Update 40:  04/12/2017  Tribute to Moebius new adds:

   Introducing Alejandro Ortega



Lieutenant Blueberry by Alejandro Ortega

This week Alejandro Ortega, artist born in Barcelona but raised in Almeria since he was 4, visits our blog. This year he has created the poster of the Almería comic days, with a magnificent drawing that includes a lot of comic characters (there is something of Moebius too ...)..

And today we show his magnificent collaboration, a Lieutenant Blueberry riding with his own style, a great tribute by Alejandro showing his admiration for Jean Giraud. He also wanted to concede us an interview, which we can find at the end of this post.

Alejandro, born in 1970, has a degree in Fine Arts in the specialty of Graphic Design from the University of Granada. As we will read below, he has worked in all disciplines in the world of illustration; we are introducing a very versatile professional  with many years of good work behind.

He has more than 20 years of experience in the advertising world working for several companies creating illustrations, comic advertising, storyboards, animations, pet design, plans, posters, logos, brochures, layout, clipart. Apart from collaborations with press, illustrations in books, commissioned work and works of all kind.


"His own version of Capitán Perrillo (Juanma Beltrán)"

He has also worked on TV, with two years of experience as an animator and intercalator in cartoon series in the Anglo-Saxon market with series such as "Fantomcat", "Captain Star", "Sooty" and in Spanish with "Las 3 Mellizas" .

He has created the humorous strips "Federo, estudiante de primero" that can be found in digital media and press.



"Federo", estudiante de primero

He publishes comics with the association of artists from Almería "La Duna" from 2004 to the present with his new magazine "Versión Impossible", of which 3 issues have been published to date.


"La duna" magazine

Finally, his current profession is teaching secondary education since 2005 in the subjects of plastic and technical drawing.



This is our very interesting interview with Alejandro Ortega:

- TBE: What has been your greatest artistic influence and how has your way of drawing evolved?

I have thousands of artistic influences. From Velázquez, Goya, Lautrec or Schiele in painting. Billy Wilder, Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter or Berlanga in cinema. Michael Ende, Jules Verne or H.G Wells in literature. Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bill Plympton or Glen Keane in animation, and so I could continue for hours.

But focusing on the comic drawing, really one of my maximum influences are Giorgio Cavazzano and Massimo de Vita, authors that I discovered way a lot later than when I started reading them, but whose drawings of Disney series in Don Mikey already fascinated me when I was a child and were a great source of inspiration later in my time as an animator (on the other hand,
the world of animation was a great school of drawing, I learned a lot in it from what I know).Authors of humor from Bruguera editions who have influenced me most are  Vázquez, Raf, Jan, Fresno brothers, Cera, Ramis and Ibáñez, of course. 

And on the top of the list of the great authors who have marked me the most and who are a constant source of inspiration in everything I do, apart from Moebius, my holy trinity are Carlos Giménez, Will Eisner and Peyo. Followed closely would be Uderzo, Franquin, Jack Davis, Enrique Ventura, Luis Bermejo, John Romita, Toriyama, Vatine, Walt Simonson, Mazzucchelli and a very long etcetera. 

Of all these authors I have always sought and been fascinated by the expressiveness, dynamism and purification of the line, characteristic of which all are great masters.I tried to assimilate these characteristics of their styles to take them to my side and turn them into my own. I'm still on that path of evolution, because you never stop learning.



Alejandro Ortega "on fire"



- TBE: What are the current graphic artists that you like the most?

I love Kyle Baker, Alessandro Barbucci, Bryan Lee O'Malley and Jeff Smith with that style so indebted to the world of animation. I also really like the synthesis of drawing that Brüno gets.

On the other hand the Americans Sean Murphy and Paul Pope hook me, they are tremendous...so visceral. And from the Spaniards I always like Miguelanxo Prado (a classic) and the new authors, Guarnido, Pau, Munuera, Toledano, Walta and Fontdevila are six very, very great artists.

