The Portuguese artist HvH is probably familiar to you from a variety of publications, for example, his comics have been published by FRESHMEN, MEN and Class Comics. His first book GONE TO THE MOVIES has just been released. Read on for an interview with the artist.

Do you remember the first movies that left deep impressions on you?

My love with movies began the very first time I sat in a theatre. I don't exactly remember the movie, but seeing all the enhanced 'reality' in the big screen made an everlasting impression. I loved - and still do - big action movies and science fiction, so the first ones I remember watching were "Flash Gordon" (with hunky Sam Jones) and "Aliens".

Every single page in your book is detailed and allusive. How is your working process like?

It depends a lot on the project. For GONE TO THE MOVIES, I began with the idea: doing a book with movie posters revised to gay. After that I decided I should first start with the structure, so that the book would have something for everybody, from classics to comedy, to sci-fi. Then, I listed as many movies as I could for each category so that I could later check the posters and choose which were the most appealing and best to turn gay.
When all the research work is finished, I start sketching each one by hand, scan all the sketches and go over them in a vectors program, and finally I export all the vectors to a bitmap program and paint it there.
I usually like to work on several different projects at the same time, but GONE TO THE MOVIES was such a demanding book that I had to basically put every thing aside to complete it on time.

HvH

The evolution of which poster was the most complicated?

While most movie posters rely solely on a figure standing and very little to no background ("The Sperminator", "Penix loaded", etc), and these were very easy to make, the book also contains what I called "scenes from..." which are much more elaborated, more difficult to make, and were printed as double page spreads. Very early on when studying for the project, I realized that if I were to do just poster after poster the book would have become a little boring. It would have been much easier, I tell you, but I love to complicate things... hehe. So, the most complicated were the double page spreads and the posters that had a lot of characters (like "Home Anal", for instance).

posted in Interviews, Comic & Art on 29.05.2008