Canada!
This weekend I traveled with four of my favorite guys: Chuck, Jose, Gabby, and Max to Montreal for Expozine! It was my first time at this convention, and I really hope it won't be the last. I loooooove this show. It's cheap as heck to get a table, people are really nice and into trading and excited about other people's work, there are no name-tags, it's free to get in...etc etc. The only bad part was when it started to smell like old gym shorts.
The other thing that made this weekend so great was getting to hang out with some people from L' Employe du Moi, a collective of comic artists in Brussels that Max (de Radigues, who is the current fellow at CCS), is a part of. In Brussels they share a studio and collaborate on comics, and publish beautiful books as well. Most of them also have day jobs, and they are funding these projects themselves out of pure love for comics. It's so inspiring so see what they do, especially because they are always thinking about what good storytelling is, and because they are so supportive of each other. Sacha Goerg spoke with Max in our class about Employe du Moi, and I got to see some of his comics this weekend, they are absolutely beautiful, as are Max's.
All the people on the Grand Papier website, where they get a lot of submissions for the massive anthologies they've been putting out, are amazing (most of it's in french, but what I understand looks amazing!) We also got to hang out with some cartoonists who live in Montreal and work in a studio together, where last week they all drew and printed an entire newspaper comic to give out at Expozine! And it's beautiful! (See cover above, drawn by Sacha and Max).
That's all.
Inspiration.
*For a way better post about Expozine, read this!
