I’ve been busy lately dealing with new upcoming jobs, and thus slow at updating this blog. Better late than never however, so here we go:
Idea: Joakim Gunnarsson
Pencils: Andreas Qassim
Ink: Bernt Hanson
Yet another Bamse-cover drawn by yours truly. This is the third one for the main magazine I’ve done. Susanne Adolfsson who wrote the lead story, which the cover is based upon, was very pleased with this one. So was I, I guess. Actually I got compliments from others too, so I guess I achieved something a little extra this time. It’s nice receiving appreciative e-mails from your scriptwriter. Doesn’t happen every day at Bamse.
The story is a “modern” take on the emperor’s new clothes. Reinard fools the villagers they’ll get really smart from this miracle potion he’s selling. Unless you’re really really stupid, in which case you’ll get a terrible itch instead. Not surprisingly, the itch inflicts everyone drinking the potion, but no one dares to confess, in fear of being regarded as stupid. Luckily enough there’s this cure potion, only available at Reinard’s wagon. It’s a bit on the expensive side, but if you need it you need it, right?
From a cartoonist’s perspective this story was all about trying to vary poses of itching and scratching as much as possible. Quite a challenge, but quite an amusing one too. The weird part is that this summer while on a one week charter vacation in Cyprys, I got chicken pox, of all deseases, and I was forbidden to travel back home because of the mega high contagiousness, and I had to stay at my hotel room another week. This story I drew early on in the year, maybe in February or March or so. Four to five months later I felt EXACTLY like these characters feel. The little dots rushing all over your body was spot on. That’s what it was like. Getting chicken pox as an adult is not like getting it as a child. It’s much worse, and like Skutt and Bamse I was nearly going mad from the itching.
Is it really possible to commit so strongly to your characters that your body reacts in the same way as theirs? Like you have too strong an imagination for your own good or something. Like some kind of voodoo. Maybe I should try to find a way of directing this power of mine toward my enemies…?
