Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists (1996)

MoebiusGondola

Jean Giraud, aka Moe­bius, was a com­ic book artist who com­bined blind­ing speed with bound­less imag­i­na­tion. He shaped the look of Alien, Empire Strikes Back and The Fifth Ele­ment. He reimag­ined the Sil­ver Surfer for Stan Lee. And he is an acknowl­edged influ­ence on every­one from Japan­ese ani­mat­ing great Hayao Miyaza­ki to sci-fi writer William Gib­son.

MoebiusJourney

In 1996, the Mex­i­can news­pa­per La Jor­na­da pub­lished a lec­ture giv­en by Moe­bius called “Breve man­u­al para his­to­ri­etis­tas”  – a brief man­u­al for car­toon­ists – which con­sists of 18 tips for aspir­ing artists. If your Span­ish isn’t up to snuff – mine cer­tain­ly isn’t – then there are a cou­ple trans­la­tions out there. Some­one called Xurxo g Penal­ta cranked out a direct ver­sion in Eng­lish, but to get the true nuances of Moe­bius’ wise words, famed illus­tra­tor William Stout’s excel­lent anno­tat­ed ver­sion is best.

For instance, Moebius’s first tip is “When you draw, you must first cleanse your­self of deep feel­ings, like hate, hap­pi­ness, ambi­tion, etc.”

Stout ampli­fies this with the fol­low­ing:

These feel­ings are typ­i­cal­ly emo­tion­al prej­u­dices that func­tion as a block to cre­ativ­i­ty.

This was some­thing I learned from draw­ing and hang­ing out with anoth­er French­man, the bril­liant car­toon­ist-illus­tra­tor (and reg­u­lar Atlantic Month­ly con­trib­u­tor) Guy Bill­out, when we were trav­el­ing togeth­er in Antarc­ti­ca and Patag­o­nia back in 1989. Until I spent time with Guy, I had no idea how many pre-con­ceived notions and assump­tions I held with­in me regard­ing peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions and what a block they were to the flow of my cre­ativ­i­ty.

Divorc­ing your­self from such emo­tion­al­ly blind­ing pre-con­cep­tions allows you to see things with fresh eyes. Solu­tions and ideas then flow with much greater ease. I have noticed with all the cre­ative genius­es I have met that they all share a child­like delight with what­ev­er or whomev­er they encounter in life (they can even find amuse­ment in life’s vil­lains). For them, all cre­ative bar­ri­ers are down; life and cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing for them is like con­stant­ly play­ing. They gush great ideas all day long like a foun­tain.

All of Stout’s anno­ta­tions are like this. It should be required read­ing for any­one even vague­ly inter­est­ed in visu­al sto­ry­telling. Below are Moe­bius’ orig­i­nal obser­va­tions. Stout’s thoughts on Moe­bius can be found here.

1) When you draw, you must first cleanse your­self of deep feel­ings, like hate, hap­pi­ness, ambi­tion, etc.

2) It’s very impor­tant to edu­cate your hand. Make it achieve a lev­el of high obe­di­ence so that it will be able to prop­er­ly and ful­ly express your ideas. But be very care­ful of try­ing to obtain too much per­fec­tion, as well as too much speed as an artist. Per­fec­tion and speed are dan­ger­ous — as are their oppo­sites. When you pro­duce draw­ings that are too quick or too loose, besides mak­ing mis­takes, you run the risk of cre­at­ing an enti­ty with­out soul or spir­it.

3) Knowl­edge of per­spec­tive is of supreme impor­tance. Its laws pro­vide a good, pos­i­tive way to manip­u­late or hyp­no­tize your read­ers.

4) Anoth­er thing to embrace with affec­tion is the study of [the] human body — it’s anato­my, posi­tions, body types, expres­sions, con­struc­tion, and the dif­fer­ences between peo­ple.

Draw­ing a man is very dif­fer­ent from draw­ing a woman. With males, you can be loos­er and less pre­cise in their depic­tion; small imper­fec­tions can often add char­ac­ter. Your draw­ing of a woman, how­ev­er, must be per­fect; a sin­gle ill-placed line can dra­mat­i­cal­ly age her or make her seem annoy­ing or ugly. Then, no one buys your com­ic!

