Ulice Ankh-Morpork

Kor · Moderator Wiek: 30 Dołączył: 25 Kwi 2004 Skąd: Mstuff

Wywiad z córą Pracza:

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http://www.denofgeek.com/...e_overlord.html

Kor · Moderator Wiek: 30 Dołączył: 25 Kwi 2004 Skąd: Mstuff

Wywiadzik o Nation:

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http://www.publishersweek...cleID=CA6591388

i jeszcze inny wywiadzik:

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http://www.bucksfreepress..._by_university/

Kor · Moderator Wiek: 30 Dołączył: 25 Kwi 2004 Skąd: Mstuff

Wywiad z jednym z twórców filmu KM

:arrow:

http://www.dwscifi.com/admin/articles/show/2655

Kor · Moderator Wiek: 30 Dołączył: 25 Kwi 2004 Skąd: Mstuff

Jeszcze cieplutki wywiad z Kidbym:

Interview with Le Vade-mecum December 29th 2008

- Vade-Mecum: It's rather difficult in France to get information about you. Who are you actually? When and where were you born? What studies did you follow? How did you end up doing this job? (We are just doing a little presentation of you, even if it sounds more like a police interrogation...)

- Paul Kidby: I am a 44 year old freelance illustrator. I originally come from
London. I have been self-employed since 1986 working on art commissions. I left school at 17 and worked for two years as an apprentice dental technician, before taking on a job as a painter of roller blinds, I then began to work for an art studio that produced
greetings cards. I did not go to Art College, and I have no formal training, although
a retired art teacher in my road gave me help each week with my drawing skills such as
anatomy and perspective.

I ended up doing artwork for Discworld in 1994 after queuing up to see Terry at a book signing where I took the opportunity to give him some of my character designs. A few
weeks later he rang me and asked if I would be interested in working with him.

- VM : Some of your works are shout-outs to well-known paintings like Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Edward Munch's The Scream, Grant Wood's American Gothic etc...What are your models, your muses, your inspiring influences?

- PK: Sometimes the opportunity arises to parody famous pictures; I only do this if
it fits with the characters and gives an extra dimension. It amuses me to do this!
Other influences and sources of inspiration are: nature, the work of other artists (I have many reference books), and music such as Goldfrapp's 'Seventh Tree' and Coldplay's 'Viva La Vida'. My main muse however is obviously my dear wife Vanessa, who works with me creatively, and keeps everything organised!

- VM: We know thanks to the Art of Discworld that you discovered the Discworld via a present. What is your favourite volume? And the one you like most to illustrate? By the way, which is your favourite character?

- PK: My favourite Discworld book, which I like to draw from, is 'Guards Guards!'
This is because of the way Vimes develops through the story, and it's got dragons, which
I love to paint! My favourite characters are: Granny Weatherwax, because she is such a powerful and interesting witch; Vimes, because he is another complex individual and its fun trying to capture the different elements of his personality. I also like to illustrate Death, this is because people have a knee jerk reaction to skulls and it's fun to try and give him a benign, friendly feel which goes against the classic pre-conceptions of the grim reaper.

- VM: How did your collaboration with Terry Pratchett build up? Did you send him some of your works? Did he contact you personally? Or did it happen in a completely different way?

- PK: As I have already mentioned, I showed him my artwork at a book signing, those initial sketches were of Rincewind, Cohen, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat. The first project I worked on with him was The Pratchett Portfolio which was published in 1995. I went on to produce various diaries and maps, and then in 2001 following the sad death of Josh Kirby, I did my first book jacket, The ‘Nightwatch’.

- VM: What is the process of your Discworld illustration work? Do you read the entire book? Do you doodle throughout your reading? Does Terry Pratchett ask you a precise commission? What does it look like?

- PK: When I did my early work with Terry there was a wealth of published Discworld books which I read and made notes throughout before starting to draw. This gave me a clear understanding of the characters, and any physical descriptions of them.
Nowadays, when I am commissioned to produce a new book jacket, the publishers usually like to have the artwork before Terry has finished writing the book. So I am given a precise brief from Terry listing what he wants to see included in the illustration. This comes to me as an email via an art editor. I then make a sketch and send it off for approval by Terry and the publishers, before making a final drawing to be coloured up. The whole process takes around four weeks to complete.

