ll www.​luclat​ulippe.com

Who gets to share your bed and who gets to lick your toes, Una or Doug?

Doug’s the man who shares my bed and makes me the hap­pi­est boy on the planet, but Una is sure enough a toe-​licker. Par­tic­u­larly in the morn­ings, on her way to the window to check if any squir­rels are out caus­ing trou­ble. Doug’s more of an ear-​man. I can wiggle my ears, kinda like Saman­tha from Bewitched could do with her nose, and it really gets him going.

How much do you depend on your com­puter could you sur­vive with­out it?

I depend a great deal on my com­puter. At this time, I could prob­a­bly not sur­vive with­out it, but if pressed (and given time!) I know I could re-​adapt to the life of a Lud­dite. I cut TV out of my life a few years back and I don’t miss it one bit.

I do try to rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between enjoy­ing it and being a slave to it though, and if I do have to work late I still shut down at 9pm and try to get to bed at a decent time. I still enjoy going out­side, meet­ing with friends, and doing other non-​computer things. Having a dog helps in that respect, plus a part­ner who loves the out­doors. But I make no apolo­gies for spend­ing time on the computer.

I like using new apps, par­tic­u­larly if they ACTU­ALLY make my time at the com­puter easier and shorter, more enjoy­able, and more pro­duc­tive. I like draw­ing and design­ing on the com­puter and don’t feel the least bit guilty or bad about not paint­ing as much as I did years ago (although I miss it some­times). I’m sure I’ll return to it one day, but I don’t get all “it’s not real art!” when using the com­puter. It’s just another tool. One that doesn’t get goopy paint stains all over the place when I’m done.

Could I live with­out it? I sup­pose so. I’d prefer to live with less of it than to kick it out the door altogether.

Apart from illus­tra­tion what other things are you into?

Well, first off, I don’t think I’d say I’m the type who is “into” illus­tra­tion. You won’t find many illus­tra­tion books in my house, for one thing. And I’m not that great at naming who’s who in our field. I have quite a few illustrators’ blogs in my news­reader, but besides that I’m really not in the know.

So what am I into? Hm. I’m pretty boring. I don’t play any instru­ments. I don’t play any sports. I don’t col­lect any­thing. I don’t spend tons of money on clothes or shoes or home acces­sories. I don’t own a car. I don’t garden. I live in Van­cou­ver but I nei­ther hike nor ski. I’m not a movie buff.

Mostly, I read; books and comics. I exer­cise, but mostly to keep fit. I love walk­ing my dog. And I love spend­ing time with Doug. We spend time with friends, do movies, travel when we can. Noth­ing too much out of the ordi­nary I guess. I’m into a few other things that I don’t think your audi­ence needs to know about.

But I have no hob­bies. Right now, the one thing that IS eating up all of our spare time is just get­ting ren­o­va­tions done on our new apart­ment. It’s all slow baby-​steps. It’ll prob­a­bly be going on for another 9-12 months at this point. Ugh. I may take up drinking!

I like keep­ing life pretty simple. It gets com­pli­cated all on its own so fast anyway.

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

Oh boy.. like I said ear­lier, I’m barely aware of who’s out there today. There are so many won­der­ful artists, and I don’t have the energy to keep up. I have about 300 artists’ blogs in my RSS feeds. I’m so back­logged it’s not funny.

Short list, off the top of my head:
- all my pals in the Jupiter Project
- Stuart Immo­nen
- Paul Pope
- Jaime Her­nan­dez
- Steve McNiven
- Leo Espinosa
- Edel Rodriguez
- Bob Staake
- Aaron Leighton
- Monica Mel­ny­chuk
- Carey Sookocheff
- Michael Wertz

I like the scratchy hand-drawn/painted stuff as much as I like the crisp vector/design stuff.

Have you ever thought about cre­at­ing an action figure or vinyl toy?

I have thought of that actu­ally. This past year I’ve been want­ing to learn about it more (but haven’t found the time). What I’ve dis­cov­ered so far is that it would be a huge chunk of money with no return on it, so that sort of turns me off. I’d prefer if I could at least break even on such a project.