For the read­er to believe your sto­ry, your char­ac­ters must feel as if they have a life and per­son­al­i­ty of their own.

Their phys­i­cal ges­tures should seem to emanate from their character’s strengths, weak­ness­es and infir­mi­ties. The body becomes trans­formed when it is brought to life; there is a mes­sage in its struc­ture, in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of its fat, in each mus­cle and in every wrin­kle, crease or fold of the face and body. It becomes a study of life.

5) When you cre­ate a sto­ry, you can begin it with­out know­ing every­thing, but you should make notes as you go along regard­ing the par­tic­u­lars of the world depict­ed in your sto­ry. Such detail will pro­vide your read­ers with rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ter­is­tics that will pique their inter­est.

When a char­ac­ter dies in a sto­ry, unless the char­ac­ter has had his per­son­al sto­ry expressed some way in the draw­ing of his face, body and attire, the read­er will not care; your read­er won’t have any emo­tion­al con­nec­tion.

Your pub­lish­er might say, “Your sto­ry has no val­ue; there’s only one dead guy — I need twen­ty or thir­ty dead guys for this to work.” But that is not true; if the read­er feels the dead guy or wound­ed guys or hurt guys or whomev­er you have in trou­ble have a real per­son­al­i­ty result­ing from your own deep stud­ies of human nature — with an artist’s capac­i­ty for such obser­va­tion — emo­tions will surge.

By such stud­ies you will devel­op and gain atten­tion from oth­ers, as well as a com­pas­sion and a love for human­i­ty.

This is very impor­tant for the devel­op­ment of an artist. If he wants to func­tion as a mir­ror of soci­ety and human­i­ty, this mir­ror of his must con­tain the con­scious­ness of the entire world; it must be a mir­ror that sees every­thing.

6) Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky says I don’t like draw­ing dead hors­es. Well, it is very dif­fi­cult.

It’s also very dif­fi­cult to draw a sleep­ing body or some­one who has been aban­doned, because in most comics it’s always action that is being stud­ied. It’s much eas­i­er to draw peo­ple fight­ing — that’s why Amer­i­cans near­ly always draw super­heroes. It’s much more dif­fi­cult to draw peo­ple that are talk­ing, because that’s a series of very small move­ments — small, yet with real sig­nif­i­cance.

His counts for more because of our human need for love or the atten­tion of oth­ers. It’s these lit­tle things that speak of per­son­al­i­ty, of life. Most super­heroes don’t have any per­son­al­i­ty; they all use the same ges­tures and move­ments.

7) Equal­ly impor­tant is the cloth­ing of your char­ac­ters and the state of the mate­r­i­al from which it was made.

These tex­tures cre­ate a vision of your char­ac­ters’ expe­ri­ences, their lives, and their role in your adven­ture in a way where much can be said with­out words. In a dress there are a thou­sand folds; you need to choose just two or three — don’t draw them all. Just make sure you choose the two or three good ones.

8) The style, styl­is­tic con­ti­nu­ity of an artist and its pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion are full of sym­bols; they can be read just like a Tarot deck. I chose my name “Moe­bius” as a joke when I was twen­ty-two years old — but, in truth, the name came to res­onate with mean­ing. If you arrive wear­ing a T‑shirt of Don Quixote, that tells me who you are. In my case, mak­ing a draw­ing of rel­a­tive sim­plic­i­ty and sub­tle indi­ca­tions is impor­tant to me.

9) When an artist, a real work­ing artist, goes out on the street, he does not see things the same way as “nor­mal” peo­ple. His unique vision is cru­cial to doc­u­ment­ing a way of life and the peo­ple who live it.

10) Anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment is com­po­si­tion. The com­po­si­tions in our sto­ries should be stud­ied because a page or a paint­ing or a pan­el is a face that looks at the read­er and speaks to him. A page is not just a suc­ces­sion of insignif­i­cant pan­els. There are pan­els that are full. Some that are emp­ty. Oth­ers are ver­ti­cal. Some hor­i­zon­tal. All are indi­ca­tions of the artist’s inten­tions. Ver­ti­cal pan­els excite the read­er. Hor­i­zon­tals calm him. For us in the West­ern world, motion in a pan­el that goes from left to right rep­re­sents action head­ing toward the future. Mov­ing from right to left directs action toward the past. The direc­tions we indi­cate rep­re­sent a dis­per­sion of ener­gy. An object or char­ac­ter placed in the cen­ter of a pan­el focus­es and con­cen­trates ener­gy and atten­tion. These are basic read­ing sym­bols and forms that evoke in the read­er a fas­ci­na­tion, a kind of hyp­no­sis. You must be con­scious of rhythm and set traps for the read­er to fall into so that, when he falls, he gets lost, allow­ing you to manip­u­late and move him inside your world with greater ease and plea­sure. That’s because what you have cre­at­ed is a sense of life. You must study the great painters, espe­cial­ly those who speak with their paint­ings. Their indi­vid­ual paint­ing schools or gen­res or time peri­ods should not mat­ter. Their pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with phys­i­cal as well as emo­tion­al com­po­si­tion must be stud­ied so that you learn how their com­bi­na­tion of lines works to touch us direct­ly with­in our hearts.

11) The nar­ra­tion must har­mo­nize with the draw­ings. There must be a visu­al rhythm cre­at­ed by the place­ment of your text. The rhythm of your plot should be reflect­ed in your visu­al cadence and the way you com­press or expand time. Like a film­mak­er, you must be very care­ful in how you cast your char­ac­ters and in how you direct them. Use your char­ac­ters or “actors” like a direc­tor, study­ing and then select­ing from all of your char­ac­ters’ dif­fer­ent takes.

12) Beware of the dev­as­tat­ing influ­ence of North Amer­i­can com­ic books. The artists in Mex­i­co seem to only study their sur­face effects: a lit­tle bit of anato­my mixed with dynam­ic com­po­si­tions, mon­sters, fights, scream­ing and teeth. I like some of that stuff too, but there are many oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties and expres­sions that are also wor­thy of explo­ration.

13) There is a con­nec­tion between music and draw­ing. The size of that con­nec­tion depends upon your per­son­al­i­ty and what’s going on at that moment. For the last ten years I’ve been work­ing in silence; for me, there is music in the rhythm of my lines. Draw­ing at times is a search for dis­cov­er­ies. A pre­cise, beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed line is like an orgasm!

14) Col­or is a lan­guage that the graph­ic artist uses to manip­u­late his reader’s atten­tion as well as to cre­ate beau­ty. There is objec­tive and sub­jec­tive col­or. The emo­tion­al states of the char­ac­ters can change or influ­ence the col­or from one pan­el to the next, as can place and time of day. Spe­cial study and atten­tion must be paid to the lan­guage of col­or.

15) At the begin­ning of an artist’s career, he should prin­ci­pal­ly involve him­self in the cre­ation of very high qual­i­ty short sto­ries. He has a bet­ter chance (than with long for­mat sto­ries) of suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing them, while main­tain­ing a high stan­dard of qual­i­ty. It will also be eas­i­er to place them in a book or sell them to a pub­lish­er.

16) There are times when we know­ing­ly head down a path of fail­ure, choos­ing the wrong theme or sub­ject for our capa­bil­i­ties, or choos­ing a project that is too large, or an unsuit­able tech­nique. If this hap­pens, you must not com­plain lat­er.

17) When new work has been sent to an edi­tor and it receives a rejec­tion, you should always ask for and try to dis­cov­er the rea­sons for the rejec­tion. By study­ing the rea­sons for our fail­ure, only then can we begin to learn. It is not about strug­gle with our lim­i­ta­tions, with the pub­lic or with the pub­lish­ers. One should treat it with more of an aiki­do approach. It is the very strength and pow­er of our adver­sary that is used as the key to his defeat.

18) Now it is pos­si­ble to expose our works to read­ers in every part of the plan­et. We must always keep aware of this. To begin with, draw­ing is a form of per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion — but this does not mean that the artist should close him­self off inside a bub­ble. His com­mu­ni­ca­tion should be for those aes­thet­i­cal­ly, philo­soph­i­cal­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly close to him, as well as for him­self — but also for com­plete strangers. Draw­ing is a medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the great fam­i­ly we have not met, for the pub­lic and for the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.


