Boredman interview
I became aware of the artist Boredman’s comics with Apocalyptic Horseplay on Webtoons . The story starts out funny and colorful, with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse pictured as Saturday morning cartoon characters, but turns dark as they become tempted to fulfill their Biblical destiny -- today. (That's Pestilence, Famine, and War below.)
Boredman is a French cartoonist. His work, while often quirky and colorful, is usually pretty goth in nature. Some people (him) claim he's some kind of cartoon himself, born on the wrong side of the page, while others (everybody else) say he watches too much TV and try to keep him away from sugar.
In this video he explains his working method, so I won’t need to ask him about that.
Charlie: You live in France, which is interesting to us who don’t. Have any of the places you’ve lived in influenced your art?
Boredman: I live in Belgium, actually, but I am French. I'm from Paris originally, born and raised, but it wasn't until I moved to Belgium in my early 20s that I started dedicating my time to my art. I started attending the Brussels Saint-Luc School of Arts, majored in comic books, basically ate and breathed comics and cartoons for about four years while befriending a bunch of talented people to suck the skills and life-force out of, and ultimately decided to just live there.
I do occasionally miss France, but I don't think I could ever live in Paris again. Great for tourism, that city. But spend more than a summer in the midst of its indigenous population, and you will become a stressed-out, contemptuous and hollow husk of a being.
A city-vampire, of sorts.
Charlie: You seem very fluent in English.
Boredman: Thank you! I wish I could say I studied hard, but I really owe it all to the movies I watched growing up, which initially made for a very gap-y and superficial understanding of the language.
My pen name, for instance, was the product of a flawed attempt at bilingual humor. I meant it to be Boring-man, which in French can also signify Annoying or Bothersome. Basically, I wanted to be Bother-boy and couldn't even be bothered to double-check. Still, I came to enjoy that name.
Charlie: Who are some artists that have inspired you?
Boredman: Ouch, tough one. It's like picking your favorite toppings on a pizza... there's so much to choose from.
I think Stephen Silver, Jhonen Vasquez, Bruce Timm and Genndy Tartakovsky's style and designs had a strong impact on me when I was young, but it wasn't until I came across the works of Mike Mignola and Ted Naifeh that I became truly attracted to American comics.
I did grow up loving Bandes Dessinées before that, of course, so there's a myriad of French artists I also drew inspiration from, like Franquin, Boulet, Dav, Fabrice Parme and Eric Liberge to name just a few.
Charlie: In a satiric autobiographic video, you show yourself marching back and forth in front of an art school. How was the school experience?
Boredman: Basically that. Lots of paper, lots of walking.
No seriously, it was pretty great. I thoroughly enjoyed these four years, even if most of what I learned in History and Philosophy classes quickly went out the window.
Mostly I was grateful for the opportunity to experiment. I was introduced to such a variety of tools and mediums, shown so many techniques and received so many useful tips to improve my work... It really is a shame I gravitated towards webcomics and ultimately dumped all of that good stuff.
Charlie: Your illustrations include detailed and atmospheric buildings (especially impressive, considering you make them viewable on a cellphone). How did you become interested in architecture?
Boredman: I actually never realized I cared about buildings until after I moved out of Paris. Brussels really is a lovely city, but upon arrival, I immediately started longing for the Parisian architecture I had grown up with. That's when I started collecting photos of said buildings, and later bought art books about or just featuring them. Then I moved on to pictures of castles, cathedrals, and now boats.
I don't think I ever did them justice, tho. Time being a factor in webcomics, I try never to allocate too much of it on drawing detailed backgrounds or elaborate perspectives, but I still can't really tell my stories as effectively without showing where they take place.
Sometimes I just trace photos. You gotta cut corners.
Charlie: Apocalyptic Horseplay is sort-of a sequel to your earlier story, UndeadEd. But Ed is a gag cartoon, while Horseplay is a graphic epic with a message. How did you go from one to the other?
