
"People are likely to biorobot and perform one common program"
When I started the comic project about unrecognized states, I was sure that I was doing a series of small, relatively peaceful stories. No, no, I will not have a big policy, only fascinating stories, with a minimum of violence and without bloodshed. By the end of work on the eleventh comic, and this is August 2014, it suddenly became clear that the series turned out exactly what is happening right now.
I must say, by the end of the work, I looked at the events that I drew in a different way, I ended the series not at all with the mood with which I started. An example is “ Second Russia ”. I made a comic about it in February 2014, and many people wrote to me that for the first time I learned about this dusty story from my comic book. And what? Two months passed, and this suddenly became a reality. Especially so it was impossible to podgadat, of course. It just happened.
This is an example of how what existed in the form of a virtual project, or even in some kind of “unreal” form, can easily and simply at any moment become a familiar reality. And the action today is very easily transferred from the virtual world to reality and vice versa. There is actually no border between micro and macro, and, all the more, there is no “virtual reality” :). This is a very outdated concept of the surrounding world, that there is some real and unreal reality. The word "virtual" can be safely sent to the dictionary of obsolete words.
These are the brief conclusions of this project.
⌛ Crowdfunding is also a relatively new trend of progress. While major publishers are fighting for the renewal of copyright and against torrents, some writers, musicians and artists collect money for their works themselves. Someone turns out, someone does not.
You took the matter seriously, even registered a future book in the Russian Book Chamber, but you did not go to the same Bumstarter, but organized a pre-order in your VC and blog . How did you come to this decision?
Before I started fundraising, I analyzed the results of fees on Bumstarter. Indeed, few people managed to collect the required amount, especially in the sphere of Russian comics. Yes, it is easy to collect large sums of already well-known writers, musicians who have their own large audience. I'm not really a celebrity at all, this is only my second book.
Why I did not go to Bumstarter or another crowdfunding platform? I objectively assessed my strength, and it seemed to me inexpedient to try to raise funds on Bumstarter. The principle of "all or nothing" did not suit me. I turned to people for help, wasting time and energy on advertising, some kind of promotion, but in the end did not get at least a little and get zero - this option did not suit me at all. From the very beginning I did not set a goal to collect one hundred percent of the money for printing a book, as it should be on all crowdfunding platforms. Anyway, I contribute a substantial part of the amount myself, although those who made the pre-order still eased my heavy financial burden.
"The principle of" all or nothing "did not fit me"
Another option for publishing the book was print on demand - print on demand. I also refused this idea, because the cost price of the book is huge. Pre-order is now being organized by many independent authors and small publishers. This is a variant of mutually beneficial cooperation with readers: they make money before publication and get the book cheaper than in stores, and it’s much easier for the publishing house or the author to pay the printing house. I decided to try to act in the same way.
As practice shows, in any case, the rule of five percent. Those. from any number of people only 5% will do something, participate in something. The remaining 95% is ballast. Oh, it sounded somehow disparaging, in no way did I want to stab someone. This is just a harsh statistic: always and everywhere there are 5% active and 95% passive. Oh, the "passive" sounds even worse :-). How are these calculations related to fundraising for my project? Very simple. Knowing the number of your friends, subscribers, readers, you can quite accurately calculate how much money you can collect. Therefore, I knew about how much I could count. I must say that I collected this amount. By the way, the pre-order of the book is still ongoing.
In addition, it is important to understand the specifics of Russia. Many are not familiar with crowdfunding platforms, especially middle-aged people. You can not even imagine how many people write to me that they do not use Yandex-wallet. For some people, bitcoins are a familiar thing, and for many people there is no credit card. At least one third of the money collected was given to me in cash.
⌛ Any tips from books you use for marketing and self-presentation?
I learn marketing on personal experience, by typing and by stuffing cones. I have no cunning self-promotion strategy. Whether I learned or not, we’ll check on my next book I’m working on. I tried to write regularly about the progress of my work on the series “Unrecognized States”, to show sketches, beautiful fragments, and pieces of layout. I use many of the advice of the artist and writer Austin Cleon from the book "Show Your Work." This is a book about how an artist to show their work in the modern world. Cleon says that the “creator” in the ivory tower is a myth, in fact always, and in the pre-digital period, and now, there were groups of creative people, within which new ideas, new styles and trends were created. Those. Creativity has always been a collective process, a mutual exchange. Probably, this is the most important advice - not to lose touch with the world, to watch what others are doing, and to show what you are doing, including sketches, the process of work, even unsuccessful options. And then you will easily find you who might be interested. And no more tricks.
⌛ Why does the book need to be “official” and have a UDC, BBK, author's mark, ISBN and bar code ?
The book "Unrecognized States. Eleven stories about separatism ”received ISBN, UDC, BBK, barcode. This is, of course, a formality, it is very easy to get them, and anyone can do it, even if he is a crazy graphomaniac. A bar code is needed for a book only so that it can be sold in “official” stores, with checks and a cash register. In my previous book, The Process of Twelve, the circulation was very small, only one hundred copies, for "their" and a narrow circle of interested parties. The circulation of “Unrecognized States” will be much larger, therefore, without the participation of “normal” bookstores is not enough.
⌛ In general, in the light of the fact that many projects, even on Kickstarter and similar projects, are very bad fees with a lot of money spent on advertising and marketing, can there be anything to say about how charges are going? Has it reached its intended goal, or was it disappointed in the pre-order?
I am pleased with the decision to collect money on my own, there were even more pre-orders than I expected, people from different cities are ordering the book, most of those who ordered it are unfamiliar to me.
