Kazka, and how it all happened
Here's a quite detailed interview that I gave to Zarya Bar. If you have some more questions about the comic, feel free to ask me.
Hi Dominik, or should is say Kazmonavt, this isn't you're first time in Moscow, right?
True, I've been living in Moscow from 2003 to 2010. My friend MiuMau introduced me to Tema Lebedev. So I started to illustrate for his studio for a couple of years. And actually the comic started to evolve in that period, as well as the Kazmonavt monicker and the typeface that I use for the whole Kazmonavt communications. What exactly is behind the name Kazmonavt Hm, that's quite a mix of several stories. In Moscow, still in 2003, as I was looking for a new and stylish tag (graffiti signature) I liked the letter-combination KAZ. Then so many other words popped up with with KAZ as a root. KAZel (Russian for goat or douche-bag), KAZino, KAZifornia and also the KAZmonavt thingy. That was also the time I started hanging with the Flammable Beats, and the first flyers for them went out with KAZ404. I made some weird music as Prince Kaz and then somehow the KAZmonavt thing became stronger and stronger, and the best thing about it. No one had it in the www. Then there was once that enlightenment, that everything in the universe, the cosmos, must thus be cosmic, even planet earth, which means, me and you are ****ing cosmic. And now, this is important, without any esoteric hippy attitude. It is a FACT! That really put me back on my feet. It meant, I can be cosmic, without even leaving the planet, I can just stick around and do my stuff. So here I was reborn, the Kazmonavt, in my own private Kazmos, the vast and endless realms of inspirational sources and possibilities. Everything was suddenly there and applicable. Your comic is called KAZka, so what does that mean then? First of all, it contains the KAZ root, then it is related to the Russian word Skazka (story, tale ) and the Russian word kaska (helmet). I even think Kazka means fairy tale in Ukrainian, not sure actually, shame on me. And it means SOMETHING in Lithuanian. Maybe it means the story about something and the helmet, which is of course the helmet of the main character. Honestly, I tried to read the comic on your website, but I have to admit, I do have problems understanding it. Can you tell a bit about the story :-)))) Yeah, it is not so easy to read, actually it is not so heavy if you know how. :-) You definitely can't grasp it rationally. The whole story, even if it follows the typical Hero's journey – hero has problem, struggles, happy end – happens on a subconscious level. So you better read it as you try to understand a dream. It is full of symbols and little myths that actually are waiting to be interpreted by the reader. I have about 5 interpretations myself of it. For instance, that the black stuff is the technology that came into our life and kind of takes over or that that black stuff is just the unknown new things that follow their own rules, that we have to cope with, to understand and not fear and know how to integrate them. Change is inevitable I once was said. So somehow it is also quite a Freudian mash-up of the Greek myth of Orpheus & Euridice and the biblical story of Noah's arc and for sure, a bit of Alice in wonderland with a zest of manga and 'urban' design aesthetics. Did you have this story in mind, when you started drawing. Nah, definitely not. I actually wanted to make a story about Moscow. Where urban myths, for example Stalin's Metro Two and contemporary problems or happenings collide. I searched the internet with all this Moscow underground stories and already made a lot of sketches. It was super inspiring, but it didn't click. At the same time Arne from Invisible Chamber and me, developed an animation concept at the studio Lebedev for MTV Russia, that never came out when MTV cut their budgets. We made about one minute of animation and the style that we developed, became a visual base for Kazka, as well as for the movie Arne is working on. As I was stuck with my underground story, Arne said, that I just should draw a bunch of panels and put them together later and that a story will appear by itself. So I went on with that rabbit character and a fox that I was scribbling all the time anyway, also the guy with the helmet popped up in my sketchbooks here and there, so I just grabbed them and went from there. So I am pretty thinkful for his advice. Suddenly, from drawing single frames, I had that full page image in my head, with the naked couple lying in the grass, bah, too boring, something must happen. Sure, a spaceship is crashing down on them. Good ole deus ex machina trick, Girl probably dead, arm remains, boy has to get girl back. I had my story. Or at least I had some sort of ending. I didn't know how to get there yet, I just went on drawing. And then, the story started to get it's own logic and rules and somehow I just let things happen. Later towards the end, when there were overlapping actions ahead, I made up a lot of storyboards to solve the problems that appeared. It took me more then six years to finish it. There were periods where I had no time or ideas so it waited. Towards the end, that was just before I left Moscow to go to San Francisco for work, I worked very intensively on it, that was when all this huge double page spreads and the 8 page panorama appeared. I just needed that space. In movies it is easy, you can just have a shot that takes longer, or even slow-motion scenes. In comics there is no time in that sense, there is just bigger and smaller panels that give you a hint, if that image goes quick or slow. So I slowed down after the dynamic battle in the air to make an emphasis on the showdown, to unveil the story quite impact- and effectful. It was also like a meditation to draw all this mountainous landscapes while being stuck in the -30°C Moscow winter )))) which was