Craig Thompson Quotes

It's absolutely chilling to think that I've been working on a comic-book series called 'Optic Nerve' since I was sixteen.

When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

In a way, 'Sin City's designed to be paced somewhere between an American comic book and Japanese manga. Working in black and white, I realized that the eye is less patient, and you have to make your point, and sometimes repeat it. Slowing things down is harder in black and white, because there isn't as much for the eye to enjoy.

I'm not a cinephile. My films don't reference films. I'm more interested in rhythm and feeling.

Anime is intended to have ambiguous features. That's part of the art form.

Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words.

I think making a movie is like drawing or creating an art piece. The artwork reflects part of your personality, but not all.

I didn't expect 'Scott Pilgrim' to be successful. I just made this weird comic to entertain my friends.

I get all dressed up in fuchsia, looking like a clown, and show pretty pictures to people.

I am writing graffiti on your body. I am drawing the story of how hard we tried.

A comic book is the opposite of a cartoon. In a cartoon, you want to simplify the idea, so when they look at it at a glance, they get it. Boom. Simple. Direct to the point. But when you're drawing Groo, now it's a narrative, a story. You want the viewer to get involved in the story. You want him to feel like he's in the town to follow your main character. So I love to add lots and lots of things in it. Things that people will enjoy going back to and say, "Oh yeah, that's how a market must have looked in this fantasy world, with people selling meat here and dishes here."

The most natural thing for us is drawing. The characters [in Persepolis] are hand drawn. We're not technical people. We don't know how to type.

I firmly believe in the value of books: it's the way to pass on our work, and it allows us to explore new ways to express our creativity. In this specific case, Mariano Vivanco shot some images of David for this project's purpose.

Filmmaking in general is just really where I'm putting all of my energy.

What can make your work interesting is as much who you are, as how you draw.

Working with the kind of talent that I've gotten to work with, like the cast of Sin City, it makes me think probably more fully dimensionally about what is going on behind their eyes. But I draw the way I draw, and ain't nothing gonna change that. Although, I draw Marv and I think, "Boy, I could throw a little Mickey [Rourke] in there."

The best work never was and never will be done for money.

I have the gift of neither the spoken nor the written word, especially if I have to say something about myself or my work. Whoever wants to know something about me -as an artist, the only notable thing- ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.

Romanticism is the mother of kitsch and that there are moments when the child becomes so like its mother that one cannot differentiate between them

I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions.

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

We [Rodriguez and Frank Miller] wanted to take the movies and turn them into a graphic novel, so that people wouldn't even know what they were looking at. It's still visual storytelling, but it's approached completely different. The two mediums don't have to be separate mediums. They can be one and the same.

Painting is silent poetry.

There are some people who may not like precision in their art. They may like it to be grittier and more gestural, more of a direct expression in the way that a painter would put his strokes on canvas.