Do you remember when you where unable to walk?
Of course not! you’ll say, it was a long time ago.
Well, me, I do not recall ever being unable to draw (even with a broken middle finger).
I was just a daydreaming doodler when in grade 10, a friend suggeted that I start drawing my own cartoons. A comic book, to be precise, modeled after the american classics of the genre. So, I decided to use the caracters of GAP (which are the french initials of Anti Teachers Group), a fictitious organization created to amuse my fellow classmates. After a number of modifications to these caracters, I undertook to depict there adventures with the help of pencils, sheets of paper and a fiew ideas.
Naively and without much knowledge about anything, except that guns go BLAM!, I produced 120 pages of action, using the super-heroes I created. But I suddenly hit a snag. This wasn’t going anywhere. There was to many caracters, to many useless dialogues and not enough originality. So, did I work for nothing? Not really, I learned how to build a story in the beginning, not while drawing. I mastered the art of human proportion, I discovered the Mangas and rediscovered european graphic novels. I was learning by trial and error. These, I would make again in the years that came. In grade 11, I started two other stories that would never be completed.
And that was high school. College was now on the agenda. I was undertaking a three years course which would make a graphic designer out of me. Luckily for me, an optional comic book drawing class was given in college. With no hesitation, my friends and I went on to learn more about the art of cartoons. Teached by Réal Godbout, creator and illustrator of Red Ketchup, the course helped us become better cartoonists, but also to publish a collection of our work.
That was a bit more serious. Our cartoons were going to end up, as any publication, in Quebec’s and Ottawa’s national libraries. However, after working on three stories that weren’t going anywhere, I yearned to write and draw something that would finaly satisfy me.
My choice fell on Igor Big-Tof, a caracter featured in two old stories and I started the production of a six pages short story. But my writing problems were persisting. The action was laid down on paper, two pages were inked and then $#!+! The drawing was good, but the storyline had no punch. It was just a series of uninteresting events.
But Alleluia! finally came my saviour or my saviourette, if I may say.
Catharina Eva Sirkowski, known before as Miss. Dynamite, was once the sidekick of Igor Big-Tof in two previous stories. Of this supporting caracter, I would create MY leading caracter. I produced a three pages cartoon in color, a one page gag also in color and a to be continued two pages in black and white. All this for the Ahuntsic College collection named 100% Paper. Eva Sirkowski had prouved her value and her versatility. I would also grab the occasion to solomnly swear never to use the Igor Big-Tof caracter again, since it’s my belief that he is marked by The Beast (John’s Book of Revelation ;-)
Miss. Dynamite was then my main project and so, six other color pages ended up in the second edition of 100% Paper. But on the other hand, I had just inavertently signed the death sentence of this collection. Certain members of the teaching staff felt that priting our work represented a risk to great to take on the College’s good reputation.
So 100% Paper was no more. But this adventure was responsible for the creation of Miss. Dynamite. And even though she was eventualy responsable for the death of the collection, it was all worthwhile in the end. I must even thank the Ahuntsic College and I forgive their censorship (but not too much).
I would then complete the first episode of Miss. Dynamite (36 pages), before taking on the second (50 pages) that was finished just before I got my graphic designer diploma. I then got a job as a animation computer colorist at Toonteck. During this time, I undertook the production of my third episode. This new chapter in the adventures of Miss.Dynamite, once completed, will amount to 80 pages.
Since then, I have made a living as a freelance illustrator/animator.
More crap about me.
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