pretty sunny by the way. The whole thing is pretty trippy, were there drugs involved? No way man, besides beer and ciggies, I am drug free!!! It's that famous doors of perception to one's cosmic fantasy that everybody can open and not feeling ashamed about it. Also sometimes we have weird dreams, that have nothing to do with drugs of course, same if we look at kids, they just fool around and mix things and just dont give a damn if Barbie has a shark-boyfriend and in the next moment some weird teddy-bear becomes Darth Vader. It's just placeholders with a special edge, or so. Did you draw the whole thing by hand or with the computer? Aaahm, actually both )) I have this so called tablet PC, where you have a pen to draw directly on the monitor. The thing is pretty old, so i went for black and white ))) The only things I did on Paper was scribbles and storyboards or actually artwork that i traced later on. All the drawn stuff came out of Photoshop and all that black energy graphical material I did with my special brush-technique in Illustrator. That's a pretty hard to control technique, so I made myself a set of elements that i could modify quickly and implement. Even animate in a very weird manner )) Is there going to be a sequel to Kazka? Yes maybe, i have the loose story in my head, if it will work out with that one, there is material for a trilogy. Besides that, I am working on a new completely different topic. Various stories of migrants connected to the era of the sowiet union. I already took a bunch of interviews of friends or their parents. for instance with MiuMau or my Russian-African friend Anton. Really touching and moving life-stories. And to place their stories into the actual facts of that time, I started kind of studying Russian history. ))) Which comic authors do you see as examples or perhaps even cartoonists? Hm, as for Kazka, there is no comic authors I see as examples. For sure there is a lot of elements I took from Japanes art and comics. For example the black and white raster shading, or the dynamic page layout and sometimes Kazka gets close to that Japanese kawaii (cute) style. The backgrounds towards the end are definitely influenced by Japanese wood block prints. And the trippyness might have influenced by the artist Robert Williams, who influenced me a lot when I was about 16/17 yrs old. Which comics or authors do you really like now and read as a kid? As a kid Asterix, Lucky Luke and The Peanuts I really liked and still read them once in a while. And for sure Mickey Mouse I also read as a kid. Funnily, I never was into Hergé, though I definitely do like his style. The kick-off to more adult or matures comics was, when I got introduced to stuff from Enki Bilal, Franquin and Frank Miller and for sure the European version of the Heavy Metal (Metal Hurlant, a weekly comic magazine) Then Moebius, Manara, and of course Hugo Pratt is one of my all-time faves. (It was like a sacred act to help on his exhibition in St. Petersburg). Pratt's historical approach made me interested in more mature and serious books such as Persepolis, the Photographer and all the Joe Sacco stuff. Baru is great to read, so is Schuiten & Peeters, Calvin & Hobbes!!! Oh man, there is so much good stuff out there )) Do you relate more to European / Japanese / other comics? Definitely more European oriented stuff. Though I love Akira, actually all the stuff of Otomo and animator Miyazaki. From an aesthetic point of view, all these Japanese wood print artists like Hiroshige, Hokusai and Kuniyoshi (my favourite) made a big impression on me. I was actually never into fantasy or superhero comics. I love to read funnies, heavy stuff as well and historical or serous things. Comic in general became a great medium for teaching things like politics and history as it is about stories not just about dead facts like newspapers. Do you have always done this job? Illustrating yes, but not comics, that's juts a passion, a hobby, and Kazka is my first book. In 1998 I started as a storyboarder in the creative sphere. Now I work as the in-house head of design at DaWanda since march 2011. I really love it there, wonderful team, so many different tasks and still a lot of illustration. Did you win some prizes or awards, yet? When I studied animation, we won some prizes at the Hamburg Animation Award in 2003. I was participating in the groups that won the prices for design and storytelling, that was for Voodee and SoundCop. Before I moved to Moscow, I worked as an animator at HB Laser We made a cartoony laser animation to the famous song Walk like an Egyptian. It won the ILDA award in 2004 What is your professional dream? As I said I love my job at DaWanda, it's an online marketplace for handmade stuff, and not depending on my art is very important for me. I really don't want to have to do illustrations for shady companies and also advertising. So at the moment I am really, really happy and grateful. You moved to California, what kind of work do you do there? Good question )) after 6.5 years in Russia I was a bit tired of it, exhausted :-) and ready for something new. And California sounded pretty tempting as there was this loose invitation to join SuperCool School in San Franciscol, a really promising education start-up. One month after I got there, they closed the project, as they didn't get their next investment. Anyway, there was so much to learn and take from there, It was a really awesome experience anyway. |
Me, at work
First flyer for Flammable Beats signed wit KAZ
Doodles of the main character way before the comic.
The first drafts before the final Kazka idea
Drawing by hand, on the computer. I really liked the wooden stand. some kind of Clash of the Centuries.
Page from my studies to my emmigrant comic, showing a famous portrait that I redrew of Felix Yusupovich, one of Rasputin's assasins.
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