Interview with comic artist LOOM

As many of you know, (also known as Taylor Holt) has been well-known for her contributions to the dA community-- particularly to help fellow comic artists gain some spotlight in their work (its quite obvious in her groups and ). But most of all, her love for all forms of art show through her stories (and if you haven't read "Vampire Fetish", you're missing alot!). She shows her love for art in the way she presents it and the way she studies it. I am VERY pleased to have interviewed a genuine artist like her!


USAGIKAY: First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions, LOOM. I'll try to make this as painless as possible! C:!

LOOM: It’s no problem. I should be the one thanking you! I’ve never done an interview before, so it’s exciting! Also, I’m sure it won’t be painful at all. Well, the only painful thing is that I tend to ramble, so beware of my responses meandering all over the place. You might wanna quit now if you've stumbled upon this by some small chance. Don't say I didn't warn you.



USAGIKAY: Haha, well thanks for the warning! But I'm sure everyone is curious about your process as an artist First off, how old were you when you started drawing? What inspired you to continue on and end up on the comic portion of art?

LOOM:  I don’t actually remember. I’ve been drawing for as far back as I can recall. Call it compulsion, if you will. I never stopped drawing at any point in my life. Even at the ballpark, I would draw between games. I’d lie down in the grass and just take out my notebook.

As for comics, I’ve always been exposed to them, so I can’t remember a time without them either. My uncle draws comics, so comics were always there in my life. I’ve had the fortune to be surrounded by those that encourage and appreciate art. In addition to my uncle being a comic artist, my mother loves crafts and decorating, and my grandmother paints, so I was always bombarded by all sorts of artistic things. I love comics. I just do, and that’s why I do it. I guess there’s no simpler reason. I’m in love! Always have been, always will be.



USAGIKAY: I'm sure you know that there are millions of stories about vampires-- romantic and otherwise. What inspired you to create "Vampire Fetish"? Why London of all places?

LOOM:  Ahh, vampires. Well, I'm kind of embarrassed to say that the initial reason was just so shallow! See, I hate vampires. Or rather, I hated them before I started writing about them. It started as a joke. You know, all the Twilight mania and the '90s preoccupation with sultry and sexy vamps. But even when you go back to the monsters of Polidori’s writings, the notion of blood-sucking creatures seems kind of silly. So, I began to look even further back into history to find something to interest me.

I’m a big lover of culture, myths, and history.  One day, the natural curiosity took over and I began to pore over folklore. Not just from Northeastern and Southeastern Europe, but all sorts of cultural accounts of creatures returning from the dead. Revenants, vrykolakas, strigoi, you name it. Blood-sucking spirits go back as far as Mesopotamia. I find this interesting. It says something about how people fear death and darkness. That was where I began to fall in love with the idea of vampires.

The underlying basis of tales of the dead rising up from the grave is a great fear of the unknown. People inherently fear death. This is why notions of the undead and fantasies of immortality have remained with us in myths and stories for so many centuries. When people read very old accounts from the sixteenth century and earlier, they're struck by how silly some of the “vampire accounts” sound to modern ears.  Take (the Nachtzehrer). The vampire’s hands are decayed and look eaten away, so he must have gnawed off his hands while he slept in the grave.  Or someone may have thought "There is noise pelting the roof outside my home, so the vampire must be stomping on it. "

Many times, the vampire accounts were put forth to explain the horrors of death, natural disasters, or plagues and disease. They were only trying to explain natural phenomena, but when you read, it’s so tempting to imagine the outrageous claims as real. From that point on, I began to apply a fictional, pseudo-psychological basis to these old vampires and envision that they were truly insane and compulsive fellows! It was relatively easy to twist outlandish behaviors of folkloric vampires into vampiric manias.

What if, I thought. What if the trauma of death twisted these beings so much that they developed strange ticks and manias? That leaves a lot of room for comedy and horror.  They become at once pitiable and more formidable, desperate to reach whatever goals they fixated upon. Have you ever tried to talk to someone who is truly insane?  You don’t get through to them like you do in the movies.  

I wound up with labels like fetishism, mania, obsessive-compulsive ticks, insanity. This is where the title of Vampire Fetish comes from. It’s a play both on the psychological ailments of the undead and Jude’s cross-dressing tendencies.

