Interview with Johan Wanloo
We have had the great honor of interviewing one of Gothenburg or perhaps one of Sweden’s greatest cartoonists. Johan Wanloo is a family man with a big heart who spend real creativity in his wonderful art. He always manages to come up with new fun ideas. You can find his art all over the place, in comic books, magazines and on the web.
Welcome to Wordrom, please introduce yourself. Give us a little background bio about yourself, tell us where you’re from.
I´m from an island outside of Göteborg called Hönö. Now i live in Göteborg. I´m 37 years old. I have two children. My favourite color is green. I could go on all day…
Your work is pretty unique and full of creativity. Where does your inspiration come from?
Short answer: I don´t know. It´s just there. I don´t really believe in inspiration. Sure, some days the ideas comes a lot easier than other but I´m never really NOT “inspired”. Maybe everything inspires me.
Could you tell us about your process? What does your workflow look like?
Theres writing and theres drawing. Two wholly different processes. When I write I tend to walk around and think a lot. Say I walk around thinking hard for two hours, then I actually sit down and write for half an hour.
Drawing is the easy and fun part. Drawing is, for me, actually not really that creative at all. When I draw I listen to music and books-on-tape or talk on the phone.
What do you consider your major influences to be? What are your favorite sources of inspiration? Do you find yourself browsing any online design communitIes or websites?
I can´t answer this. I´m influenced by everything. I´m not into design communities or forums or stuff like that. As far as drawing goes my “style” is kind of set. I can´t really push it in any direction. It goes where it wants to go.
Do you work in a office? What does your workstation look like? What tools and applications do you mainly use?
I work in an office. I have two desks. One for computers and stuff. The other for drawing. I use traditional tools like paper, ink. I recently started to ink some of my work with a Wacom Cintiq, wich is awesome. But i still do a lot the “old” way.
Are you a 9-5 worker or a night-owl? Do you have a normal or peculiar structure to your workday? How does a typical day looks like for you?
Since I have a family I work 9-5. I used to be a night owl. I don´t miss it. I´m way more productive nowadays. I come to work at 9. I check email and Facebook and stuff for 20 minutes maybe. Then i start working. I have lunch early, around 11. The I work again until 17 when i go home. Maybe I´ll have a short break around 15. 9 to about 14 are the best hours for creative work. After that my concentration slips and thats when i do other stuff thats needs to be done. Taxes, invoices, errands. The actual runnning of the company. Stuff like that.
What’s been your most challenging project so far in your career? What was challenging about it? And how did you overcome those challenges?
I couldn´t say. Being creative and coming up with stuff is for me as easy as drinking water or eating a sandwich. I´s my nature to be creative. It´s harder for me to NOT be creative than the other way around. The business-side of being an artist is a challenge. Dealing with corporate stuff is a challenge. Making a living as an artist is a challenge. But the creative stuff is never a challenge.
Which is your favorite piece of work that you have created so far and why? What was the inspiration and idea behind it?
I can´t say. I seldom look back on my stuff. I´m all about what I´m doing now and what I´m going to do next. I have fans that come up to me and talk about stuff i did ten years ago and sometimes i don´t even remember the comics they´re talking about. I´m not so much about the individual pieces of art as i am about the FLOW. If a drawing is kinda bland today it doesn´t matter because I´ll be doing another one tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that….
What kind of developments do you see in the future, regarding the type of work you do?
Well, the media is, as everyone knows, changing rapidly. I however is not the right person to speculate on this. Eeeh… the internet is going to be really important? I don´t know.
Here can we find Johan in the cyberspace www.johanwanloo.se
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nice interview, and an honor for my humble self to be interviewed on the same site as the biggest of comic artists in sweden :-)
who’s next – may i suggest henrik lange?
Henrik Lange would be fun to interview. But we have also contacted some other really good artists. One of them has already accepted, so we’ll see what the future brings.