Festival BD Essonne

Comme vous avez pu vous en apercevoir BD Essonne accueil de plus en plus d’auteurs étrangers et nous en sommes ravis et fière. Cette année, si vous avez bien tendu vos oreilles, nous avons même eu une interview « radio kid » en anglais.

Daniel Lieske auteur de Wormworld Saga a été interrogés par des membres du Conseil Communal des Jeunes. Ci-dessous une retranscription de l’interview… A vos cahiers d’Anglais ! 😉

1) Will you continue to do this comic book ? For How long ?

I’m creating the Wormworld Saga chapter by chapter. Fans around the world are helping me to fund the production of the Wormworld Saga and as long as I get this support, I will create new chapters. There story is pretty long ( I estimate about 50 chapters) so I won’t run out of story for quite some time. But the truth is that creating the Wormworld Saga is an adventure of its own and just as Jonas couldn’t answer you the question when his adventure will be over, I can’t say how this journey will turn out.

2) What are your inspiration for Worlword saga (books, movies, tv shows…) ?

I’ve grown up in the 80s and early 90s and my main inspiraton are movies like « Star Wars », « The Dark Crystal », « Labyrith », « Indiana Jonas ». I have actually not read too many comis but among my favorites are « Akira » and « Hellboy ». I also like to listen to film music and classic music.

3) Why did you choose to publish on the internet first ?

Simply because it is easy and I had to ask nobody to do it. When I went to school, I created small comic books with funny stories about our teachers. I not only drew them but also copied and stapled them and sold them on the schoolyard. I had to ask nobody to do that and that felt just right. I thought that it would be a good way to do the Wormworld Saga, too.

4) Where have you learned to draw ? In a school ? by yourself ?

I just love to draw and I did it a lot as a child. I’m pretty much self-taught. Of course I’ve learned from books and later also from video tutorials. But I didn’t go to art school or something like that.

5) Had foreign publishers impose you a certain size for your book ? Or have you thought about it yourself, according to the country where it is published ?

I give my publishers free reign when it comes to the size of the books. You know, the origin of my work is the screen and putting it into a book is a big change of its original character anyway. In what size it is produced does not particularly matter for me.

6) Was it difficult to mix fantastic and reality in the same story ?

My biggest challenge so far is to imagine a world and a civilization that works without fire. Fire is an important cultural element and a lot of things change if you remove it from the world like I do in the Wormworld. Apart from that, the Wormworld actually isn’t too fantastic compared to our world. There are some strange animals and some supernatural elements but all in all I see the Wormworld Saga much like an adventure that you could experience in our world, too.

7) Do you find it’s a good idea to pass from writing on Internet with writing on paper ?

The good thing is that drawing keeps to be drawing no matter if you do it on paper or on a graphic tablet. All you need to have to practice drawing is a pencil and a piece of paper and you could create a masterpiece with these tools. The computer is just another tool and although it makes many things easier, it’s also much more complicated than a pencil. So, if you’re willing to learn all the programs and techniques, the computer is a great tool which will keep you excited for a long time to come. But you shouldn’t think that you need it in order to do great work. Great work is done my people and not by tools.

8) During the process of writing your comic book, have you felt a lack of inspiration ?

My experience is that a story needs a certain time to become ripe. I always need some time before I’m ready to write a new chapter but the good thing is that I’m also illustrating my story. That way I have several months of time between writing chapters and that normally is enough to refuel my creative batteries.

9) At the beginning, did you imagined that Wormworld saga could be published all over the world ?

The cool thing about the internet is, that you automatically publish to the whole world when you put something online. However, what really surprised me was the reactings I got from so many different countries. The Wormworld Saga is being translated by fans into many languages and that wonderful because especially children might not be able to read the English version of my story. Therefore I’m really appreciating the help of the fans because that way a lot of children around the world can read my story.

10) Do you have a blog ? What is the address?

Yes, I have a blog at daniellieske.blogspot.com.