ComicInvasionBerlin Podcast

Two weeks ago, I was a guest on the official podcast of ComicInvasionBerlin, one of my favorite smaller comic festivals in Germany. I talked to Lara and Carlos about JAZAM!, Hipsters, my other comics, and the festival. It was pretty fun! LISTEN HERE. You can also find it on iTunes.

JAZAM! is once again going to have a table at this year's ComicInvasionBerlin on April 16/17, where you'll be able to meet me most of the time.

Erlangen report 2014

I'm back from Internationaler Comic-Salon Erlangen - tired, but happy. The festival was amazing, even more so than usually! I had a brilliant time with all of the wonderful comics people, sold & signed dozens of Hipsters and JAZAM! books, did a live reading of 'Hipsters in Hell' (with Schlogger), fought an epic art battle (against Schlogger), bought cool comics, rocked my socks off on the dance floor with some of my favorite cartoonists, drank too much, slept too little, and then continued the festival business anyway. In short: I had a blast. Creative batteries fully charged.

Back from Angoulême

I'm back from Angoulême and can happily report that it was pretty amazing. The festival is enormous - much bigger than any of the ones we have in Germany - and there were tons of cool exhibitions and parties. Even cooler, perhaps, was the group of webcartoonists I was travelling with.

We had a lot of fun drawing epic comicjams and drinking more canned beer than anyone ever should. Most of said comicjam can be found on the JAZAM! tumblr (click on the image):

More (mostly drunk) comicjams can be found on my twitter stream.

When we weren't drinking our beer out of cans, we were paying for it with our Netzbildergeschichtenkünstlerpräsentationsheft-booklets, as Hillerkiller documented in this comic:

The way the French value comics is pretty amazing - especially if you're used to Germany, where few people take them seriously, and even the ones that do oftentimes don't actually read them. As I wrote on twitter:

Germans are always surprised you'd ask them to pay money for your silly comics, French people can't believe you'd give them away for free.
— Adrian vom Baur (@hipsterscomic) 1. Februar 2014

Here's me with a childhood hero of mine:

Selfie with Hergé. #fibd pic.twitter.com/zOmF7fAeXZ
— Adrian vom Baur (@hipsterscomic) 30. Januar 2014

The others also made some blog posts about our trip - most of them with cool mini-comics:

Hillerkiller (1)
Hillerkiller (2)
JARoo (1)
JARoo (2)
Spinken 
Yinfinity

(I'll add more links when & if they come up.)

Angoulême

In a few days, I'll be visiting the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême, Europe's biggest comics convention, for the first time. I'll be travelling with a group of my comic-drawing friends, and we decided to make a little something we could show to our French peers, who aren't likely able to understand any of our German-language print publications. Each of us translated a short comic or several comic strips into French, which we collected as a 24-page pamphlet with the catchy name "Netzbildergeschichtenkünstlerpräsentationsheft" (cahier de présentation des artistes de BD en ligne) and this splendid collab cover:

 

includes the following artists: Jeff Chi, Tim Gaedke, Hillerkiller, JARoo, Yinfinity

If you, too, happen to be in Angoulême this week and want one of these comic books, just tweet at me - I'm sure we can figure out a way to meet up!

Interview for MyComics.de

Because my comic "ANNIE The Little Cannibal" made second place in MyComics' recent 24h Comic Day contest, I was interviewed about the comic and other projects for their blog.


Check out the interview by clicking HERE or on the image below. (in German only, sorry)

Comichöhle podcast interview

Last week, I was a guest on the new German webcomic podcast "Comichöhle," where I talked about Hipsters, JAZAM!, and my band Affection Play. The interview was released today and you can listen to it right here:

http://www.comichoehle.de/ch007/

Interview for fudder.de

A couple of weeks ago, Christopher Bünte (of Comicgate) interviewed me about my Hipsters comics for the website fudder.de. You can read said interview (in German) now by clicking on the image below:

