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Daria impressed us and the rest of the guests with her art at the "Cartografie Oniriche" reception gallery on the eve of the festival in Italy. Here we discuss her style, influences, and even her time working with video games.
"Hi friends, I'm in Naples for the 26th Comicon and yesterday before the event started proper, we were invited to a reception where some beautiful artwork by you, Daria, was being displayed and I loved what I saw, so I wanted to learn a little bit more about your work."
"So what can you tell me you were showing yesterday? Yesterday it was mostly two albums, Il bestiario del crepuscolo, in English it's The monstrous dreams of Mr. Providence*, and another one who speaks about Descartes, our great philosopher, Skull, so it was from these two albums and it was 50 panels. And they are all black and white if I'm correct?
Black and white, mostly black and white, I do black and white comic art and then digitally I put color on, but the originals are black and white. What are you telling in these stories, what's the message you're trying to convey? They looked a little bit creepy to me, does it have a darker side to it? Yeah of course, dark side but humoristic dark side. Satire? I don't understand."
"Satire? Yeah exactly, ironical, a bit absurd you know. So what are the stories about?
One is about Mr. Providence, he's a character described as HP Lovecraft, but he's an HP Lovecraft coming into my world nowadays and he's confronted with, he has a problem because he doesn't understand his surroundings. As he did on his time, he was a complete misfit and he's a misfit, but a nowadays misfit in my story, that's for Mr. Providence. And the other one is about Descartes' skull and bones during 300 years, so it's an adventure, a very funny adventure when you think it's our great philosopher and we still don't know if this skull, these bones are the one of René Descartes, so it's the story about that."
"Okay, on which languages are these books available right now? Only French? French, Italian, German, for Mr. Providence it's Portuguese, English, Russian, Chinese. No Spanish? No Spanish, you're the only one. We need that. Okay, and yesterday when I was taking a look at them, they reminded me a little bit of Dylan Dog and I told you because I'm a huge fan, but you told me that there's no inspiration in that, so what can you tell me about your inspiration and the sort of style that that's your trademark? I suppose it's the illustrator from the end of the 19th century as Arthur Rackham or Franklin Booth in United States or Gustave Doré in France, well that kind of artist that put great attention for the hatching or the I don't know the name in English, but the drawing. Okay, and what can you tell me about the collaboration with the Comicon? You came from France to show your work and then you have this showcase, it was last night, you were showing your work today as well, so how do you feel about this and what can you tell me about the sort of partnership? The Panini translated my work and it's my first Comicon, so it was a huge surprise to see all those people, it's a huge huge fair, it was okay, it was okay and the collaboration, I can't tell you I can't tell you things because it's very new for me and I just pop in from yesterday night, so I don't have consistent things to tell. I'm sure fans are enjoying your work same as I did yesterday, are they loving it? What are they telling you? What's the feedback? The feedback was very good and they love the drawing, they really love the drawing, the art. And something I didn't know that you had done in the past is working with video games actually as well, you were a concept artist for Syberia which is a graphic adventure we know and love, so what can you tell me about that experience? What did you do for a video game and then if it shaped you in any way for your future endeavors? It was a two years experience, I liked it very much because it was a team work and as an architect I've been asked to draw the city, all the cities of Syberia. So I made the buildings, the buildings, the facade of the buildings and I checked that the inside of the buildings match the outside of the buildings, so that it's not like in Harry Potter, and so it was a great experience because we were very free and I could construct the whole town, so for an architect it's a real dream. We loved it too, I'm looking forward to reading the books in other languages but congratulations on your work and enjoy the rest of the show Daria, thank you so much."
