Brigitte Findakly & Joann Sfar

I love the comics of Joann Sfar, which are mostly in french and so when I came across 'L' Ancien Temps' at Renaissance Books in Victoria the other day I had to get it even though I really can't understand a lot of the text itself, since I've only every had a French level 1 class... which I actually took just so I could read another favorite comic of mine only available in french... But I think it's great to get picture books in languages you don't understand sometimes, especially comics so that you can still read them but make up your own story as you do. It can be really fun, and not only that, it makes you pay double attention to things like composition, layout, and of course COLOUR, because all of a sudden you aren't 100% drawn in by the story and those elements don't just vanish more into the background like they usually do.

So as I was 'reading' 'L'Ancien Temps', I noticed for the hundredths time how much I always love the colour of Joan Sfar's work, and how big of a role it plays in his work for me. On the cover of 'L Ancien Temps' it only credits Joann Sfar as the author, but then on the inside of the book it says 'Colour by Brigitte Findakly'.

Hmmm, Brigitte Findakly I thought. Let's check out who does the colour for all the other Joan Sfar books that I love. I knew that someone else coloured for him sometimes, but guess what, pretty much all of them are either coloured by Brigitte Findakly or someone else. Sure Joann Sfar is a total Genius and his work is amazing, but I so think that with work like that the colorists name should be on the cover too. It's such a huge part of it.... but then again, it makes me respect the colourist even more. So vital to the work as a whole and yet so humble. Check out this video here of Brigitte Findakly if you can understand any french... and then, .. if you do... please let me know what she's saying, cause I can really only understand the work 'colour' and 'photoshop' in there. :)

The next post will now have to be more on Joann Sfar himself though. If you don't know him and like comics,... get ready to have your mind blown... and pray that you can speak french.

Here are some images of Sfars work, with colour by Brigitte Findakly who's sense of colour is amazing, dream like and who makes Sfars work look it's very best. Her colour brings a whole new level of composition and feeling to his images. So much depends on it.