/zellig/ - Ongezellig

(translated to english)

Santiago Martín in conversation with Mass Grave
Name: Mass grave
Place of residence: Roermond, 1994
Born: Roermond
Horoscope: Aries
Education: Currently 6th year Atheneum
Occupation: Student
Comics:
Dirkjan: hilarious, Dutch, attractive drawing style and not dependent on satire and current events.
Sequential Art, a British webcomic that has everything: humor, style, character and cat/squirrel girls.
Juul's comics on StripSter. Always something to look forward to on Saturdays.
Music:
The Living End's first three albums.
The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers.
Doolittle by Pixies.
Movies:
A Clockwork Orange, an almost perfect film by Stanley Kubrick.
The Shawshank Redemption, its reputation is well deserved.
A Serious Man, typical that the Coen brothers' least mainstream film is their best (hipster!).








Can you tell us something about your development as a (comic) artist?
Like most, they started at a young age. My brother, sister and I entertained each other with a world that consisted of a combination of characters from comics and animated series we grew up with (especially Sjors and Sjimmie, Arthur, Dip and Dap) and our own characters. However, our versions had more violence, drug and alcohol abuse and black humor, as only we innocent children can come up with. This led to stories, murder games (all the characters are in the hotel and one guest has been murdered, who is the perpetrator?) and eventually comics. However, this stopped after primary school.


Isn't that a shame?
That's an absolute shame, I started far too late in making good use of my free time. To be honest, I have no idea what I did at home after a school day in those years…
Anyway. Only very recently (March 2011) did I start making comics again. Caiasos is lightly based on a story I wrote with my brother in primary school, a parody of the children's series Ik Mik Loreland, but with the same black humor as described above. Caiasos does not appear in this story and was specially designed for the comic, but the country where it takes place ( Veelvolk ) does play a major role in both the story and the comic. I chose Veelvolk as a location because an anarchist society not only offers funny situations, but also to experiment with political ideologies such as anarchy and libertarianism.
There are no big ambitions, it is mainly for fun and learning. The ambitions in the field of animation are much greater, but as a 17-year-old I can't predict much about that. For now, I want to study animation and eventually pursue it as a profession. At least, that's the idea. But those are still dreams, first we have to see if there is a school that will let me in.


Democracy or Anarchy, which do you think is the best political system?
Don't see me as an anarchist who will bomb embassies and scream for political reform, because the way the Netherlands is currently governed is not bad. Democracy works, but it can always be a bit more anarchic (more liberal). Less unnecessary punishment for urinating in public, drugs and holocaust denial (all three of which, to be clear, I don't do). Distance yourself from the authoritarian, conservative and confessional and use Dutch tolerance as an example.


What is Massagraf doing when he's not drawing?
The answer can be divided into two categories:
Productive: writing scripts, animating, filming, recording, editing videos, playing (bass) guitar, singing, rehearsing for our band and working on the school newspaper as an editor/cartoonist.
Unproductive: bored at school, surfing the internet in a nonsensical way, playing games and looking at drawn erotica.


Drawn eroticism?
Drawn eroticism is what it is, eroticism, but drawn. There is a whole underground world on the internet that deals with this and where money can also be made from it. The advantages are that fantasies have no limits and there is a do-it-yourself mentality behind it, but I have not started it myself.


Can you tell us something about your videos on YouTube?
My first experience making videos was in seventh grade, but that career was quickly decapitated by my nemesis, Copyright. Years later I started again.
At the end of 2009, my creativity (which had been killed by games and laziness) started to revive. December 2009 I started making video reviews of animated series, which eventually produced fifteen episodes in a year and a half. In 2010 I started to focus my free time completely on production and in a very short time I learned a lot about drawing, Photoshop, filming, editing and animation. In July 2010, the humorous edits of Samson and Gert episodes that are the most popular to date began, in December 2010 the first real animations started and in June 2011 Copyright struck for the second time. My account was banned