THIS master’s graphics are just as magnificent, but they are completely different. If I could describe it in one word, I would probably choose the word “non-man-made”. If Toppy is a very diverse, but always within the realities of our planet, then the artist known to millions of comics, sci-fi and adventure fans as MOBIUS is something alien, unrestrained and unimaginable. At the same time, his range of mediums is disproportionately modest – always just a line drawing with fine shading, complemented by neat color fills. But what incredible pictures these lines create, what marvelous worlds!
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud – this is his real name (the accent in the surname, as it should be, on O). Yes, he was born French, but if you ask me if there is anything French in his works, I will probably hesitate to answer.
In 1963, Jean-Michel Charlier was looking for a cartoonist for a western that was to be published in Pilote magazine and spoke to Giguet, who suggested that Jean Giraud take the job. Thus began the adventures of the famous Lieutenant Blueberry, which enjoyed great popularity and became a classic of the genre. Jean Giraud signed the pages of this series briefly – Gir, and the full name was printed on the album covers.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Jean Giraud illustrated a series of science fiction magazines and books, and it was on these illustrations that the signature “Mebius” first appeared – a pseudonym inspired by the one-sided tape described by the German mathematician August Ferdinand Mebius.
Why did he choose such a pseudonym? How did he associate himself with the simplest but spectacular-looking trick with the plane and space, which was repeatedly used as a symbol of various organizations? Most likely, the connection here was purely emotional. We have only a rather thoughtless and provocative phrase of the artist himself that he “…thought it would be funny to commit an act of aggression against the world by taking a pseudonym”. An act of aggression against the world? Well, the humble comic book artist appears to be a rebel! However, he was never modest, each of his projects was in some way daring and unusual.
Comics under the pseudonym MOEBIUS appeared in Les Humanoïdes associés, Le Bandard fou, Les Yeux du chat and other popular science fiction anthologies of the time. In 1975, the famous Arzach series, a kind of calling card of Moebius, was published.
The peculiarity of this series of comics – Arzach, or Arzak, about the adventures of brave space rangers in exotic alien worlds – was that it had no words. Traditionally, any comic book is a combination of text and “illustrations” to it. “Artsakh” consisted only of ‘pictures’, the plot had to be clear to the viewer, like in a silent animated movie. These were, in fact, movies, only not on the screen, but on paper. A lot of plot twists, dynamic and diverse “frame building”, inexhaustible wealth of imagination, prompting the artist a variety of entourage. And not without reason French and American cinematographers in the 1970s repeatedly appealed to Giraud-Mebius to participate in the production of science fiction films.
How did Jean Giraud work? Lightning fast! This is evidenced not only by numerous eyewitnesses, but also by the very nature and number of his drawings. He immediately “calculated” the composition, it was the main thing in his work, and then he seemed to have no difficulty filling it with details of either the real or fantastic world. In the network you can get acquainted with Giraud’s advice to aspiring artists drawing comics. Among them is interesting, for example, such as this: the master advises to be especially careful to draw the faces of female characters, because they “should always be beautiful, and the slightest undesirable deviation spoils the impression of the female face, while the male can even add character. On the whole, however, Giraud’s manner is his gift. He can be imitated, but you can only learn to paint like him if you have a special mind, a tendency to improvisation, a special eye and, of course, innate imagination.
This is what “clear line” is the name of the basic style of Moebius’s work. (Not Early Giraud). The term is widely known and means, above all, drawing by closed, continuous lines of approximately equal thickness with even colored fills. Such a drawing practically does not convey space and volumes, everything is based on rhythms and very precise placement of objects relative to each other, because nothing can be “blurred” here.
And in the Master’s work it is noteworthy that there are two periods (or, rather, two “sprouting into each other” manners of image). Fans of ink and pen drawing will note at once that in the early comics, on the subjects of westerns, signed GIR, there are no monotonous, outlining silhouettes contours. The lines are “alive,” changing thickness, conveying the pressure of the pen. This is a classic manner for a comic book, which could do without color “fills” and elaboration of watercolors.
Moving to the illustration of science fiction, the artist consciously changed the character of the lines. They became less discontinuous, less “man-made”, more subtle, one could even say, mechanical. obviously, this manner seemed to the master more suitable for the image of alien landscapes, technology and people of the future. The fact that this was done consciously is evidenced, at least, by the portrait of Lieutenant Blueberry from 1989, when “Mebius” was already in full swing. The drawing is executed in the former, lively and juicy manner of GIR, i.e. the artist was able to return to it and periodically did.
Consciously moving away from the “vividness” of the lines, Mebius also changed the character of the watercolor spots. Now they were the most even in tone fillings of a single color, only occasionally modeling the volume. The drawing approached an ornament, a drawing, something non-man-made. Is it worth saying that this was the effect that its creator was trying to achieve?