How it all started.

It was the summer of 1981. I was 20 years old and dreaming of being a professional illustrator. I did every job I could find in this area and told everyone I knew about my ambition. Drawings in the leaflet for the sportsclub, publicitydrawings for the lokal comicshop, the school-newspaper, nothing was save. The road many young drawers go. I got payed in bottels of wine and comic-books and I was happy with it. But one day all the talking around worked out well. As grazy as it sounds, it realy happened. Someone came to my door to ask me if I wanted to do a complete comic book. I had done 10 pages so far and no idea what making a comic-book was about. But I said yes!
A little more than half a year I worked on it. Going to publicity-school at te same time. I did not sleep much in those days.
But it was worth it. My first book was published in 500 copys. Here's the foto on the back-cover. On the left Paul Spapens. He's the one that came to my door and the writer of the book. No photoshop-tricks in 1982. A combination of a photoprint on paper with handdrawings on a plastic sheet. Paul was chef-journalist of a local left wing door to door news-paper at the time and I was a student in publicity. The characters were called Nilles and Kiske. Two old names from Tilburg. The city where this all took place. The story was about going to America and discovering a city there that was a copy of the real Tilburg.




Here's page number 5. The page where the two main characters left the house. Sneaking out in the night. Paul Spapens was and is a journalist with a special interest in Tilburg and it's historie. The story came right from his hart. We could'nt realy go wrong there because of that. Working on it was a great experience. In the end everyone involved in Pauls newspaper helped to make the deadline for the printer. For the gray-scales we used these sorts of sticker materials bij companies like Mecanorma and Letraset. Know what I mean? Every piece of gray-scale was cut out with a little knife and put there by hand. Those were wonderfull saturday-mornings with a lot of black coffee. We were young and it was the eighties. Saturday-mornings were not favorit. But it was the only way. And everyone came to help.



Page number 8. Our hero's arrival in America. They have dressed up as cowboys and are on their way to start the adventure.



And the cover of the book to end this story with. My first work ever printed in full-color. For the good memories of 1982.