Caravan Studio

Will be meeting Chris Lie of Caravan Studio again next week at the Bandung conference, so here are some short notes based on the chat I had with him at STGCC last year.

For those who don't know, you learn more about Caravan from their company profile here.

http://www.caravanstudio.com/

At last year's STGCC, they were selling this very nice art book. KLOVN; Artbook of Caravan Studio.

I wrote about them earlier.

http://singaporecomix.blogspot.sg/2011/09/indon-comics.html

Caravan Studio can be considered a success story in Indonesian comics. They started out in January 2008 with only four in-house artists, but now has grown to almost 20 people in their studio. This does not include the freelancers they engaged. What is interesting is the model they are using in Indonesia, which is a studio system to create works for projects overseas. This pays the bills and allow them to hire artists to work on graphics and comics. They are like IFS (Singapore), which used to have a studio in Jakarta and Sunny Gho's Stellar Labs and Makko.

http://makko.co/read/blog/329/2012/06/22/menyambut-datangnya-stellar-labs

But doing projects overseas do not necessarily give you a presence in the local market/scene. That is something Caravan has rectified with their current Baratayuda series. So far, more than 10 issues are out. Full colour and good quality paper. It is based on the Mahabharata story, but aimed at the 6-12 years old market. Caravan knows they cannot compete with the manga market in Indonesia, so they decide to create stories based on their own myths and legends.

As to why they decided to use the Garuda, Lie said, "Garuda is popular, because it's also our nation's symbol. A mythical bird from the epics."

Lie has come a long way since growing up in Solo, and coming to Singapore to work between 2001 and 2003. He still has close links with Singapore as his brother works here. He attended Savannah College of Art and Design on a Fulbright Scholarship between 2003 and 2005.

One of the first Caravan projects was an adaptation of a classic Twilight Zone episode, Deaths-Head Revisited. It was published by Walker and Company in 2009. Lie did the storyboards and his team did the actual drawing and finishing.

http://vimeo.com/31183266

Since then, Caravan has worked on card games illustrations for Legends of the Five Rings, Wizard of the Coast. They used to do the bestselling Return to Labyrinth series for Tokyo Pop before the latter went defunct in America. They have also done Scholastic Books like the Dinosaur Data Handbook.

Lie promises to announce a new project at the Bandung conference, so do keep a lookout for that.

Indon Comics

(Aish, Rony, Azisa, Rama, Tita)

Had lunch with Tita Larasati during STGCC and she updated me about the scene in Bandung. Basically, she and her business partner, Rony Amdani, were in town to promote the books published by their company, Curhat Anak Bangsa (CAB).

All the books are written by Rony. The art is by different artists:

Seeta – Rama Indra (based loosely on the Ramayan)
Insight – Risza A. Perdhana
The Messengers – Aish (based loosely on the independence of Indonesia)
Mantra – Azisa Noor

It’s still tough for indie artists to make their living from drawing comics fulltime. Even for Tita, she lectures at the Bandung Institute of Technology.

Interestingly, the bestsellers from CAB are the graphic diaries by Tita and Sheila Rooswitha Putri. Tita has written an article about the trend of Graphic Diary for an upcoming volume of International Journal of Comic Art, based on a paper she presented at the Women’s Manga Beyond Japan conference held at the National University of Singapore earlier this year.

Sheila’s story about a family trip to East Java has been reprinted in Liquid City 2. She has kept busy with a new project for www.naked-traveler.com . She is drawing a strip written by Trinity and Erastiany. (Rony is involved too)

http://duohippodinamis.wordpress.com/

Several Indon artists have made it overseas. Other than Ardian Syaf, people like Chris Lie, Sunny Gho and Admira Wijaya (aka Anto Garang) have done international work. Chris Lie has drawn for GI Joe and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 video game (Chris is also running Caravan Studio, which he set up in West Jakarta in January 2008) while Sunny Gho is the Art Director of IFS Jakarta. He has coloured Power Girl, Secret Warriors, Ultimate Avengers vs. New Ultimates and The Darkness. Both Chris Lie and Sunny Gho were at STGCC. Some samples of Caravan Studio works here:

http://www.stripspeciaalzaak.be/beelden/07-12-2011_Besprekingen/Storm-Buitenring1_PR.jpg

http://www.denoormanstrips.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Storm-1-Banneling-van-Thoem.jpg

But the bulk of comics produced in Indonesia are slapstick books, eg. the “101” series. (101 Surviving Super Singles, 101 Prehistoric Culture, etc) and ‘local manga’ series.

http://www.indomanga.com/index.php?topic=5977.0
http://wahyuhidayatz.blogspot.com/2011/06/komik-101-peradaban-purba_30.html

Tita called this current situation as “lata” – the Malay word for imitate. Most comic companies are merely copying each other’s themes to sell their books.