I’ve already dab­bled in doing t-shirts myself and that was just too much work for a lazy guy like me. I sell them through Cafe­press now, and that works out great for every­one; both for people who buy them, as well as for me (and my bank account; making t-shirts your­self is fun, but EXPENSIVE).

I’m not sure what a “Luc” toy might look like. It would either be a mon­ster, a sexy space girl/alien, or a hunky space man/alien. Or maybe all three. I guess that pretty much describes all the toys out there. I guess I’d stick to the hunky space man/alien. Not many of those out there!

Also, I want to look into licens­ing more. I’ve been think­ing about it a lot, and I know I can’t sur­vive for­ever doing mag­a­zine illus­tra­tions. I need to be more diver­si­fied about my work. Just the fact that I’ve been delv­ing more into graphic design of late has really influ­enced my illus­tra­tion style (which, as with all illus­tra­tors, is in a con­stant state of evolution).

Are you involved in any col­lab­o­ra­tive projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

Noth­ing right now, besides doing the occa­sional group art show with the Jupiter Project gang, and a big +100 page anthology-​style book that we’re work­ing on. But SOMEone’s pirated soft­ware *COUGH!* ATOMOS! *COUGH!* has delayed that project.

For the most part, free­lanc­ing suits me nicely. That said, me and two friends are right now plan­ning a small design agency/collective of sorts here in Van­cou­ver, to work on bigger projects that pay more money.

It’s that cold, my friends.

It won’t be an agency really, but more of a hub; we know tons of artists, illus­tra­tors, design­ers, and web-​savvy folks here in the city. With this net­work, we could work on more inter­est­ing projects, make more money, AND spread the love to other pro­fes­sion­als by sub-​contracting out to them. Work­ing on projects with people you like and can depend on, and every­one making more money than the usual $250 mag­a­zine illus­tra­tion, that sounds nice to us.

What’s next in the pipeline for Luc Latulippe?

A Hawai­ian cruise in April on a boat-​load fulla gay menz! Yeeeeah!

Oh.. you meant WORK-​wise? Umm..

I’m plan­ning a few small projects this year. I’d like to put a couple of books together, and self-​publish them on Lulu.com or Blurb.com. I uploaded a little “test” book onto Lulu last year and that little sucker is still sell­ing nicely (it’s a col­lec­tion of some of my favourite edi­to­r­ial illus­tra­tions). But I’d like to do some­thing that is more “me” than that first book was. These new books would be more the­matic, and con­tain orig­i­nal, unpub­lished work.

I’ll be con­tin­u­ing my usual edi­to­r­ial illus­tra­tion work, but I plan to push my way into graphic design more.

I’m also work­ing on a few illus­trated porn projects. Yup. I’m not sure how I’m going to intro­duce that to my exist­ing “audience,” if at all. I may just plug it else­where (no pun intended) and let people find it if it’s what they’re look­ing for in the first place.

Shouts?

Hi Mom!

Tintin or Snowy?

Snowy. I’ve been re-​reading my old Tintin books (they’re actu­ally my Mom’s, but she’s passed them on to me) and Tintin seems to come off as a total knob. Snowy’s sage advice always falls on deaf ears with Tintin.

Having said that, Hergé’s work was very influ­en­tial to my becom­ing an artist. I devoured those books as a kid, and while re-​reading them recently, I was amazed at how super-​familiar every single panel seemed. I spot­ted little details in the back­grounds and think “Hey, I remem­ber seeing that 30 years ago too!” Holy crap… did I say 30 years ago? Yikes. I’m old.

Batman or Superman?

Batman, entirely because of his hairy chest.

You can see more of Luc Latulippe’s work at
www.​luclat​ulippe.com

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Tags: Aaron Leighton, Bob Staake, Carey Sookocheff, COUGH, energy, goopy paint stains, Hernandez - Steve McNiven, Interviews, Jaime Hernandez, Leighton - Monica Melnychuk, Leo Espinosa, Michael Wertz, pirated software, Stuart Immonen, USD, Vancouver, web-savvy folks, www.luclatulippe.com