Babble & Doodle

Two weeks ago, I was invited to record an episode of Beetlebum, Jeff, and Doppeltim's cool new video podcast "Babble & Doodle". It's a very fun format that allows you to listen to us babble on about comics, life, and other stuff, while watching us draw new installments of our respective webcomics. Watch it now:

influence map

A couple of years ago, there was this meme going around DeviantArt in which you were supposed to make a "map" of the artists and other things that shaped and informed your art style. I actually wanted to make one of these way back then, but never got around to it. Now that the meme has cropped back up at the Comicforum.de, I finally decided to make one. Here it is:

HERE is the Comicforum thread with some other examples.

workplace

Wittek recently started collecting photos of German cartoonists' workplaces. He already linked to quite a few. I thought it would be fun to contribute a photo of my humble desk. This is where I draw my Hipsters comics and a bunch of other stuff:

interview

A cool interview about JAZAM! with Florian Steinl and me is part of the newest "Zettgeist", a weekly German mp3 podcast from comics publisher Zwerchfell. The interview was recorded at the Comicfestival München in june 2009.

Listen to it HERE!

radio interview

Tomorrow, I'm part of a radio broadcast about the current state of the comics medium. The discussion will air on tuesday, june 16, from 9:00 to 11:00 pm on the new Bavarian radio station egoFM, which can be received in Munich, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Regensburg, and Würzburg, and on the net. As far as I know, the discussion will be available online afterwards.

Read more about it here.

comics creator survey

I haven't had a lot of content on this blog lately (due to university-related work overload, combined with enormous laziness) so I decided to bore you with my answers to a comics creator survey I stumbled across on Bryan Lee O'Malley's Livejournal. The questions are originally by Jake Hopper.

PART ONE: COMICS PERSONALITY TYPE

Name:
Adrian vom Baur

Age:
22

Sign:
Scorpio

Introverted or extroverted?
Actually, when I was in school, I once made some test that was supposed to determine just that and ended up exactly in the middle. Which seems about right.

What are your top 5 procrastination tools?
1. watching movies
2. internet
3. riding my bicycle
4. reading comics
5. watching movies (and tv series)

What gets your juices flowing?
If I knew that I would probably be more productive.


PART TWO: COMICS CONSUMER

What kind of comics do you like to read?
Pretty much all kinds. I like anything that has some kind of a distinct artistic voice or is simply fun to read, no matter what genre or style.

What kind of comics do you dislike?
I don't like comics that feel like they've been created by a commercial assembly line, which mostly concerns mangas and superheroes. I don't generally dislike either of those, though.

When were you first introduced to comics?
My parents had books with Donald Duck comics by Carl Barks which I devoured as soon as I coud read.

What were some of your first comics?
Besides the Disney stuff, I really dug some of the French and Belgian classics such as Tintin, Asterix and Spirou.

When did you first get "The spark"?
The thing that re-awakenend my interest in comics as a teenager was mangas, specifically Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Battle Angel Alita.

What is your favorite animated movie?
It's difficult to name just one. As a kid it used to be Aladdin, but now I guess it's either one of my Miyazaki favourites (Princess Mononoké and Spirited Away), or one of Brad Bird's masterpieces (The Iron Giant and The Incredibles).

What is your favorite anime series?
Does "Avatar" count? "Cowboy Bebop" kind of rocks, too.


PART THREE: COMICS CREATOR

What kind of comics do you make?
I haven't really decided for any specific style or topic yet. So, currently, whatever kind I feel like.

When did you first start making comics?
As soon as I could hold a pencil and draw a stick figure, really. At first, I stapled paper together, drew only one panel per page, and my parents had to write the words in the speech bubbles. In grade school, I started to do "proper" paneling and write the words myself.

What are your favorite comic artists right now?
Craig Thompson, Bryan Lee O'Malley and Jeff Smith, among others. I also still really dig Barks.

What are your main influences in comics?
I have lots of influences. The ones I named above, but also Eisner, Hergé, Mignola, Tezuka, Franquin, Watterson, Mawil, Flix, Barbucci and many of the artists in "Flight".

Artistically?
The same as above, I guess? Plus all kinds of old and current animation artists.

Who do you admire in comics?
People who are more productive than me, which means just about anyone these days.