Boredman: Backwards, you might say, since Apocalyptic Horseplay was already an old idea of mine when UndeadEd came along. I guess that's why Horseplay came loaded with a lot more ambition and intent than UndeadEd, which really was just a goof I wrote for the sake of my own sickening laughter.
Readers often asked if I'd planned on making both stories take place in the same world from the start, and the short answer is yes, but only because I tend to make all my stories coexist within the same universe and repurpose some of the characters. Couple of the backgrounds characters you see throughout Horseplay actually are from The Ripper, another webcomic I published on deviantART in 2011.
Charlie: Horseplay includes educational background features about history, mythology and the Bible. Were these interests of yours that inspired your story or did you do research after you started drawing?
Boredman: Bit of both, really. While I do enjoy mythology and all kinds of religious lore, I always was and remain an irredeemably abysmal student of history, so everything I included that wasn't already part of the common knowledge required extensive research.
Oh, and I already pretty much forgot it all, so yeah. Irredeemable.
Charlie: I love your color work. Any tips for other cartoonists (like me)?
Boredman: Thanks! That makes one of us then.
I always felt my color work was the weakest part of my game, which is why I often lean into color complements (red/green, blue/orange, purple/yellow, etc.) to create a balanced atmosphere.
I do recommend experimenting with that if one is looking to improve their coloring, and also to try and occasionally assign meaning to the colors you chose, so colors may better serve the story.
I have an entire video about that on my Patreon, if anyone's interested (and also rich).
Charlie: How is your Patreon going? https://www.patreon.com/boredman
Boredman: Honestly, a LOT more useful and gratifying than I ever would have guessed! I really wasn't expecting much when I first set it up, so you can imagine how much of my sh** I ended up losing when literally HUNDREDS of my readers signed up overnight. Their donations quickly allowed me to drop all my freelance work and dedicate myself solely to my comics. Also kept the lights and heat on during sick days and hiatuses.
Some people even increased their monthly donation when they found out I was getting married! How much more support and appreciation could I POSSIBLY have the AUDACITY to ask for? That's mainly why I had to come up with special rewards, like commissions, cameos, signed artbooks and original pages.
I would have included a "lick-your-feet-and-suck-your-****" tier, but Patreon has extremely narrow-minded policies.
Charlie: You have a new project coming to Webtoons.
Boredman: Indeedy-dude I do! It's called BlackSmith, it's a pirate story I've been wanting to tell for like five years, and it's scheduled to start in late October 2021!
I HAVEN'T SLEPT IN WEEKS.
Charlie: Is BlackSmith a bigger or more intimate story than Horseplay?
Boredman: Well, the main characters aren't physical manifestations of world-ending scourges, so it hardly compares, but it does have similar magnitude. The focus will obviously be on the main character's journey through the sickeningly heartless world of pirates and their attempt to hold onto their last shreds of humanity, but I'm also going to be giving a lot of importance to the antagonists, their struggles and the stakes of their respective societies. Also there's going to be demons.
Charlie: You have gotten many, many comments on Webtoons. How do reader comments affect your work?
Boredman: They entertain and galvanize me, and really help with my process sometimes.
Back when I was publishing UndeadEd, I became very attentive to people's expectations of the story, and even created entire arcs based on people's jokes and ideas. I wasn't as open to suggestion for Apocalyptic Horseplay, mainly because the story was heading in a very specific direction most people didn't and couldn't expect, but I was still interested in their theories on what was going to happen next. Those helped me make sure some events wouldn't come as too unexpected while others would still manage to blow their fragile and adorably unsuspecting little minds.
Charlie: Will readers see BlackSmith as the next step in a progression that started with UndeadEd (or your earlier work on deviantART)?
Boredman: Not really, no. This time, I aim to make something entirely new, set in a totally separate and different universe. I mean, there will be some demons, but no zombies, no vampires, no ghosts... well okay, maybe also a couple ghosts. I really like ghosts.
Not as much as I love pirates tho.