And above all I like everything that my countryman does, the Almerian of El Ejido, Fran Carmona a portentous artist and a true genius of humor, who together with his always excellent screenwriter Santiago Girón are authors of "Horizonte Azul," Operation Sparrow " or "The Samurai Sheep".


- TBE: What is your favorite technique when it comes to drawing and coloring?
 
The technique I use is very traditional, I have tried to draw with a graphic palette but I am not convinced by the result I get, everything is very unorganized and very cold, although I recognize that there are people who do wonders with them but I prefer my faithful HB pencil.

Drawing in pencil is what I like and enjoy the most, as I said before. In fact, I usually detail pencil sketches too much, because once I start scribbling I enter a trance and I can't stop until I have drawn the smallest detail. I usually work the sketches in a small format, I'm a miniaturist artist, I don't know why, but I like to work in small.

And for inking I use everything: calibrated markers, pentel brush type pen, black bic pen, brush...all depending on the type of stroke or thickness I want to achieve. 

The color, since I discovered it, I do it with this magnificent invention called Photoshop because it saves many hours of suffering for those who do not have special ease with color, as is my case. And it allows to work by layers, to correct errors with a simple keyboard shortcut and to use many tricks that are very useful as the plots, the background textures or the gradients...a real wonder.I also like to work in digital color lately with limited palettes of very few colors with which you get very fresh and "poppy" results.



"Tomatoman, a food comic...could never be better said"

- TBE: Looking at the whole of your professional career, do you have a "thorn in the back" that you would like to take away, like working with a specific artist, or working for an editorial, or in a professional field that you have not explored?
 
My professional career since I began to make a living with drawing has been more focused on illustration than in comics, so I should have a thousand thorns stuck in this medium, but I really believe that I have always done what I wanted to do in the world of drawing and being a comic professional, if I think about it carefully, it has never been one of my goals. 

I respect cartoonists a lot because being a professional in the world of comics is something very complicated and very poorly paid for all the effort it requires. And I really do not consider myself a comic artist, let's say I'm a cartoonist who likes to make comics, that although it looks or sounds the same,  it's something totally different. I draw comic strips to have fun and without pretensions to earn my living with them or to compete with the real professional cartoonists of comics. 

I see comic as a hobby more than  a job and more if I see how it works today, because today you can't live from it unless you are very productive, very well connected or a real genius. 

Anyway, I think that the nails and the frustrations of life are just bad situations that your mind tries to remember and that must be silenced materializing new dreams and projects that exceed them. 

But continuing with the thorn, better call it the dreamed project or that thing that I've always wanted to do...put to fable and dream of impossible projects I'd like to illustrate a Goscinny script of space adventures with backgrounds drawn and colored by Azpiri, but as this is impossible because sadly these two geniuses left us, I will have to put myself to work with that story trying to do both and also finish another less pharaonic story with which I am also working on.


- TBE: At what point in your career have you felt more comfortable working and with more creative freedom?
 
Undoubtedly, right now. In these moments I enjoy everything It's me who frames my own limits.

Experience is a degree. I have been drawing for many years and now I can face more ambitious projects, write scripts and develop more complex plots, and draw what I want , knowing that the final result will be at least positive.

I believe, without sinning pretentious but fleeing from false modesty, that I have reached great maturity in drawing and telling stories. And when you master the situation you just have to get carried away with whatever you intend to do. Yes, as I said at the beginning, without ever losing sight of your limitations ... but also without fear or modesty to experiment and overreach when I want to.


TBE: What do you think of the digital format in the comic or in digital publications such as magazines and fanzines, (with the constant threat of massive pirate downloads) and how will it affect the survival of the authors and the industry?