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Comments (31)
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  • Dan says:

    Hi there,

    Some­one with a lot of mojo men­tioned our post on their Face­book page. Does any­one hap­pen to know who that was?

    Thanks in advance.
    Dan (edi­tor)

  • Billy says:

    I fol­lowed the link after Shane Glines post­ed it :)

  • Brian Carroll says:

    The Soci­ety of Illus­tra­tors of Los Ange­les

  • thasen says:

    this is just beau­ti­ful.…

  • Meysa says:

    Ben Mau­ro post­ed it today ;)
    Its a nice read, so thanks!

  • manuel says:

    Its a great inter­view! I went to the source, the mex­i­can arti­cle; let me say that the trans­la­tion left some tasty details out,… like when moe­bi­ous describes the amer­i­can com­ic tec­niques (“imi­tates ges­tures of fierce­ness, fight­ing, run­ning”). By pic­tur­ing him doing that, I pic­ture him as a very acce­si­ble per­son, kind, tru­ly able to help any­one with wise advice…

  • cheerios says:

    Twas Ben Mau­ro for me as well : )
    Thank you for the infor­ma­tive post, inter­est­ing per­spec­tive to anoth­er ones process.

  • MaeAnn says:

    Most are great tips, but I do find it fun­ny how he talks about con­scious­ness and being aware of the world and its trou­bles, yet he miss­es some of his own slight­ly misog­y­nis­tic notions — for exam­ple, guys can be flawed but for a female to be imper­fect makes her annoy­ing or off-putting. That state­ment almost made me want to stop read­ing halfway.

  • I cant says:

    MaeAnn I believe his addi­tion of “Then, no one buys your com­ic!” at the end of this misog­y­nist (which it is) remark actu­al­ly points the smok­ing gun at the read­er and their demand towards the strin­gent depic­tion of women and how if he does­n’t adhere to said depic­tion the com­ic does­n’t sell. So maybe this remark was meant to stim­u­late a dia­logue about gen­der bias expectations/demands in comics every­where not just his own.

  • I can says:

    That com­ment was­n’t misog­y­nist at all.

  • Amin Fara says:

    Amaz­ing con­tent, thank you very much for this. It made my day or maybe ruined it!

  • arndt says:

    i love his work. but alien was done bei h.r.giger

  • Dave says:

    Dan, I dont know if you talk­ing about this group.. (the thing is, that in there we are most­ly span­ish­language read­ers.. )

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/139920702804471/

  • vm says:

    Inspir­ing! I think some of his advice can be a bit strange if not viewed in con­text, mean­ing as advice giv­en by a BD/comic book artist, which is a spe­cif­ic kind of visu­al art.. It applies to all visu­al artists of course, but to under­stand what he meant and where the idea comes from, it has to be viewed from a BD artist’s per­spec­tive.

  • Jessica says:

    He would­n’t get a job these days.

  • Dan says:

    Moe­bius worked on Alien. Do your research. http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com

  • timothy says:

    Jes­si­ca, please explain com­ment?

  • JF says:

    I think you missed the fin­er point. Please don’t take this the wrong way… but… he’s not say­ing that all females must be per­fect, as in what is con­ven­tion­al­ly per­ceived by a male-dom­i­nant soci­ety. What he’s real­ly say­ing is that when one is to draw a female (could be fat, skin­ny, tall, short, what­ev­er), the small­est shifts in a line can change the char­ac­ter’s mood dras­ti­cal­ly, where as in a male, the artist can ‘get away with it’. If you look at Robert Crum­b’s draw­ing of females, the ones with buck teeth and smells like onions, they are still very beau­ti­ful in a way. Yet each line plays their part and it’s eas­i­er to mess those lines up and dimin­ish that ‘beau­ty’ where as draw­ing a male it’s eas­i­er to mask. Par­don me for the long expla­na­tion, actu­al­ly I’m not even sure if that explains it but Moe­bius is not only a great artist, but a won­der­ful open­mind­ed human being and it pains me to see him tak­en in such way. Thanks for read­ing!

  • snakeappletree says:

    I first saw this artist on cov­er for zap mama album a ma zone. Great to learn more about him.

