Cyberpunk-Influencing Artist Moebius Offers 18 Tips for Artists #cyberpunk

In this history of cyberpunk series, we’ve talked about Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, the comic book artist who had a significant impact on Ridley Scott and Syd Mead of Blade Runner, William Gibson, and the aesthetics of cyberpunk in general.

In this piece on Open Culture, they reproduce a transcribed lecture from Moebius, published in a Mexican newspaper in the mid 1990s. In it, he offers 18 tips for those interested in getting into comic book writing and art. Many of these tips can be applied to other forms of writing, art, and other creative work.

1) When you draw, you must first cleanse yourself of deep feelings, like hate, happiness, ambition, etc.

2) It’s very important to educate your hand. Make it achieve a level of high obedience so that it will be able to properly and fully express your ideas. But be very careful of trying to obtain too much perfection, as well as too much speed as an artist. Perfection and speed are dangerous — as are their opposites. When you produce drawings that are too quick or too loose, besides making mistakes, you run the risk of creating an entity without soul or spirit.

9) When an artist, a real working artist, goes out on the street, he does not see things the same way as “normal” people. His unique vision is crucial to documenting a way of life and the people who live it.

13) There is a connection between music and drawing. The size of that connection depends upon your personality and what’s going on at that moment. For the last ten years I’ve been working in silence; for me, there is music in the rhythm of my lines. Drawing at times is a search for discoveries. A precise, beautifully executed line is like an orgasm!

14) Color is a language that the graphic artist uses to manipulate his reader’s attention as well as to create beauty. There is objective and subjective color. The emotional states of the characters can change or influence the color from one panel to the next, as can place and time of day. Special study and attention must be paid to the language of color.

Read the rest here.

There is also another version of the piece with lengthy annotations (including visual examples) by fellow illustrator Bill Stout.


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