Ah, I’m getting wordy about vampires. There’s just so much to talk about! On to London, London, London. Why did I pick London? Besides the intimate association with the early vampire literature, you mean? Early romantic vampire works by John William Polidori, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and Bram Stoker have various English settings and characters. So, in my head, the London and vampires go together quite nicely. Also, I like modern London as a character. Modern London doesn’t seem to be as popular as historical or Victorian London, but I wanted the gritty, grimy, tough London of modern day. It rains a lot. It’s dirty. It’s strong, brutish, kind, cruel, and inspiring. It is a city of contrasts. It has been called splendid, but also pestilent.

In terms of design, I wanted London for its architectural qualities and history. It has both old brick buildings and pockets of very modern buildings and campuses.  I wanted its streets and cityscapes. I wanted the Thames.  I wanted a design premise that wasn’t Gothic or associated with the typical vampiric elements, like bats, for example. But mostly, I wanted the fire motif. The city has quite the intimate association with fire, and I need that.




USAGIKAY:   Jude is definitely an interesting character--  that's putting it lightly! Was there anyone that he was based off of by any chance? Why cross-dressing?

LOOM: Jude came fully formed in my mind. Uninvited, might I add.  I don’t know why. I was actually getting ready to go full steam ahead on another quite different story, when I "met" him one day.  Jude Hawthorne. He popped in and said "hi" in this impish way that begged me to follow, and now look! I’ve gotten all serious about a comic I did on a whim!

I’ve had tons of protagonists in my head, and one day, there was just this perfect illusion of a man who can’t seem to write a story. He’s horribly blocked and dishonest with himself, and he might be a little unstable, to be honest. And then, suddenly, he goes off to his second job, and he kills someone!  A vampire!  Stranger still is his dissociative way of executing the foe! He always makes me ask, Why? Why are you doing this or that? He doesn’t actually want to hunt vampires. He wants to write. Why can’t he just quit the hunting, then? And why on earth does he cross-dress? Is it sadistic, pleasurable,  dissociative, or something else entirely?  He’s not very easy to talk to, so I’ve been intrigued to find out why Jude acts the way he does, and that’s why I initially kept on trying to clumsily tromp through this story. Even if it’s flawed or imperfect, I want to see Jude’s story through.

As for the cross-dressing motif, I think maybe that too is something I associate with English comedy:  “a disturbing number of British men like dressing up as women. Apart from those who are declared transvestites and, it is said, an alarming number of Conservative MPs, there are lots of comedians and actors who love to put on frocks and stockings, high heels and lipstick, and prance about as grotesque caricatures of the opposite sex,”  (London: Secrets & The Splendour by Nick Yapp, page 15). So Britain has a peculiar history of using cross-dressing in their humor, oftentimes with lead roles. This is better known as the Pantomime Dame.  



USAGIKAY: You have done a brilliant job in helping other comic artists bud into the dA community and become more recognized. What made you so determined to put unknown comic artists out there?

LOOM:  You think so? I’m glad to hear it. Though I honestly don’t see as I’ve done all that much. People are responsible for their own hard work, and I’m just a third party. I’m a big sap, and as I said, I’m in love with comics. Amateur comics, professional comics, and everything in between. I love comics so much that I might hate you…and still love your comic. So, really. All of this is just inherent. It’s not determination so much as it is an impulse.



USAGIKAY: Who are the artists that inspire you? Does their style of artwork influence your own?

LOOM: Uh, shoot. Well obviously in a roundabout way it has to be Cully Hamner.  I grew up looking up to him and wanting to be able to draw houses and architecture like him, even if I didn’t much like superheroes. As for stylistic influence, I think and have been told that I am truly a giant melting pot. I’ve been reading comics and foreign comics like manga since I was a very small child. All of those things were ingrained early. I also loved all sorts of cartoons and animations. I love everything. I also am heavily into fashion. I love to look to Erte and others for interesting fodder on designs, silhouettes, and dynamics.

I really admire many people and artists of all sorts, not just comics. I rotate 'round and 'round and forget a lot of names. I tell people that I feel bombarded because all art and visual things produce a spark in me and I can’t stop thinking about it. Andrew Loomis, William Blake, Caravaggio, Katsuhiro Otomo, Togashi Yoshihiro, Inoue Takehiko, Saki Hiwatari, Masashi Kishimoto, Chie Shinohara, Kyoko Ariyoshi, Jeff Smith, Paul Smith, Brian Stelfreeze, Stein Walsch-- the list goes on forever.