  • Robert V. says:

    Jean Giraud was a great artist. As you can see in this video, he appar­ent­ly also had an impact on Star Wars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK8B10_oY5g

  • Dru Cloud says:

    The first three change a great deal for me. I need a new sketch­pad…

  • Buys comics about people says:

    I am also very annoyed by that remark: “With males…small imper­fec­tions can often add char­ac­ter. Your draw­ing of a woman, how­ev­er, must be per­fect; a sin­gle ill-placed line can dra­mat­i­cal­ly age her or make her seem annoy­ing or ugly. Then, no one buys your com­ic!”

    But I guess you have to take it in con­text. In cer­tain gen­res, we don’t want females to have ‘char­ac­ter’, or be real peo­ple at all, for fear they may appear ‘annoy­ing, old or ugly’. Females, in these gen­res, are only beau­ti­ful men after all; you have the smart guy, the tough guy, the nerd guy, and the beau­ti­ful guy to name a few — but the beau­ti­ful guy has to be drawn like a female because men aren’t allowed to be beautiful…apparently.

  • Non-Canon says:

    Way to hyper­fo­cus on one ill-phrased out­dat­ed notion and com­plete­ly miss all the wis­dom else­where.

    Con­grats you’re a gad­fly.

  • JD says:

    My mes­sage to peo­ple who were offend­ed: don’t be. (I say this as a woman)

    We must remem­ber that Mobius was a prod­uct of his times. When you look at 20th cen­tu­ry movies and comics, you will instant­ly notice that they have a very spe­cif­ic idea on what a beau­ti­ful woman looks like. In oth­er words, con­ven­tion­al stan­dards for beau­ty were very, very nar­row, which means it was very easy to make an artis­tic mis­take.

    I remem­ber while watch­ing Twin Peaks (one of my favourite TV series of all time) I had an extreme­ly hard time telling apart all the women at first. The rea­son? They were all stun­ning, so apart from the hair­styles, they looked iden­ti­cal.

    We are slow­ly but sure­ly expand­ing the line on what makes a woman beau­ti­ful.

  • Brian says:

    Love this arti­cle! Stay pos­i­tive

  • Joséfine says:

    This tre­sors’box tells all…!
    Learn it, grow­ing to it, all of it!
    Mer­ci 💫

  • Ky says:

    Yes, MaeAnn, I com­plete­ly agree with you — I want­ed to share the com­ment with all my friends and laugh at the silli­ness of it, in amongst the wis­dom.

  • Hannah says:

    Exact­ly! I did stop read­ing halfway because of that remark. The word I could­n’t find was misog­y­nis­tic, thanx.

  • Hannah says:

    And the women have to be straight, have long hair, wear heals etc etc. Luck­i­ly there are comics with women with char­ac­ter or that are not drawn to please the male gaze.

  • Waldo Lightner says:

    Like most peo­ple, I like my gaze pleased,and I’m unlike­ly to pay mon­ey for some­thing I don’t like.

  • Maj.Tom. Starman. says:

    I can’t believe peo­ple are this idi­ot­ic. The man just say it’s hard­er to draw female fig­ure than male fig­ure, That’s all. He was an respectable pub­lic fig­ure, of course he roman­ti­cizes his sen­tences like that, but that’s lit­er­al­ly what it meant. If you take offence, you are an idiot, it just words. It could­n’t harm you or your belief, it does­n’t do any­thing to you at all. If any­thing it’s a remark to any beginner(or at any lev­el, real­ly) artists who was strug­gling with draw­ing the female fig­ures, and that he is still strug­gles with the same thing. “I’m shak­ing and trem­bling right now because (deceased)Monsieur Jean Giraude hurts my feel­ing and now I can’t draw straight, because of his (mistranslated)misogynistic view is absorb­ing our tal­ent, NOOOO!” is how you “offend­ed” peo­ple are right now, prob­a­bly. Heav­ens above and bloody hell!

    P.S:If you bloody retards could­n’t under­stand my quote unquote, it was sar­casm. Heav­ens, with how asi­nine peo­ple are, I real­ly have to put this as a dis­claimer, or no one would get it. It is a shame.

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