Heavy Metal

For last weeks class on World Wide comics, I read Heavy Metal, which was the American version of the French comic Métal Hurlant.  This comic is a collection of short stories in the sci-fi and fantasy genera, each story has a different artist.  Many of the French artists that illustrated for Métal Hurlant also worked on Heavy Metal. The first story in Heavy Metal is Arzak, it is a wordless comic about a guy driving across the desert in order to fix something. This story is one out of four short stories created by Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Moebius's illustrations for this comic are extremely beautiful. The line work and simple color and composition drew me in. I also really enjoyed the look of the Sci-Fi worlds that he created, they reminded me a lot of the movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The stories are not similar at all, but I believe that some of the visual direction for this movie was inspired by Moebius's work. 

The top image is from Arzak and the bottom is a still image for the trailer of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. It is easy to see the influence of Moebius in the shape language, color composition and even the basic color scheme and costume design of the lead protagonists.