Boulet (nom de plume of Gilles Roussel) is a French comics artist, largely unknown in the US, but familiar in Europe for his work in the magazine Tchô! and on series like Raghnarok, Miya and Womoks.

Since 2004, Boulet has been one of the premiere comic strip bloggers, telling of his experiences, work and general life situations in short comics pages, done in a variety of styles.

Boulet has in recent years been translating his comic strip blog posts into English, and a selection of them is viewable on the English section of his site.

It’s easiest to simply go to the first strip and click forward, but if you’re inclined to jump around there is a month selection at the top let, and dates arranged as numbers across the top bar; only the yellow highlighted ones are linked to strips. You can also go to the Archives and view the entries as a list.

Be sure to click on the “React” link at the bottom of each strip for additional panels.

The French version of his site is more extensive and up to date.

There is a brief interview with Boulet on Euronews.

[Via MetaFilter]

Comic Crits are book reviews done by artist John Bonner in the form of one page comic strips.

The reviews are often (though certainly not always) of books in the science fiction or fantasy genres, such as Neal Stephenson’s Reamde (above top), and The year’s Best Science Fiction 28, edited by Gardner Dozois (above, bottom).

The reviews can be read either on Bonner’s Comic Crits blog, or on the Tor.com site, which is where I encountered them.

On researching John Bonner, who I had assumed was an illustrator and cartoonist, I learned he is a painter. I’ll make his paintings the subject of a separate post.

Emily Carroll is an illustrator working in the television animation industry who is also a webcomics artist.

You can find galleries of her illustration and webcomics on her website, as well as additional material on her blog, along with some Flickr sets.

Carroll works in an open line and filled color style, accented with textural and watercolor-like effects. She inks her drawings first on smooth bristol, scans them and applies her colors in Photoshop. There is a bit about her process here.

Her webcomics are often closer to illustrated stories, sometimes dark and inspired by mythological or fairy tale like subjects.

The Prince & The Sea: A Romance (images above, bottom) is a short webcomic/illustrated story that Carroll says was inspired by a dream she had, as well as the illustrations of Henry J. Ford.

[Via The Beat]

Sketchtravel is a project started by illustrators Gérald Guerlais and Daisuke (“Dice”) Tsutsumi in 2006 in which a single sketchbook has traveled around the world, being handed from artist to artist between 70 artists in 15 cities, each adding a single page to the whole.

The project, which involves well known illustrators, animators and comics artists, benefits Room to Read, an international non-profit devoted to children’s literacy.

The sketchbook was completed by its final contributor, Hayao Miyazaki, in February. The first print edition has just been released in French and is now available on Amazon.fr. English and Japanese editions are planned, though there are no firm details yet.

The sketchbook itself will be auctioned off in Paris, and online, by Pierre berge & Associes on October 17, 2011. Details for the online auction, as well as other information, will be found on the new Sketchtravel website.

Designed by Seth Van Booven, the website itself it entertaining, with parts of the interface animating as you scroll down the page. There is also an impressive list of the contributors, with links to their websites or blogs.

Unfortunately the virtual version of the sketchbook that used to be available on the old site seems to be gone, but you can see more images of pages from the book on the Sketchtravel blog, along with interviews and additional features.

There is also a video trailer for a planned documentary about the project by Catherine Bonvalot available on Sketchtravel.tv.

For more, see my 2007 post on Sketchtravel.

(Images above: Greg Couch, Terada Katsuya, Sylvain Marc, Peter de Séve, Jerome Opena, Erik Tiemens)

I’ve written before about Flesk Publications, a small specialty art book publisher that concentrates on presenting illustrators and comics artists. Among the artists are many that I’ve featured here on Lines and Colors.

Flesk has published a book called Flesk Prime in which five artists are highlighted in the same volume. Four are artists who have been featured in previous dedicated books: William Stout, Petar Meseldžija, Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni (links to my posts); one, Craig Elliott, is the subject of an upcoming title.

The book serves both as an introduction to those artists and as a kind of sampler and introduction to the Flesk line of books — in that the artists exemplify the kind of terrific and often underappreciated talent Flesk spotlights, and the book’s beautiful production values are consistent with the publisher’s consistently high standards.

Flesk Prime also serves as an art book on its own, a beautiful selection of work from five talented illustrators and comics artists. For those like me who already have many of the books in the Flesk line, the features and images are not redundant, each showcasing work that has not appeared in the publisher’s other volumes on these artists.