I am old enough having always known comics and paper sleeves. And I buy comics on paper because apart from the simple reading I like the physical object, I like to smell its pages and feel it in my hands while reading it. But recently I bought a tablet whose exclusive purpose was to read digital comics, and thus be able to access discontinued works that have not been published again in years and that are shared on the internet in order to spread them and keep them alive. I have also read some works created expressly to read them in digital and that have been conceived in the horizontal and panoramic format of the digital screen as "The Private Eye" by Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martín on the Syndicate Panel platform.

I believe that the two formats are compatible and can coexist simultaneously, although I still have the idea that the digital is about fast consumption and the paper is made to last. In fact, when a digital work is successful, it rises in level and in category if it is published on paper for the simple fact of going from virtual to real and tangible.

I think that comics are published and sold more than ever, both on paper and digitally. And also that the percentage of people who buy comics has been stable for years. But with as much supply and variety as there is and the same amount of buyers, the profits are divided and each title at the end sells less, so the runs are smaller and limited. It is true that there are pirate downloads, but the buying public before piracy continues to buy. Those who only download and buy nothing or buy less, are the same who didn't buy anything on paper before piracy.

Piracy is a lesser evil for the author because his work is finally disseminated even though he does not collect royalties, and that is the bad part of the story. Although the real evil I think is precisely royalties. The survival of the authors is more to increase their percentage of profit in the sale of each comic than to take into account other considerations. Taking into account the prices of laughter to which each page is paid for years and the tiny piece of cake that the author of the final price of the comic takes, the miraculous thing is that there are still comic authors, that in a suicidal attitude, almost masochistic and for love of art they are still at the bottom of the canyon.

If the comic book industry, read editors, distributors and stores, lowered their margins and give more in an act of faith and love to the 9th art in favor of the author, things would be much different. I know that this is a tremendously romantic and utopian thought, because this is still a business where everyone wants to earn as much as possible. But taking into account that without authors there are no comics, I think the industry should take a little more care of their workforce, ultimately their raw material and have a more patronage, more protectionist and less entrepreneurial...in short, the dreamer in me.

Anyway, the authors have taken action on the issue and now sell without intermediaries (or less) in crowdfunding projects or digital platforms such as Panel Syndicate or Patreon. Times are changing, that is a fact.


 Almerian comic days poster,  2017

- TBE: Are you going to continue with the publication of Version Imposible, and at what pace?

After several years and the publication of 14 issues of the magazine "La Duna" created by the association of comics artists of Almeria, was born "Version Imposible", a magazine in which each draftsman and scriptwriter should give their particular version of the same character created by some artist of the association. 

Since this proposal emerged, the association set a biannual cadence for this magazine and in principle it will continue like this. You could always publish more, but a couple of numbers a year is a more than acceptable amount, which can be maintained without burdens and without burning the idea considering that the sale of one number serves to pay for the next and that we keep this publication in a devotional way, we have to steal time from our leisure to bring it to light.  

The magazine will continue as long as we do not run out of characters and ideas or topics to be dealt with and,  above all, as long as the authors are still involved with as much enthusiasm in the project as they are now.

- TBE:  Bachelor of Fine Arts and Professor of Plastic Arts, what does your teaching job bring? Have any of your students decided to direct their career towards illustration?

I never wanted to be a drawing teacher but everything that happened around me (the fact of teaching comics courses or giving children's illustration workshops) kept giving me signs that this was what I had to do, or maybe that It was my fatal and irremediable destiny, hahaha...I'll never know that. 

The fact is that finally I ended up, among other jobs, being a teacher of Plastic. And although not all the students I teach respond to my teachings as many of them are in your drawing classes (hence "Compulsory" of the Spanish acronym "ESO"), train the rest of children and young people who do have your same concerns and who you recognize when you were their age, is tremendously rewarding. See how they improve, evolve and learn, observe day by day how they absorb your advice and how they surprise you with their own achievements is something wonderful. 

