HERoes: Leila del Duca

We get a chance to have a pressure free conversation about comics with female creators in the community. Their creativity is inspiring to people throughout the comic fandom who enjoy their work.

They are our HERoes

leiladelducaLeila del Duca has stolen comics readers imaginations with her wild landscapes and characters found in her Image book, Shutter. With the first volume coming out this past week, we decided to talk to her about her influences, squeezing in reading comics into her day and working in the sequential medium.

Jessica Boyd: What is your favorite aspect of comics?

Leila del Duca: The sequential part. Which sounds dumb to say, but I love seeing images come together to form a coherent story, and I love that most of them include words. Comics to me are a perfect blend of words and pictures that make my brain happy.

JB: What is your favorite part of creating comics?

LD: The funnest part of creating the comics I make is drawing diverse subject matter and seeing myself improve with each new thing I draw. I love the problem solving and personal growth that occurs when I’m up against a really hard page that forces me to work through the fear and technical problems it presents. After that struggle, I feel more and more confident about my ability to draw whatever I want to, therefore creating more confidence in myself as a person and artist.

JB: What issue or series has had the biggest influence on your work? Who is your favorite protagonist/antagonist?

LD: Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz has probably been the biggest influence. Schultz’s versatility with ink textures and page layouts is astounding and I would have never considered using a dry brush technique without discovering his work.

As for favorite characters…it’s always changing, but I really dig Hellboy from, well, Hellboy, and Jaeger from Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder. They’re both chill dudes with good senses of humor, and they don’t let people push them around. They’re people I’d genuinely like to be friends with. My favorite antagonists are any from Invincible. The villains in that book not only have awesome and often hilarious designs, but they can either be really evil, have great intentions but do wrong, or they can flip-flop back and forth between good and evil depending on how Kirkman wants to spin the tale. Very multidimensional and interesting.

Shutter06_Page1-2JB: What is a typical creative working day for you?

LD: I usually wake up at 7:30, make breakfast and drink coffee while reading a novel or comic book. I start drawing around 9am. I try to pencil and start inking a page by noon, take an hour or two of a lunch break, then finish inking after lunch. I try to be done with work by 3 because I love having extra time to work on personal projects or to run errands, or just not work. I find I need a lot of time to recharge my creative energy, so the less I work, the faster and fresher I am with the next day’s work.

It’s embarrassing to admit how important my daily creative routine is. If one event changes, my focus and motivations are shot. For example, I’m not allowed to check email and my other social media sites before 11am, except for special occasions because I don’t have the willpower to stay off the internet once I start surfing. If I wake up late and don’t start work by 10 or 11 at the latest, I usually work slower for the rest of the day, or just don’t complete my work. It’s terrible!

JB: Musical inspirations? Or do you need quiet to create?

LD: I’m quite moody when it comes to needing silence or sound when I work. Lately, I’ve been bored with my music selection (which sounds so stupid to say in this day and age where we have all of the music at our fingertips), so I’ve just been working with silence. When I pencil, I have to have silence, otherwise I can’t focus. But when I start inking, I can listen to music, podcasts, or even re-watch television shows like Star Trek as long as I don’t have to be watching the screen to get what’s going on.

My favorite genre is acoustic vaudeville cabaret brassy Tom Waits circus stuff, like Man Man’s earlier albums, Beirut, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Jason Webley, and Martin Martini and the Bone Palace Orchestra. So if anyone has recommendations, please let me know! I’m always looking for more of that stuff.

JB: What is your favorite representation of women in comics (floppies, webcomics, any medium?)

LD: Sophie Campbell is a pro at representing women in all shapes and personalities. I particularly dig her work on Wet Moon, Shadoweyes, and Glory. I also love how Carla Speed McNeil writes and draws women. Both Sophia and Carla make their women super believable and relatable.

Shutter05_CoverWhat is one of your favorite story or cover you have ever been part of creating?

No hesitation–Shutter. I love Kate, the main character, and her crazy supporting cast. The visuals and emotions in this book are so fun to draw. And I say this in every interview, but I can really draw anything I ever wanted to draw in this comic. Joe knows that I love to draw almost anything and he does a perfect job of throwing in amazing characters, environments, and situations. I’m having a blast and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a comic!

JB: What do you think is the biggest impact of female voices in the creation process?

LD: The biggest impact I’ve seen is that women and girls are being portrayed more realistically and respectfully in comics. More women aren’t willing to put up with the same old crap. We’re standing up for ourselves and the stories we want to see and read. A lot of headway has been made in the comics community because more women and men are refusing to write and draw badly portrayed female characters. We’re spending money on titles that better represent females, cons are developing strong anti-harrassment policies, and publicly-humiliating sexist and chauvinistic ass holes online and at shows…these tactics are actually working. I’m really proud of these efforts!

JB: What is some advice you wish someone had given you before you began working in the comic medium?

LD: Play the long con. Basically, I was very impatient and my naive 23-year-old mind thought that I was ready to work in comics when I had only been trying for a year. In actuality, I had so much more improving to do. Our culture is one of instant gratification. I felt this pressure to be good NOW, and if I wasn’t successfully making a living from art by 25, then I was going to be a failure forever. If I could have heard any advice it would have been, “Know that building your craft is going to take many years and a lot of patience. It’s hard and sometimes it’s not going to feel worth it, but it is. On average, it takes 5 years AFTER graduating to make a livable wage off your art, so cut yourself some slack when getting work proves to be difficult. But keep with it and stay positive, because when you get there, it’s absolutely worth it.”

JB: What message(s) do you hope people get when experiencing your work?

LD: Every story has a different moral or message, but I guess overall I want people to gain a moral understanding of how to be a good human being. I feel like I learned a lot of my morals and ethics from literature, so I like drawing characters that teach us a lesson about how we should treat each other, how we should respect the people in our lives and the world we live in, how we shouldn’t take those things for granted, how we should stand up for ourselves when we’re being bullied, or apologize when we’re wrong. Those kinds of things. If that stuff gets lost in translation, I just hope that people feel excited and inspired after reading my comics. At least that’s what I’m always striving for.

JB: When it comes to comics, “all I want or dream is …” 

LD: a well-told story with multi-dimensional characters and appealing visuals.

 

If you’d like to learn more about Leila and her work you can find her at:

Website: leiladelduca.com, Twitter: @leiladelduca, Blog: leiladelduca.tumblr.com

 

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