Luca Malisan

This weekend I will be in Sainte Enimie (France), for the festival of medieval comic books. I will be there with my new book La Conjuration de Cluny, just published by Glènat.

With the book “La Conjuration de Cluny” I defined somehow “a method” of work. I can’t say that I lacked method before, but it wasn’t so precise (I had many files and sheets everywhere!).

Here there are three images of the workflow on one page of “Le Crepuscule de Tellure”, my next book.

First of all I have to define the correct amount of cases, and build the “grid”, but I don’t have an image for that (just some sketches on paper). The other three phases are here:

1) Storyboard. After gathering all the photos and the documentation, I put the texts inside the cases and I make quick sketches of characters, positions… This phase is completely digital.

2) Pencil. The main backgrounds are inked directly (digitally), then I print the page and I draw characters and secondary backgrounds with pencil. I acquire the result with the scanner and I draw (digitally) balloons outside text.

3) Ink. Very little to say, just… inking (digitally). And putting away the texts on another file, just to make life easier for the colorist.

The cover of “La Conjuration de Cluny” that you’ll see in bookstores is completely different from the first idea. These images are the “remains” of the original idea for the cover of this book: 1) sketching the ideas, 2) quick draft of the chosen cover 3) final version of the cover. Anyway, the actual cover is pretty better than this.

I’ve just completed my second French comic book. The title is “La Conjuration de Cluny” (The Cluny Conspiracy), and it will be a single 54-pages book (see website). This book will start a new collection about the main french monuments, issued by Glénat and Editions Du Patrimoine – Centre des Monuments Nationaux.

The plot is an historical thriller written by Didier Alcante (Pandora Box, Remind).

La Conjuration de Cluny is settled in 1198, between the third and fourth crusade, and the location is the Cluny Abbey, whose church was the bigger of whole Europe (until the building of St.Peter in Rome). Today very little of the abbey is still there, it was dismantled after French Revolution.

Now my next work will be “Le Crepuscule de Tellure”, for the french publisher Soleil.

The colors of  ”Cluny” are by my friend and colleague Paolo Francescutto, who did a great job. Here there are some preview pages:

It’s been three months since the latest post. I’m very busy with the drawings of two books, I’ll post some image soon. Meanwhile I’m taking a small holiday to go to the comic books festival of Angoulême, in France.

This is the comic I did in the 24 Hours Comic Day (22 hours of work).

The work was (almost) all digital. A piece of  “real” paper for the mini-storyboard. Dialogs written on an OpenOffice Spreadsheet, drawings (pencils, cases, balloons, lettering and inking…) with Manga Studio EX, and colors with Photoshop. All on a PC Enface Filo M25 with Windows XP Pro hooked to a Cintiq 12WX tablet.

Timing: 1 hour for texts and storyboard, 6 hours for pencils (1 hour dinner break), 7 hours for inks (sums up to about 14 hours to complete black and white pages) and then 1 hour of rest and 7 hours for colors. Total: 22 hours. And then about 1 hour to print everything (on postcards).

Thanks to Associazione Vastagamma for the organization and to my colleagues the climbed the mountain with me.

Texts are in italian.

This afternoon (in Italy) I will start the 24 Hour Comics Day. I’ll work on a story of 24 pages realized in 24 continued hours. Me and other authors will gather in Pordenone, thanks to the organization of “Associazione Vastagamma”:
www.vastagamma.org

The same (crazy!) thing will be done by thousands of artists in the whole world. You’ll find here more information on the “global” 24 Hour Comics Day:
www.24hourcomicsday.com

Andrea Mutti did the art on this episode of Marvel Zombies, where I did colors. The main character of this issue (settled in the 70s) is Tony Stark / Iron Man, that will struggle against a bunch of zombies. Bloodbath!

[I've removed these images after suggestions of other authors involved in this project. They think that the publisher may not authorize previews like these.]

The book “La Croisade des Enfants”, written by Fabrice David and drawn by me, has won a prize! It won the 1st prix in the “Jeunesse” section at the festival of Sainte Enimie, in France! All my thanks to the organization of the festival for their kindness, Sainte Enimie is really great: a medieval village in the mountains of the National Park of Cévennes.

Moreover, the gran prix of the festival has gone to the beautiful book “Les Voies du Seigneur”, written again by Fabrice David, together with Grégory Lassablière, and drawn by Jaime Calderòn (website), great spanish artist and travel mate!

This is the medal that I received for “La Croisade des Enfants”:

Prix Jeunesse Sainte Enimie 2009 à "La Croisade des Enfants" (David/Malisan)

On Juillet 11 et 12 I will partecipate at the comic festival of Sainte Enimie, in France. I will do “dédicaces” on the book “La Croisade des Enfants”, just issued by Soleil Productions.

Visit the festival website to get more information.