- VM: What is your most enjoyable memory as a Discworld illustrator ? Your favourite compliment?

- PK: My most enjoyable memory was working closely with Terry back in the early days. My most favourite compliment is that I have managed to capture the characters exactly as people imagine them, especially when that comes from the writer himself.

- VM: Generally speaking, how do you work? Are there particular circumstances, atmospheres? Well, with music, maybe?

- PK : I work in the dining room of our house, I like to keep the environment tidy
although reference books and paperwork does tend to pile up very quickly! I play music
while I work, and I drink lots of cups of tea! One day I hope to have a studio of my
own.

- VM : Some of our budding artists would like to know about the tools you use for your work (type or brand of painting and canvas ...) ?

- PK : I use Windsor and Newton acrylics and Windsor and Newton Griffin oil paints which dry overnight. I build up thin layers of paint and it is a gradual process. I
work on illustration board or paper. When drawing I use 2H, H, F and HB pencils which
do not smudge. I also use a selection of very fine Cotman brushes made by Windsor and Newton. I very rarely work on canvas as the surface is not smooth enough for high detail. Most illustrations are produced at least 2x the size required for printing. Sometimes I work on a very large scale, such as the cover for the Last Hero which was 3ft x4ft (this however is not very practical!)

- VM: "The Last Hero" was a splendid work of art. Was the idea of an
illustrated Discworld book (which reminds us of Faust Eric) originally from Pratchett or was it one of your suggestions? How much time did it take you to realise it?

- PK: The Last Hero was Terry's idea, and was a wonderful opportunity for which I am very grateful. I worked on it over two years (Spring 1999 to Spring 2001), but also during that time I produced the illustrations for two Discworld Diaries and Nanny Ogg's Cookbook. It was a difficult time of hard work, during which my first marriage broke up. Ideally I would have liked to have spent the full two years working solely on The Last Hero. I am glad that people like the final publication, but I still feel a little frustrated when I look at it!

- VM: What do you think of the other two well-known illustrators of the Discworld, Josh Kirby and Stephen Player?

- PK: I admire Josh Kirby's work, he had a very strong and distinctive style. I was lucky enough to meet him on a couple of occasions and he was a kind and talented man who seemed somewhat puzzled by the enthusiastic reaction of his fans!
Stephen Player is an accomplished artist, and it is always interesting to see how other illustrators perceive Discworld.

- VM: What are your future projects, whether they have a link with the Discworld or not?

- PK: Over the last few years I have been enjoying exploring other artistic avenues, producing non Discworld art, and doing some sculpting. I am currently working on a new personal project which I hope to see come to fruition in 2009. I will be posting further details of this on my website www.paulkidby.net in the months to come. French Publisher Daniel Maghen has recently released 'l'Univers des Dragons', volume two, this contains artwork by many contemporary fantasy illustrators, including myself. I also continue to produce Discworld artwork whenever I am commissioned, at the moment I am working on the cover for Terry's new book 'Unseen Academicals', you will be able to see this work in progress on my website.

- VM: If you were a Discworld character, which one would you be? And why?

- PK: I can relate most closely to the characteristics of Vimes and Rincewind. People sometimes say I look like Rincewind too! I think we share a similar disposition!

- VM: Not a question, but our resident fan-artists would like to say they idolize your work and have it as their primary inspiration in most aspects. You probably would be hard-pressed to find a Discworld fan-artist who doesn't. Though they frequently get frustrated when your depiction seems so perfect that it blocks all further attempts. Any comments?

- PK : It is a great compliment to have my work appreciated. I think that with art of any type, there is plenty of scope for new interpretation. However, I must admit to
feeling that what Alan Lee produced for 'Lord of the Rings' was definitive, and that I
could not surpass it. I would encourage any fans to keep working on their own style and never to feel discouraged. I hope that my work inspires them in their own work. I often look at other artists work (including Alan Lee) to encourage me and give me inspiration.

- VM: A rather inquisitive question : Do you actually make your living from your
job as an illustrator ?

- PK: I try to!

- VM: A rather French question : Have you ever been to France ?

- PK: I Love France! My wife, Vanessa and I have had some fantastic holidays in Parisand the Maritime Alps. There is a wonderful culture in France and the people seem to have an appreciation of art and artists which is not very apparent in England. We also enjoy the food, wine and varied landscapes! We will be visiting France again in 2009, and we are very much looking forward to it.