Unfortunately, the previews of the book on the Flesk site, while they do give you an idea of the book’s appearance, don’t show the artwork itself to best advantage and don’t do the book justice (though the images certainly look better there than in the limited space I have to show them above). If you’re not familiar with these artists, you would do better to look through the site for the individual volumes on them for better examples of their work.

Flesk Prime is available through the Flesk Publications store.

One of the most renowned and influential French comics artists, Régis Loisel is known in particular for his work in the fantasy genre. Along with Jean Giraud (“Moebius”) and several other pioneers, he helped set the stylistic standards that became the foundation of Franco-Belgian comics (“bandes desinees”) from the mid 20th century to today.

Most comics readers here in the US, despite the fascination with Japanese manga in some circles, aren’t aware of how vibrant (and different) the comics scene is in other parts of the world, like France, Belgium, the UK, Italy and South America.

Loisel is perhaps best known for his work on La Quete de l’Oiseau du Temps (“The Quest for the Time Bird”, published at one point in English as Roxanna and The Quest for the Time Bird), a multi-volume fantasy epic written by Serge Le Tendre.

Loisel worked on numerous short projects, as well as the multi-volume series Le Grand Mort and a striking adaptation of Peter Pan (images above, second from bottom). He also did visual development art for the Disney animated features Mulan (above, bottom) and Atlantis.

His comics pages manage to feel detailed and open at the same time, with passages of intense detail balanced by well spotted blacks and flat areas of color, all used to dramatic effect. He has a wonderful command of the environments in which he places his characters, both natural and architectural.

He uses visual texture to great advantage in creating atmosphere, mood and a sense of scale and distance, as well as controlling how long the reader’s eye lingers on a given panel,

Loisel’s website, though in French, is easy enough for non-French speakers to navigate. The major comics series, Peter Pan, La Quete de l’Oiseau du Temps and Le Grand Mort, each have a drop down menu to pages about each volume in the series. These are usually accompanied by a few sample pages that open in pop-ups.

Some of the volumes, in particular La Quete de l’Oiseau du Temps volumes 7 and 5 have more extensive previews. Volume 5 is supplemented with images of pages in their penciled or inked states in addition to finished art.

I find Loisel’s pencil drawings for comics pages particularly appealing; even though they are intended to be finished in ink and printed in color, they have a wonderful quality just as pencil drawings.

You can sometimes find Loisel’s comics albums on Amazon.com, both in English and in French, as well as through importers like Stuart Ng Books.

You can find larger images of some of Loisel’s pages from Peter Pan, along with samples of his visual development drawings for Mulan on Animation Treasures: One1More2time3′s Weblog, the superb blog of Hans Bacher.

Bacher is the production designer who, while working on Mulan, suggested to producer Pam Coats that he bring Loisel in on the project. Bacher has an excellent series of posts on Loisel and his work.

You can also find some larger images of pages from Le Grand Mort on Vincent Mallié’s site (also here, here, here and here)

If you are:

A) Not already overloaded with information about 9/11

B) Interested in the official 911 Report issued in 2005 by the 911 Comission

C) Not inclined to wade through the original report’s 800 plus pages, and would rather have the report summarized in a convenient 144 page graphic story format

then here is the book for you: The 911 Report: A Graphic Adaptation was written by Sid Jacobson and illustrated by veteran comics artist Ernie Colón; it was released in 2006.

Though the pages are no longer available online on the Slate site as I reported in my original post at the time, they have archived an interactive of the first chapter.

In addition, the Amazon.com page for the book includes both a regular preview (more extensive if logged in) and sample pages further down the page along with the chapter listings and additional information.

Illustrator and comics artist Dan Hipp has clients that include Real Simple, Wired, DC Comics, Image Comics and Random House.

When not working on professional assignments, and/or training to survive the zombie apocalypse, Hipp fills his blog with his wonderfully colorful, energetic and in-your-face drawings of characters from comics, movies, games and other aspects of pop culture.

His takes on the characters are usually wacky and imaginative, including mashups and routine zombifications, and are often hilarious. I particularly enjoy his mash-up Tintin covers, in which Tintin meets Ridley Scott’s alien or becomes Han Solo.

Hipp employs large areas of bright but almost monochromatic color, against which smaller passages of contrasting color shine out. He embellishes his linework with areas of darks or textures and cranks it all up to 10 with his great sense of comic exaggeration.

You can browse his blog or Tumblr as well as his Flickr stream.

Unfortunately his limited edition collection Mr. Hip Strikes! is sold out, but you can still purchase some of the comics he has worked on, and, at some unspecified point in the (hopefully near) future you will be able to purchase his new book, Stray Days.

Who Watches the Watchmen, indeed.

[Via MetaFilter]