So I eventually found it; a small little gallery on the outskirts of Wimbledon Village, and went inside to be greeted by 'Patch', the gallery dog. I met Ed shortly after and he was very nice, very friendly. He was very pleased (as am I, lol) that we'd finished our first job, and showed me some of the other artists they have - one artist actually did all the Halloween decorations for Asda. We talked about my portfolio - I have to get on and send him some more stuff, when I can manage the internet, lol, and my next step is to design some character designs. Easy peasy!
I then met the rest of the team, and they were all really lovely and complimentary. I was nervous enough, and it really helped to have such friendly people there. I'm looking forwards to the next job. =D
After that, I did a bit of shopping at Tokyo Toys and Forbidden Planet, then sat in the middle of Central London for the better part of an hour and a half waiting for Dan and the others, who had managed to get themselves lost.
And that's that. =D
So... the illustrator I want to mention this time is not a manga artist. I thought i'd mix it up a little just to show that not ALL of my influences are manga. =D
Jhonen Vasquez
Have you ever seen that cartoon, Invader Zim? Well, JV is the mastermind behind it. I first heard of JV from my friend Joe who, one day, brought into school a strange looking black book with just 'Z?!' on the cover. After actually reading the book, I was a bit worried that i'd actually gained a weird kind of empathy for serial killers.
'Z?!' is actually the Directors' Cut of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, which tells the story of Johnny ('Nny' to his friends), a guy who is trying to figure out the psychological/supernatural reasons that make him a serial killer. His friends are a talking, floating, dead bunny-head called Nailbunny, two styrofoam figures, Psychodoughboy and Mr. Eff, who act as a kind of angel/devil device for Johnny (disregarding the fact that neither of them have good intentions), and a terminally hopeless and scared-witless little boy for a neighbour, who Johnny likes to call 'Squee'. Squee was given his own four-issue series later on. Johnny also has a brief romance with a female character caled Devi (one date that ended badly with Johnny trying to 'immortalise the moment' by killing them both), who was also given her own little series. The thing that makes the series so funny, however, is the brash, black humour that plays on the readers' own revenge fantasies, making Johnny so completely relatable.
My favourite character has to be Devi - mostly because she's the character most similar to myself. In I Feel Sick. Devi is an artist, who works for a company that likes to suck the creativity out of all she does. She has no time to work on her own work, and can feel herself slowly going insane.
Enter Sickness. The strange little doll that Devi painted once and left to work on actual work. Only now, it's talking, and starting to come out of the painting. And it's telling her to do things.
Jhonen Vasquez has a really good, quirky style that's just on the good side of being totally inappropriate, and the geometric art style suits the black comedy of the narrative. He does, however, like to include a smily face here and there just to show that the world is not all doom and gloom, as his characters would make you believe.
His animated series, Invader Zim, is a lot lighter and smoother, since it was made for Nickelodeon. It's all about a hopeless alien named Zim and his inept attempts to exterminate the Earth. He's accompanied by his malfunctioning pet robot, GIR, who dresses in a dog suit so as to not be noticed by the slightly satirical and oblivious humans. However, Zim, despite his weak disguise, is recognised for what he is by Dib, a boy from his school. It then becomes Dib's main mission in life to foil all of Zim's attempts at annihilating the Earth.
The series still retains some of JV's quirky humour, only a lot less dark and without the extensive amount of expletives that JtHM has.
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