May I take this opportunity to thank everyone who enjoys my work in France, I am very
grateful for your continuing support. I wish you all a wonderful New Year!

Paul.

:arrow:

http://paulkidby.net/Interview.html

Kor · Moderator Wiek: 30 Dołączył: 25 Kwi 2004 Skąd: Mstuff

Archiwalna wypowiedź Gaimana, bardzo dodam fajna (kocham takie szyki w zdaniu :mrgreen:

):

Cytat:

Terry Pratchett: An Appreciation
Right.

So it's February of 1985, and it's a Chinese restaurant in London, and it's the author's first interview. His publicist had been pleasantly surprised that anyone would want to talk to him (the author has just written a funny fantasy book called The Colour of Magic), but she's set up this lunch with a young journalist anyway. The author, a former journalist, has a hat, but it's a small, black leathery cap, not a Proper Author Hat. Not yet. The journalist has a hat too. It's a greyish thing, sort of like the ones Humphrey Bogart wears in movies, only when the journalist wears it he doesn't look like Humphrey Bogart: he looks like someone wearing a grown-up's hat. The journalist is slowly discovering that, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot become a hat person: it's not just that it itches and blows off at inconvenient moments, it's that he forgets, and leaves it in restaurants, and is now getting very used to knocking on the doors of restaurants about 11:00am and asking if they found a hat. One day, very soon now, the journalist will stop bothering with hats, and decide to buy a black leather jacket instead.

So they have lunch, and the interview gets printed in “Space Voyager” magazine, along with a photo of the author browsing the shelves in Forbidden Planet, and most importantly, they make each other laugh, and like the way the other one thinks.

And the author is Terry Pratchett, and the journalist is me, and it's been two decades since I left a hat in a restaurant, and one and a half decades since Terry discovered his inner bestselling-author-with-a-Proper-Author-Hat..

We don't see each other much these days, what with living on different continents, and, when we're on each other's continents, spending all our time signing books for other people. The last time we ate together was at a Sushi counter in Minneapolis, after a signing. It was an all-you-can-eat night, where they put your sushi on little boats and floated it over to you. After a while, obviously feeling we were taking unfair advantage of the whole all-you-can-eat thing, the sushi chef gave up on the putting sushi on little boats, produced something that looked like the Leaning Tower of Yellowtail, handed it to us, and announced that he was going home.

Nothing much had changed, except everything.

These are the things I realised back in 1985:

Terry knew a lot. He had the kind of head that people get when they're interested in things, and go and ask questions and listen and read. He knew genre, enough to know the territory, and he knew enough outside genre to be interesting.

He was ferociously intelligent.

He was having fun. Then again, Terry is that rarity, the kind of author who likes writing, not having written, or Being a Writer, but the actual sitting there and making things up in front of a screen. At the time we met, he was still working as a press officer for the South Western Electricity Board. He wrote four hundred words a night, every night: it was the only way for him to keep a real job and still write books. One night, a year later, he finished a novel, with a hundred words still to go, so he put a piece of paper into his typewriter, and wrote a hundred words of the next novel.

(The day he retired, to become a full-time writer, he phoned me up. “It's only been half an hour since I retired, and already I hate those bastards,” he said cheerfully.)

This was something else that was obvious in 1985. Terry was a science fiction writer. It was the way his mind worked: the urge to take it all apart, and put it back together in different ways, to see how it all fit together. It was the engine that drove Discworld – it's not a “what if...” or an “if only...” or even an “if this goes on...”; it was the far more subtle and dangerous “If there was really a..., what would that mean? How would it work?”

In the Nicholls-Clute Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, there was an ancient woodcut, of a man pushing his head through the back of the world, past the sky, and seeing the cogs and the wheels and the engines that drove the universe machine. That's what people do in Terry Pratchett books, even if the people doing it are sometimes rats and sometimes small girls. People learn things. They open their heads.

So we discovered we shared a similar sense of humour, and a similar set of cultural referents; we'd read the same obscure books, took pleasure in pointing each other to weird Victorian reference books.

