1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4. No, Leslie Feist hasn’t made her way to comics. Veronique Tanaka has takes the pulse of a metronome and used it for the rigid pacing of her book, Metronome, published by NBM. Thus far, the French-Japanese artist's career has been in fine arts, but this is her first graphic novel. Within the pages lies a story of a couple who relate to each other only on a sexual level. The look of the book is part manga, part European, but it’s mostly the rhythm of the comic that grabs the reader. Tanaka explains her approach.
Publishers Weekly Comics Week: You have a career as a conceptual artist. Why did you decide to do a graphic novel project?
Veronique Tanaka: Because once I get the idea, I think about it a lot and develop it. I think that it was different from any other comic I've seen. I am an artist. I produce any art I can in the way I see it in my mind. I love comics and at last thought of an original way to approach this medium.
PWCW: The story of Metronome is about a relationship based around sex and nothing else. Was that an inspiration to use the 4/4 rhythm? Sex, like comics, can have a musical rhythm to it.
VT: No, it was based on music. I made the man in the story a musician. I think sex is more like 2/2 time! In the book, I have sometimes single beats for an image, or [two, three or four images per 'beat'] I do body-pump exercise twice a week. It is like aerobics with music and works on a 4/4 rhythm. For example, you can do a bicep curl three beats up, one down, or two up and one down, or singles. I think this is where I get the idea of presenting the images in 4/4 time.
PWCW: The characters and objects are created from simple lines and designs, closer to the European Tintin look than the photorealistic look some American comics have. Was this choice due to the fact that you were working with 16 small panels per page?
VT: I wanted the readers to spend about the same amount of time looking at each panel, to set up a beat, a rhythm. To achieve the effect I wanted, simple images are best. They are like symbols and are easily recognized at a glance. That was the idea, though I don’t draw in a photorealist style anyway.
PWCW: There's animation on NBM's site that really drives home the hypnotic feel of the book. Whose idea was that?
VT: It was the idea that Bryan Talbot had when we were talking about the book. He said that it would work as an animated movie. I had sent him all the files on disk so he could find me a publisher, and he animated the whole story at one second each panel. I think on NBM, there is only a short section that ends before the first erotic sequence. The whole movie is here.
PWCW: If you're doing another graphic novel in the future, will it follow a similar storytelling style?
VT: I have started working on one and am still designing it. I have done some individual pictures, but have not decided on the format yet. It will be in my computer drawing style, but will be displayed in a different way from Metronome. I have done the Metronome style once, and there was a reason in the story to use that style. I won't use that style again.