I would love to build a schedule of pre-orders, but I don’t have any intelligible statistics, pre-orders come randomly, now thickly, now empty, and it’s difficult to identify a clear link to publications on some third-party resources. What is really very important is to regularly write posts in your blog or public, after each entry, there are more pre-orders immediately. Apparently, if a person who wants a book goes and makes money, a reminder about this should flash a number of times before his eyes, only then will he not forget.
⌛ Are you satisfied with the decision to raise money only from those who want a book in paper format? After all, all images are available in LiveJournal.
If it were not for the publication of the project in the network, these people could never know about it. During all three years while I was working on this series, I published each new story on my blog. And many people asked, and still ask, am I afraid of thieves or that everyone reads everything online, and no one will buy the book. In fact, there is no reason for fear. “Unrecognized States” is, first of all, an artistic project, and in the plot there is no intricate intrigue that must be hidden from the reader to the last pages, something in the spirit of “the killer is a gardener”. But there are many details that can be considered for a long time. It is desirable in the crib :). Simply, there is a big difference between, for example, web comics, short and witty, but often with fairly simple graphics, and what is created for printing on paper. On paper, it is necessary to read it, in the form of a book, beautifully laid out, printed in high quality, in which all the stories are arranged in the right order. A number of pages posted on the Internet can only give a general, quick and superficial, idea of ​​a project. They will truly see the project “Unrecognized states. Eleven stories of separatism "only those who read the book.
“If it were not for the publication of the project in the network, these people could never know about it.”
⌛ So is it possible to live on drawing comics ?
This is a sore point. In Europe and America they live on it, in Russia these are still isolated cases. The sphere of Russian author's comics is held by amateurs and fanatics.
⌛ And now closer to art - why the collage? Is this a deliberate artistic riot, riot or just a favorite technique?
The collage has a long history, just mention the surrealistic Max Ernst series “The Week of Kindness ”, as well as the collages of Richard Hamilton , James Rosenquist or Jan van Toorn . If at the beginning of the last century a semi-abstract collage could be considered a challenge to realistic academic traditions, today it has become a tradition itself. Rebellion in the use of collage no more than in drawing with a brush on canvas. Somehow I can’t even think of what form of art can be called rebellious today. It seems no one can.
As for my series, the use of collage is primarily related to the plot of the stories and how I tell these stories. The collage is very natural, as if by itself, arose when working on the first story, and then I repeated a number of techniques in the remaining ten stories in order to keep the entire series within tight boundaries. I tried to find an adequate visual form to show how one layer of information layered on another, how they are combined into absurd and sometimes insane events. As in sad and even tragic events, absurdity and irony inevitably penetrate.
Photos for the collage are taken from my family archive. This subjective associative array is an attempt to find a balance between personal and common, between large and small, I wanted to show one through the other. Well, at some point I had to include in the series the state that my brother and I created as a child at the dacha. Without it, the project would be incomplete.
⌛ How and with what (if there is digital processing with which programs) do you draw these stories? (in my opinion, there was a blog post, of course)
It is more correct to say that I have a “digital collage” - cutting and overlaying parts of the photos is done in Photoshop, the originals of the photos remain intact, they are old and very valuable. I combined parts of scanned old photographs, a handwritten font, graphics drawn with a pen or brush, with hard, frankly “computer” elements. I am a designer by training and used many techniques from graphic design.
⌛ Well, you write beautifully about beauty, including art . Often there is a conversation about whether art is digital art, photo retouching or just using a computer as a tool. What do you think? For example, Hal Lasko, painting in paints ? And designers drawing mockups for applications on mobile phones - simple craftsmen ?
Of course, a computer is only a tool that can fall into different hands, and different heads are still attached to the hands. The result still depends on the person. It is hardly possible to divide the tools into "noble", "real" and "computer", "artificial". The fact that the oil painting is “alive” and “breathing”, and digital painting is necessarily “dead” - this is such a boring statement that it is even too lazy to argue with him seriously. Many still believe that everything that exists only on the monitor is not real. "Well, he really is not." These are representations of the last century, and, unfortunately, many still live there.
“The fact that the oil painting is“ alive ”and“ breathing ”, and digital painting is necessarily“ dead ”- this is such a boring statement that it’s even too lazy to argue with him seriously.”
On the other hand, it is possible to understand why digital work often causes rejection. Any material and tool has its own specifics that need to be understood and felt, and to learn to interact with it, and not to hide it, as if it is something bad. If you try to disguise digital painting under the oil, drawing under the photo, photo under the drawing - then it turns out a disgusting "fake". Works that cause internal protest and hostility with their fake, even if they are technically executed masterfully.
Beautiful things, including mobile applications, interfaces can be called art in form. But in terms of content ... Still, beauty is not the main goal of art. There is a fundamental difference between simply creating beauty around and art as a way to explore the world. Art is not obliged to bear any practical use, it expresses sensations and asks questions. In any case, should ask them and look for an answer.
⌛ Maybe you can advise aytishnik and geeks to draw a story or a comic, or an artist?
Documentary graphic novel "The Photographer " by Emmanuel Giber, Didier Lefebvre and Frederick Lemercier. If you do not know anything about comics, feel free to start with the "Photographer". Or change your mind about comics by reading "The Photographer."
“Art is not obliged to bear any practical use, it expresses sensations and asks questions.”
But in general, what to be shy about, I am working on a new long drawn story, again based on real events. Follow her creation, it will be sad, but interesting.
Thanks for answers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/364539/
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