A few years after we met, in 1988, Terry and I wrote a book together. It began as a parody of Richmal Crompton's William books, which we called William the Antichrist, but rapidly outgrew that conceit and became about a number of other things instead, and we called it Good Omens. It was a funny novel about the end of the world and how we're all going to die. Working with Terry I felt like a journeyman working alongside a master-craftsman in some medieval guild. He constructs novels like guildmaster might build a cathedral arch. There is art, of course, but that's the result of building it well. What there is more of is the pleasure taken in constructing something that does what it's meant to do – to make people read the story, and laugh, and possibly even think.

(This is how we wrote a novel together. I'd write late at night. Terry wrote early in the morning. In the afternoon we'd have very long phone conversations where we'd read each other the best bits we'd written, and talk about stuff that could happen next. The main objective was to make the other one laugh. We posted floppy disks back and forth, because this was before e-mail. There was one night when we tried using a modem to send some text across the country, at 300/75 speeds, directly from computer to computer because if e-mail had been invented back then nobody had told us about it. We managed it too. But the post was faster.)

(No, we won't write a sequel.)

Terry has been writing professionally for a very long time, honing his craft, getting quietly better and better. The biggest problem he faces is the problem of excellence: he makes it look easy. This can be a problem. The public doesn't know where the craft lies. It's wiser to make it look harder than it is, a lesson all jugglers learn.

In the early days the reviewers compared him to the late Douglas Adams, but then Terry went on to write books as enthusiastically as Douglas avoided writing them, and now, if there is any comparison to be made of anything from the formal rules of a Pratchett novel to the sheer prolific fecundity of the man, it might be to P.G. Wodehouse. But mostly newspapers, magazines and critics do not compare him to anyone. He exists in a blind spot, with two strikes against him: he writes funny books, in a world in which funny is synonymous with trivial, and they are fantasies – or more precisely, they are set on the Discworld, a flat world, which rests on the back of four elephants, who in turn stand on the back of a turtle, heading off through space. It's a location in which Terry Pratchett can write anything, from hard-bitten crime dramas to vampiric political parodies, to children's books. And those children's books have changed things. After all, Terry won the prestigious Carnegie Medal for his pied piper tale The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, awarded by the librarians of the UK, and the Carnegie is an award that even newspapers have to respect. (Even so, the newspapers had their revenge, cheerfully misunderstanding Terry's acceptance speech and accusing him of bashing J.K. Rowling and J. R. R. Tolkien and fantasy, in a speech about the real magic of fantastic fiction.)

The most recent books have shown Terry in a new mode – books like Night Watch and A Monstrous Regiment are darker, deeper, more outraged at what people can do to people, while prouder of what people can do for each other. And yes, the books are still funny, but they no longer follow the jokes: now the books follow the story and the people. Satire is a word that is often used to mean that there aren't any people in the fiction, and for that reason I'm uncomfortable calling Terry a satirist. What he is, is A Writer, and there are few enough of those around. There are lots of people who call themselves writers, mind you. But it's not the same thing at all.

In person, Terry is genial, driven, funny. Practical. He likes writing, and he likes writing fiction. That he became a best-selling author is a good thing: it allows him to write as much as he wishes. He's Guest of Honour at the World SF convention – in many ways the ultimate accolade that the world of speculative fiction can bestow on those who have given it much – and he'll still be writing, between panels, before breakfast, here and there. He'll probably write as much in a day at Worldcon as most other authors will manage on a quiet day when there aren't any DVDs that haven't been watched and the weather precludes spending time in the garden and the phone's out of order – and Terry will do this while doing his proper Guest of Honour share of panels and readings and socialising and drinking exotic drinks of an evening.

He wasn't joking about the Banana Daiquiris, although the last time I saw him we drank ice-wine together in his hotel room while we set the world to rights.

I'm delighted that he's Guest of Honour at the Worldcon. He deserves it.

Neil Gaiman, May 2004

Vanti · Wysłany: 31 Marzec 2009, 10:34

Wywiad z Rhianna Pratchett o grach

Kor · Moderator Wiek: 30 Dołączył: 25 Kwi 2004 Skąd: Mstuff

Wywiad z Ianem Stewartem (współautor Nauk):

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http://www.guardian.co.uk...rts-mathematics

Kor · Moderator Wiek: 30 Dołączył: 25 Kwi 2004 Skąd: Mstuff

Wywiad z P. Kidbym

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http://artistinsight.blog...-inrerview.html