YORKTON - Saskatchewan artist Jason Sylvestre will be one of the highlight guests at the upcoming Yorkton Comic Con.
Being part of the inaugural event like the one being hosted by Blue Drip Art Supplies Nov. 25, is important to Sylvestre.
“I love this province. I love being able to go out into communities where they may not have an opportunity to do things like this and meeting fans,” he told Yorkton This Week. “I love trying to inspire the next generation of creators and seeing people enjoying a thing I toiled over always brings me joy.”
Hailing from Regina Sylvestre said he has basically always wanted draw.
“I knew from a really young age I wanted to pursue cartooning, one of my earliest memories of making that decision was seeing Charles Schulz on TV advertising for the Art Instruction Schools of America,” he said.
“And I can remember saving clippings of the daily funnies in a scrap book.
“I studied the various artistic styles and how the artists would make the different characters react to things to draw a laugh.”
But, why comic books?
“For me this is the perfect media. I have the ability to take all the time I need to tell a story,” said Sylvestre. “I can go from big sweeping action to small human moments.”
Like most artist Sylvestre has his influences.
“I grew up on Cracked Magazine, Mad Magazine, the dailies, and Marvel comics,” he said. “My influences are varied but I would say I have to point to Sergio Aragones, Charles Schulz, a little Jack Kirby and Will Eisner. These folks taught me story pacing, punchline delivery.”
Interestingly, Sylvestre’s career start is solidly rooted in Saskatchewan.
“The Saskatchewan books, ‘You Might be from Saskatchewan If” launched my career, launched a line of books across Canada -- there are books for Manitoba, the east coast and more,” he said. “We hit the Canadian best sellers list it was wild.
“The book came about one afternoon when my writer Carson (Demmans) pitched ideas to various publishers, and he had a bite on this idea he had.
“He sent in I believe 12 one liners and they asked me to do a couple of strips to see if the idea was viable.“And we were off. I had 90 days to churn out 148 one page gags, which Carson had to write.”
For Sylvestre ultimately he has to be intrigued by a project to put pen to paper. “For me I have to enjoy the project, if I am not laughing and having fun with it the reader won’t either,” he said.
“I have a pretty good idea of how long it will take me to produce pages so once I have script in hand I set about doing the work.
“These days I work mostly digital which allows me to send in roughs and make changes right on the strip.”
His work appears and has appeared in Post Media News papers, CARtoons Magazine, Remind Magazine, Scary Monsters Magazine, Cafe Racer Magazine, The Bronze Gazette, Several all ages graphic novels, children's books.
Check out his work at jasonsylvestre.com
