Gebieden Energie Neutraal GEN

This is for archiving purposes. Animation I did together with filmmaker (and musician) Jos Hoes for the GEN organisation. It explains their mission and projects.
The film was shown at their congress, November 11, 2013.
The complete assignment included a booklet, with the full voice-over text and stills of the animation, project + stand logo's, plus discussion sheets (see below).

front page booklet

stand logos GEN congress

project logo 'Expeditie Gebieden Energieneutraal' GEN

placemat/talkboard GEN congress

Cunera sample

Yesterday we kicked off a new comic project by De Inktpot: De Halsdoek van Cunera (Cunera's Scarf). A book about the patron saint of the small provincetown Rhenen, whose legend has spread all over the lowlands. The comic will be drawn in split-pages by 10 different Utrecht-based comic artists, and see the light of day early Summer 2015.
For fundraising we made a brochure with some sample pages, which you see below.
Top one is mine (playing somewhere 500 DC), bottom one by Niels Bongers (around 1000 DC):

Trashball 4

Had to get this one online, as all hardcopy versions -even in my own collection- are running out.
A scifi comic book I did on assignment for Or-Tak productions and the Rotterdam cleaning company ROTEB, to make schoolkids in a fun way aware about littering and everyday pollution.
The A5-sized comic was distributed for free in the city in 2003, and had a rerun in 2010.
Story and art are ©
Enjoy!

Telephone Date 3

for MacFan magazine #114, illustration to serial 'De telefoonafspraak' pt.3 by Jack Nouws

MacFundamentalist

From 1998 to this year I illustrated the columns of writer Jack Nouws in the Dutch computer magazine MacFan, total one hundred. They are now bundled into an e-book, which can be had through the iBooks store (Dutch only).
This is the cover drawing:

final cover with type

Shredder

A message from an animal welfare organisation on my timeline about the industrial cutting of chickens' beaks threw me back into the past. In 1993 I did a biweekly series around Benjamin Croquette for FNV-magazine, in which he had a job at a big printing company and constant conflicts with his superiors. It was also a year where a machine for efficient destruction of 'redundant' oneday-chicks was introduced in factory farming. Combining those elements was evident.

FNV magazine, January 1993 - scan

Sketchbookpage Janine

Sketchwork for a comic called 'Janine'. Click to enlarge:

The Soul of Kiel (2)

So... preparing myself mentally for a month in the northern Germany town of Kiel (which is approximately the same size as Utrecht) I went looking for some current German literature.
Not being very structural -I did not look for an overview or guide to start with- ànd running on a low budget, the public library was an obvious first stop. A monumental building right in the centre of town (used to be a department store) on 10 minutes walk from my house.
They do have a 'foreign literature' section, mainly English, then German (4 or 5 bookcases), then French, then others. Here I pulled out Der Reservetorwart by Burkhard Spinnen and Tote essen keinen Döner by Osman Engin, the first one short stories, the second a humoristic detective.
Yes, a light diet as I don't have much time left before September 1. And in my own bookshelves I do have some German comicbooks and magazines to plough through.

Next I visited Broese, in the same block as our library and the largest bookstore of Utrecht. Just to check. Here the German literature section consisted of one (1) meagre bookcase, with a lot of non-German authors. I think mainly directed to German visitors looking for something to read during their stay here.
Knowing my way around I didn't have to investigate further. In a city like Utrecht, which has a large intellectual population and boasts about its creative spirit, the cultural influx of a neighbouring country (and biggest tradepartner) is practically invisible. Or at least: one has to work hard to find it.
It is safe to say the Netherlands are more oriented towards Anglosaxon than European culture.
Big words, I know.
Will make it smaller now.
In previous post I talked about a comic I made about my German background. Wurzeln was first published in Zone5300, in a 1999 special on Germany (also featuring work by Calle Claus, Ulf K and Anke Feuchtenberger). I had it a couple of times on my website, and in German translation on Splashcomics. The latter is featured below, slightly reconstructed as I lost the original files in a harddisk crash.
Until I am in Kiel I'll post about this and that and personal Germany-related shit, after September 1 the blog will be dedicated to the Soul of Kiel-project. Please have patience :-)

Sorry, color files are lost...

The Soul of Kiel (1)

OK, also... fangen wir an...
Ahemmm (keuchs)... dann... sollte ich mich zuerst mal entschuldigen weil mein Deutsch nicht so gut ist... Bitte... Merkwürdigerweise ist es immer dasselbe womit ich anfange vor ein deutschsprachiges Publikum. Das mich wahrscheinlich schon längst als Ausländer identifiziert hat, und meiner Beherrschung der Sprache nicht so ernst nimmt wie ich selber...
Scheisse, ist das anstrengend!
Besser mach ich das in Englisch...

Where I also need to apologise to the native speakers. This is my second language (my first is Dutch, German my third) and I'm not very good at it. Still I hope to be loud and clear here.

This is a strange project to undertake. Coming September I'll spend a whole month in Kiel with the assignment to make a journalistic comic about the city and surroundings (a CUNE initiative).
I have never been there before and wanted to use this fact as an advantage. Go in there completely blank and record everything with ultimate curiosity.
But ofcourse preparing myself I inevitably soak in information. Like for instance about my hosts, the Pure Fruit comic collective and their representative Gregor Hinz with whom I communicate.
Of these primal things I'll write about the next two weeks. Starting September the First I'll switch into alien comic journalist mode and dedicate all posts to the stuff I encounter IRL in Kiel.
But before all that, let me explain the beginning of current post: I am German myself so the language is supposed to come natural. Only: I wasn't born there, never lived there, and I was raised in my Dutch mother's tongue. My Germanship is merely a token. I inherited the nationality from my father's side and never felt the need to change it for another.
It's a bit complicated. There's a older comic I dedicated to all this, which I'll post one of these days.
German is my third language because I spend some years in primary school in Switzerland, near Zürich, obliging me to speak it all day. Kept the language alive by reading, and German lessons later in high school. I guess the combination of this ability and owning a German passport always provokes the need in me to apologise to nativespeaking Germans.
Plus ofcourse I'm a polite guy.
Anyway, part of preparing for September is embedding myself into the language a bit more than usual. Watching German tv, listening to German rock, reading German texts etc.
Like about the weapon shield of Kiel, which was something I thought could be used as a symbol in 'The Soul of Kiel', working title of this comic assignment.

Still in doubt. So to be continued for sure...

PS
Messing with national symbolism one should never limit to those foreign. Below two variations on the weapon shield of my home town Utrecht, made for De Inktpot booklet 'Utrecht Te Wapen' (2007):

GIW3