What made you make the move to England from Eastern Europe?
I wanted to study illustration, and it seemed the perfect place for that. After graduating from Kingston I ended up living in Nottingham for a year, which was an unexpected bonus.
How different is England to Budapest? Is there anything you miss about your hometown?
It’s very different, of course, and I think London - where I live now - is different to the rest of England as well. I miss all the clichés: the weather, the food, but most of all family and friends.
Your art work has been described as ‘images that tell stories’, where do you find inspiration?
From everyday things that happen to me, or that I see and hear, as well as from literature.
Your graphic novel, The Scientist, won a silver medal at the 2012 3x3 Illustration ProShow, that must have been a proud moment. Did you find the transition between ‘one-off piece’ to creating a continuous storyline easy?
The making of The Scientist was quite a long process because I had to develop a visual language that was new to me. I tested the storyline on family and friends to see if it worked – I had a lot of different versions before the final one.
Could you tell us a little about the ideas raised in the novel?
It developed from an obituary that I read in The Economist about Robert H. Rines, a scientist who had a lifelong dream to meet the Loch Ness Monster. I liked the words of the obituary, as well as the dichotomy of the scientific and storytelling approach.
Tell us a bit about the Writing Maps course you’re currently involved with…
Students get to create their own artist book, building their visual language from their chosen place or space in the city. It is a practical workshop where we tell stories through images. It’s ideal for those who like to work on their own projects but with some guidance, and who are especially interested in transforming their experiences of the city to visuals and stories.
The course is based in London, but there is also an online option. How will the course translate online?
The online course will very much mirror the London course; students will work on the same briefs but in their own cities and do peer work just as the London students will. The difference is that online students get two half an hour one-to-one Skype tutorials.
The content of the course, Subways, Side-Streets and Skyline, merges cityscapes with text. As adults we tend to separate the two mediums, do you think this is something we should do more of?
This is the core of the course, to examine the relationship between text and image, not as one that translates the other, but two that work together. I think this is something we all do already, but perhaps we could become more conscious of, especially if we want to find new ways to develop our storytelling skills.
Do you have anything else you’d like to say to the readers of LeftLion?
I'd like to wish them a very happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year. I'm so happy that I can say this through LeftLion, as it was the first UK magazine I illustrated for.
Subyways, Side-streets and Skylines: Drawing Aspects of the City runs fortnightly from Wednesday 18 February to Wednesday 29 April 2015. For more information and to sign up to the course, visit Writing Maps
Judit Ferencz website
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