A whole new patented comic book concept
When Graphic Novel, Photography,
Music and Languages meet…
1st Vietnamese Trendy Comic Book Series
Main title of the Series: The Legend of Lost Love
Title of Vol.1: EXILE
Synopsis of Vol.1
Têt 2000, Paris, Chinatown. Minh, 50 years of age and an executive manager from the Vietnamese Diaspora, wanders through the crowds, photographing
the celebrations like a connoisseur. Overcome by nostalgia, he looks back
over the past…
"Childhood in North Vietnam, his teenage years in the South, a passion for socially- committed photography since an early age, his first heartbreak, the Baccalaureate in 1967, then exile in France, May '68, the tragic death of his entire family during the war, a tough few years as a foreign student in Paris, Engineering School, an exemplary professional career, married in 1977, naturalized and relatively well- integrated, separated in 1997, existential doubt..."
Obsessed by the past, Minh turns back to the culture of Vietnam and slowly detaches himself from Western values. With meticulous care, he plans his return
to the land of his birth, for a holiday that turns into a great adventure. After posting
an ad on the Net, he is to meet up with a native Vietnamese guide at HCM-City,
a guide who, as we'll see in the following issues, is to change his life forever.
Aim of the Zixtoon publishing project
The Zixtoon design is based on the very specific nature of a combination of a paper comic book and a digital disk. In playing with the form and content of hardcopy and disk together, the designer hopes to convey an intense and convincing emotional charge to the reader/viewer, which is distilled throughout this double reading of
the artwork. The first of a whole new genre, the Zixtoon also relates a strange story enriched with multiple layers of meaning.
Paper Book
Transforming a two-page spread into a single panoramic comic strip plate, with
a large photographic image forming the first “frame” of each wide plate, gives
the book an extraordinary aspect.
The illustrated plate was conceived from the outset in the same format as a 16/9
TV or computer screen. Reading the page is made easy and smooth, thanks to clever frame division, a limited number of large illustrations and large font.
The separation of each plate from the one before and the one following makes for reading at a more dynamic pace and intensifies the emotional charge.
A major symbol of Vietnam, the conical hat at the bottom of the left-hand page plays a dual role in marking the pages in an original way and as a two-way bridge spanning the drawn image and the photographic image.
Three versions – English, French and Vietnamese – are available.
DivX disk
The DivX disk contains a full-length “Making-of” lasting 45 minutes, intended as a second mode of reading the story that has already been related in the book.
Each plate of illustrations should be scrolled down on a large 16/9 screen to visualize the different stages of creation (sketches, inking, coloring and lettering).
Mainly written and performed by a well-known musician, the jazz soundtrack lends
a strange dimension to the digital comic book. The closing credits take the viewer into the world of photography, with 80 photographs, most of which were taken in Vietnam, accompanied by a fabulous cover of an old Vietnamese song.
The viewer is also invited to venture into the realm of languages, with this full-length “Making of” available in 11 language versions: English, German, simple Chinese, classical Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Vietnamese.
FOREWORD
What is comic strip art?
For a long time, until only very recently in fact,
a comic strip was little more than a series of pictures
in frames aligned more or less one after the other in a strip.
Sometimes, maybe, the drawing might overlap
the edge of the frame.
Sometimes, instead of being square or rectangular,
you might have a round or triangular frame.
Sometimes, a drawing might be totally outside the frame.
Yet even so, it still reads “traditionally”, from left to right,
or from right to left in the case of mangas.
But now, thanks to computers,
a whole new realm of possibilities is opening up
that revolutionizes this established order,
exploding the whole idea of “strips” and “illustration”;
so, what are we to call this thing that
Niels Lan Doky, Philippe Hooghe and Bùi Huy Trang
have given us to see and hear?
I don’t know, but what difference does it make?
I love the possibilities opened up by technology.
I am not the keeper of the comic strip temple.
I use anything and everything that falls to hand
to get across what it is I have to say.
There’s only one valid rule as far as I’m concerned,
to achieve the objective, which is, to express life.
To do that, sometimes all it takes
is a line, a word, a phrase.
Sometimes, what we want to say
is so rich, so complex,
that we have to find another way,
something more than
a single dazzling flash.
For this book, a book that tells a country,
Bùi Huy Trang explored the limits
of photography, illustration and music;
a country is infinitely vast,
its story is infinitely vast.
This book is the first of its genre,
not, perhaps, exactly comic strip art,
perhaps a higher form.
The authors of this book open doors,
doors that open out onto a country,
Vietnam.
I am going through their doors,
to visit this country
with their music playing in my head.
Paris, 11 November 2007
Edmond BAUDOIN
Edmond BAUDOIN
Edmond Baudoin, the self-taught artist born in Nice in 1942, is a pioneer and master of alternative comic strip art. The scope and variety of his work, together with
his unshakeable determination to push back the limits of the genre, make him
a figurehead embodying the talent, ethics, generosity, liberty and authenticity vindicated, now more than ever, by experimental comic strip artists.
If this extraordinary and incredibly sensitive illustrator speaks, in all humility, so much of his own experience in his work, it is primarily out of his desire to address
the reader as simply and unpretentiously as possible… as a painter of emotion, intimacy and all that cannot be spoken.
Unique and inspired, a curious and acutely perceptive observer of the world around him, widely-recognized as an expert teller of stories imbued with a deep-rooted sense of humanity, Edmond Baudoin continues to surprise and fascinate, again and again.
I dream of an exemplary country,
wealthy and modern,
whose captivating people
dare to be who they really are.
I dream of a country
where people help one another,
cultivating and expressing themselves,
loving and forgiving.
I dream of a country
that jealously guards
its soul and its cultural identity.
I dream of a country
that can free itself
for all time
from lies and illusion,
from ideology, basically.
I dream of a country
where everyone has faith
in their own intrinsic qualities,
where everyone can draw down
deep within themselves
and be the best they can…
to invent their own future.
Bùi Huy Trang