Gilles Poitras, a man from Quebec who lives at California. He is a frequent guest and speaker at anime conventions. Today we chat with him about macs and manganime.
Hello Gilles, When did you began to read manga?
Around 1990 I discovered the Akira manga translation while waiting for a friend to finish some business at Comic Relief in Berkeley. I quickly also discovered Appleseed and from there actively hunted out manga in translation. I had already been a fan of anime since 1977 so starting to read manga was easy for me to do.
You are a frequent guest and speaker at anime conventions. Which are the more important meetings about manga?
First I must make a disticntion between anima and manga. Manga is the printed illustrated story, ‘comic book’ is the easiest English equivolent. Anime is animation. Some use the term manga to refer to both, even in Japan, this is considered improper terminology much like calling a fine artistic piece of animation a cartoon in English.
There are no manga conventions in the US, anime has grown quickly and fans of manga attend anime conventions to look for material and meet others. The major convantions are Anime Expo (Southern California, usually in Anaheim), Otakon (Baltimore Maryland), A-kon (Dallas Texas), and Fanime (San Jose California). Thera are about 20 conventions each year in the US ranging in size from over 10,000 to a few hundred attendies.
Your first book “The Anime Companion: What’s Japanese in Japanese Animation?” Compilates around 500 entries with commentary about manga movies. A very large job… how many time did you spent on this edition?
The book started as a fan project to ansewer common questions about Japanese culture in anime and manga. After about a year it had grown to hundres of entries. At this point Frederik Schodt, the famous writer on manga, convinced me to approach a publisher. At this point it took several months of work before I turned in the manuscript. Add the time it took to get permission to use images in the book and I’d say it took about 2 years.
For new manga readers… can you tell us what diferents kinds of manga products exists, please?
Think of any genre in fiction and it exists in manga and anime. Now it may not exist in the language you speak. In the US the range of titles started with Science Fiction, then comedy, girl’s manga, erotic manga, historical manga, sports manga and many other genres are commonly available.
It’s Osaku Temuza the begginner of manga or it’s more ancient?
The manga industry was well established when Tezuka began his career,
he contributed much to the development of manga to the degree that
the industry dramatically changed under his influence
Are there very many manga films made on mac? Can you talk us about anime made on macintosh computers?
Until a few years ago anime was almost all done by hand, computer animation was too expensive for all but the very largest studios in the world to make. Today almost all anime is digitally painted on computers. The drawings are still done by hand, scanned in, then the colors added. This allows companies to better integrate 3D animation with cell animation, doing this with hand painted cells was almost impossible due to the difficuly of matching colors.
Are there anime with macs images in them?
Plenty and more as time goes on. I have a web page devoted to Macs in anime and manga at: http://www.koyagi.com/Macs.html
All of the manga and anime I know of with Macs are on my Macs in
anime and manga web page.
“Anime Essentials: Every Thing a Fan Needs to Know“, your second book explains about “otaku” …which are the most read magazines?
In Japanese it would be animage and Newtype. In English it would be Animerica Newtype USA and Protoculture Addicts.
Let’s talk about your site on-line, newsgroups, mailling list and your certification program, please.
The goal of my website is to provide information on anime and manga that is not found elsewhere in English. I try to not take on many projects, instead I encourage others to work on improving their web pages.
Newsgroups are an old favorite for anime and manga fans. At one time there was one newsgroup rec.arts.anime today that newsgroup has divived into several more specialized newsgroups, for example rec.arts.anime.misc and rec.arts.anime.info as well as rec.arts.manga, alt.anime.gundam, alt.fan.utena, uk.media.animation.anime and many others.
Do you thinks manga anime or manga comics it’s a way to learn about japenese culture?
I think it is better than other art forms. After all these are entertainment products made for the Japanese market. They show many aspects of Japanese everyday life. Now some titles are not good for this but some are excellent. For example Maison Ikkoku, Chobits, and GTO show contemporary Japan. Titles like Lone Wolf and Cub and Vagabond show the Japan of the past. Now like any enetertainment or art form this view is impercet but enough is shown to interst the reader to study and search out more information. I guess you could say anime and manga are more like a doorway into studying about Japan.
Lets talk about Mangakas & macintosh, please
More manga writers are using Macs these days. The most famous are Monkey Punch and Masamune Shirow. They still do their manga by hand but on occasion may inhance the art by scanning it in and making certain changes on a Mac. Shirow does a lot of his color single panel illustration work using a Mac, often by starting with a hand done illustration, then scanning it in for other work. This mixture of hand work and computer work alows more flexibility for the artist.
Gilles Poitras is mac user since 1989. He uses a 17″ iMac with OS 10.2.4
Thank you for your time for faq-mac.
Best wishes!
Gilles Poitras photographs courtesy from por http://www.fansview.com/
Gilles Poitras
Profession: Librarian Obsession: Anime