I have a particular liking for animators, particularly some of the early Disney animators (Pinocchio, Sleeping Beaty) and older Russian ones (The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Anderson Tales).  I am heavily influenced by the animators Toshihiro Kawamoto and Hiroshi Ousaka. I have, later in life, developed a major appreciation for Osamu Tezuka, though I can’t say I admired him properly in my youth. He became a major inspiration once I began to study and investigate cinematography and try to evaluate sequences. His inked backgrounds are also breathtaking, as he was an oil painter and very deft with the pen. But more than anything, it’s the illusory ease with which he executes cinematic motion that inspires me. I think gestures are one of the keys to comicking, sometimes even more than being perfectly accurate, so I’m really trying to investigate this topic more.





USAGIKAY: Any other inspirations besides visual artists? Such as places or people in your life?

LOOM: YES. Movies, books, you name it! Wait, movies are visual. But I suppose I mean the entire process of designing them from head-to-toe, including art direction and story-boarding! I also recently love old movie directors like Hitchcock and Ida Lupino. And I love writers of all types and find much inspiration in reading fiction and non-fiction. That would get really long, so I’ll spare you the list. Just know I love to read boring history books just as much as I love literature!

Lately, I’ve gotten into reading about scriptwriting, shot-by-shot camera directing, and character acting with gestures. I feel like I’m learning a lot and getting a lot of new ideas! Sometimes, I feel like there's just not enough time to read and learn it all! Then I remember that I've got my whole life to keep reading and learning and I don't feel so bad. Gosh, I’ve got so much to look into! Oh, yes. People and places, people and places... I’m obligated to mention that my family inspires me because they’re wacky and off-the-wall. *coughs* And I love my home because it’s in the woods, and it makes me feel like a peaceful hermit.



USAGIKAY: If I may ask, how did you get to be a part of mangamagazine.net? Did this help with your publicity?

LOOM: Don’t know, really. Chance and luck, perhaps. I was contacted by the people there and asked if I’d like to put my webcomic on the site. I went to the site, saw all the awesome comics, navigated around pretty easily, and then I let the notion sit for a while. Soon, I decided that posting on such a site would inspire me to do better and push myself, so I did it! I haven’t been on for very long, but I can honestly say that I love being surrounded by such wonderful people and creators.  I’m hoping I get to meet some of them in person someday, even though some of us live very far away from each other. I’ve love to meet people like Cassandra Jean, Chloe Chan, Aliena Shoemaker, and Sharean Morshita for sure  because I’ve become fans of their comics! I want to meet the others, too.  But Spain and the Philippines are so far away!

As for publicity, I confess that I really don’t know! I don’t have access to that kind of statistical information like I did when the comic was purely my own, but I seem to be getting some nice comments on my dA page and the forums.  And kind people like you are turning up on my devpage, Usagikay! Therefore, it’s definitely worth it! I also feel much calmer these days and changed because I have gritted my teeth and decided to just do what I like. I've backtracked a little in the story, leaving some of my readers temporarily confused as to where the prior chapters have gone off to! But I feel happy with the re-release on MangaMagazine.net, and am inspired to push through. I feel like I'm satisfying my inner creativity. No matter how it turns out, and I'm gonna give it my best shot!



USAGIKAY: What is the best advice you can give for future mangaka everywhere?

LOOM: The future is now. Do it. Draw the comic now. Start being a comicker, not just an illustrator. It’s doesn’t matter who you are or how good you are, start putting images in sequence today. It doesn't matter if it's just a short comic of someonespilling  milk in the kitchen so long as it shows action and tells a story. Study and practice and all that, but make time to actually draw a project. If you don’t just do it, you’ll be stuck in a state of perpetual “planning.” You’ll also never actually absorb what you study because you’ve not applied it!

Everyone has a project they consider their “baby” and they want it to be juuust perfect. It makes them afraid. Write a short story and do something you don’t care about. That’s what I actually did with Vampire Fetish. It was my crap shoot project, and now I’m having a blast with it! Don’t be trapped by boundaries; just do what feels right. The East and the West have been cross-interacting in terms of art since Takahashi Yuichi’s, Oiran ("Grand Courtesan"), so it’s pointless to get wrapped up in West VS East arguments of art. We're global, and manga and manwha have been globally shared since the 80s. We grew up with it; it's ours. What really matters is storytelling and doing what you love. Remember to have fun and stay in love with comics. “All you need is love.”

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