Sometimes even the roles of teacher and student are reversed, and they give you authentic lessons of spontaneity and freshness that you can then apply to your own work. Because the fact of dealing with young people on a daily basis is refreshing and rejuvenating. It makes you share that vital force and that capacity of fascination for the new thing that they have and above all to know how you feel and live on the street today and not in your hackneyed schemes in which you always circle around the same thing. 

I have had several very talented students who have focused their careers on artistic disciplines and when you see them again over the years and they tell you what they are doing, you take great pride in them, and they thank you for the classes you gave them. Although I always say the same thing (something I firmly believe): "All the merit of what is happening to you or is going to happen to you in the future is totally yours, not mine".

- TBE: What can you tell us about your current job? Do you projects in mind in the medium and / or short term?

Well, as I said in a previous response, that of "the little thorn in the flesh", I have two new projects under development, one is in diapers and is a full-fledged space-opera and is in the stage of script, character design and scenarios. It pretends to be a very European album of 48 pages in color. It will be a closed story full of fantasy, adventure and humor.

The other, much more advanced and in which I have been involved for some time will be an album of comic strips in landscape format. Where I mixed in a strange cocktail the comic strips of a page published by Bruguera, the shorts of Warner by Chuck Jones and the design of Hanna Barbera's characters...to see what comes out. I love how it's going.

And finally, another eternally pending project is to end my personal web page with samples of work that I always leave in the last position of the list of pending tasks.



"Sol Rojo - Fuego, a version of Raúl Moreno's work"


- TBE: What are your memories / relationships / influences with Jean Giraud and his artworks?

The most intense memory I have of Jean Giraud goes back to the time when I was able to meet him in person while I was studying Fine Arts in Granada.

He came to do a course and give a guest talk in the university and it was an event and a milestone that was never repeated again. The assembly hall where this talk took place was totally filled with students, including their folder under the arm full of samples of comic book pages they had taken to show him, the professionals of the cartoon Sergio García and José Luís Munuera, who was also at that time my classmate and friend of unforgettable student escapades.


The talk was memorable, Giraud in perfect Castilian with a certain Chilean accent told an audience totally delivered anecdotes of his life, his way of seeing the world, drawing and comics and the keys of his creative process, including the peyote that opened the mind in his collaborations with my namesake Alejandro Jodorowsky, anecdote is that it made the Dean and the authorities who attended the talk for generalized laughter of the students who enjoyed the beauty of the "tense" situation quite nervous.


But apart from this university anecdote, my connection with Giraud's universe began when a Metal Hurlant fell into my hands where I could see the first pages of "The Incal". Especially called my attention the mythical vignette of impossible perspective in which its protagonist John Difool falls into a chasm of futuristic architecture.


From that moment I also fell irremediably into the endless abyss of Moebius' magic trace, because it must be said that I am more of Moebius than of Giraud, although Blueberry is a marvel without discussion and I love (who does not), he created that Giraud explodes as a genius and we discover him as the fascinating author he really is, when he becomes his alter-ego Moebius. In fact, my favorite works of all his production are the ones he signed under the pseudonym of Moebius and are the ones I revisit the most, since his reading and viewing is totally inspiring every time I look at them. They go from the aforementioned "Incal" through that little wonder and masterpiece called "The Long Tomorrow" or the fascinating "Arzach" and ending with "The airtight garage"...no words.


It is also mythical for me his collaboration with Stan Lee doing that peculiar and great version of Silver Surfer called "Parabola". Moebius marked a before and an after in the world of comics as David Bowie did in the world of music, two geniuses whose absolutely avant-garde work does not age for years that have passed since it was conceived.


From this great French author I especially like his line, all his imagery and the worlds he created and also his sequential planning, his way of choosing the frames and his staging that weaves a story as fluid, magical and enveloping as inimitable.


Alejandro, it has been a real discovery to know your work and I thank you very much for collaborating in this humble tribute to Moebius, sharing anecdotes and very interesting points of view about the current comic scene and about your influences and projects.

This is your home and you can count on this website to promote your future publications.

Greetings and good luck!!!