Could you tell us about the genesis of the series U.C.C. Dolores ?
Didier : I think that the series is the fruit of several crossed desires. I had in mind heaps of images that called for stories. These are delusions that take place in our head as when we are a kid, in fact. I wanted to draw large forests, battles in space, megalopolises Blade Runner, and there I felt the need to make something out of it, a story. When the characters come to life in my imagination, I start writing. The second determining desire was not to do only Lanfeust. I don’t like being locked into a single series, I find it sclerosing. It had become necessary for me to do something else.
- Tarquin © Glénat
Fantasy, science fiction, what do you like so much in the genre? Could the Tarquins one day try their hand at a more “realistic” comic book, let’s say?
Didier : Maybe not realistic but I have the idea of a comic strip that takes place in the present day. I think that if I have so much affinity with these registers, it’s because I’m an 80s teenager. I loved it Cobra, Grendizer, Harlock, Star Wars, I built myself with these references and many others. The comic also obviously, the one that was pre-published in magazines like Screaming metal of course, but many others too, series like the Time bird quest, Thorgal, Valerian…I think we’re basically geeks. Individuals passionate about essential works of pop culture who have appropriated them and who have deciphered them to perceive their full nuance.
Among all the segments of this Geek culture, you favored the “Space Opera”, for what reasons?
Lyse : I think it’s because we actually like it, quite simply (laughs). As much Star Wars what Star-Trek what Valerian and Laureline !
Didier : We play. We opened a toy box and when we make Dolores, we want to play with all of our toys! What sandbox could be more appropriate to play than the whole universe? We want to do something close toAvatar ? Well let’s imagine a sister planet with an original ecosystem like on Pandora. We want to do Star Wars ? We also have the right. Of Mad Max ? Let’s go to a desert planet. We can do everything ! Just land on a new planet.
- Tarquin © Glénat
And don’t you find that a fair dosage is important given the current escalation in the SF register, especially in the cinema?
Lyse : Oh yes it is important!
Didier : The right dosage, it is simple. We realize it through the writing of the characters. We are limited to three or even four characters and we do not prohibit anything. It is important that certain characters can die or have other more original trajectories.
Lyse : Worry helps to arouse more empathy in the reader in my opinion. It makes it more believable. It describes a certain reality.
- Tarquin © Glénat
What themes would you like to address after this fourth volume, which was a one-shot?
Lyse : These first three volumes were the genesis of our story. This fourth is a transition to a second cycle so the screenplay was written in the form of a chase at the Mad Max. A chain of events that the main protagonist undergoes to make the link with the next cycle which will also be three volumes. A cycle that we want to start and close. We don’t want to go on an incalculable number of albums or not fix it.
Didier : We know how far we’re going over the next three years, and then we’ll see. The principle of the first saga is to determine who Mony is. Make a learning story and confront it with its origins and a certain number of trials to find out how it can rebuild itself following these. Now the question is what she will do with this experience and who she will become. She will have to make choices. We will realize that, as in life, everything she has been able to experience in the past will serve her for the future to find her place and her role.
Lyse : It shaped her and she will use it.
- Tarquin © Glénat
Could you come back to a work of SF that was founding for you?
Lyse : Captain Harlock impressed me a lot! There weren’t a lot of anime back then, it was amazing to find that out. So of course it affects you. But there was also Star-TrekI think my geek side comes from my family, we all loved these works!
Didier : I think my big crush, initially, is Valerian ! We realize, as a child, that it is an adventure, with that there is a subtext that we can understand with a certain maturity, later. It’s hyper-intelligent SF with a political and social message that describes the world (The Master’s Birds dealing with slavery, for example).
Would you like to make a Valerian ?
Didier et Lyse : This is something that we could really like. Especially since we particularly liked that of Virginie Augustin.
Didier, could you talk more about your technique for inking?
Didier : Now it’s 100% of the brush. Even when they are straight lines. I find that the brush is a tool that brings flexibility, elegance. The reader is more forgiving I find. A messed up brush stroke looks more elegant. You have to try different tools to find out what really suits you. For me, a simple black pen is one of the best tools there is! Without being anti-digital, I think my drawing becomes beautiful when there are accidents, but the “Control + Z” prevents that.
- Tarquin © Glénat
And for the color, Lyse? In particular on this last volume which took place essentially in a polar universe.
Lyse : Ah well the snow, it’s a great screen which reflects the ambient light so a whole bunch of colors and in particular those of the sky. In the collective imagination, snow is only blue and white. I wanted to get out of that. There’s a scene where a big red moon lights up the night, so I made the snow turn a bit brown, a bit warm. I had this idea following a trip to Canada where we went out, and everything was brown. I think about textures and materials. I documented myself a lot to really get the result I want. The color, I started it in the old way, I worked on blueprints then I went digital. The concern I had was that at the beginning, the colorization on Photoshop was very cold, and on a drawing like Didier’s, the colors have to stick completely to his graphic universe. So I colorized part of the boards by hand before entering them in Photoshop to have an optimal rendering.
Didier : I think Lyse knows the advantages of digital but also knows the unique advantages of traditional colorization and that’s why she makes this compromise. She is constantly arm wrestling between these two mediums.
Lyse : The computer is still comfortable to come back to the drawing, to review a proportion… This cold side that I also find, you have to fight against to keep the spontaneity and the authenticity of this color work.
Are these really albums that are made with four hands?
Didier : I give an example: when I propose an idea, I am very talkative, I talk about it a lot. And especially to Lyse who reacts, she says to me: “That’s not bad and relevant, that less…”, then she gives me ideas to improve the whole. I then move on to drawing, and there she also reacts, in particular to the fact that I am a man and that it is the story of a heroine, she will help me to paint this character in a more coherent way with the sensitivity which is his. When I draw, I have no perspective on my work, she does. She will guide me and point out the imperfections of a board by asking me if she can afford to touch up a hazardous proportion and of course, I agree. So she influences the scenario and the drawing in a systematic way. When she realizes the color, she is totally free, and it’s my turn to intervene, I make her proposals, we discuss. The boundaries between the different stages of creating a comic are completely porous. So yes, these are completely four-handed albums. Without forgetting that a third person enters the loop: the editor who accompanies us. If at any point he has to unpin a grenade because something doesn’t fit, he does.
- Tarquin © Glénat
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