ENTREVISTA A FEDERICO BIBBO

Tell us about what kind of comics have you grown up reading, which are the characters, creators or series you loved in your youth.

I started reading Disney's and Warner Bros. comics when I was very young, liking characters as Scrooge McDuck and Tiny Toons.I was also highly influenced by Animated movies, cartoons and anime. When I was thirteen years old, I followed the anime "Ranma 1/2" on tv, I liked it so much I started collecting its own manga and then I went on reading other manga series!

During those years I wasn't very interested on the creators and I bought comics just because I was interested in characters like Spider-Man or Batman which I came to know thanks to cartoons and videogames!

Then I began to draw those characters and some of my own based on them or on the stories I had read! At first I loved to draw characters like Duffy Duck, Spider-Man or Cyclops but when I became influenced with manga culture I started to mix, for example, I recall when I created my own parody of the X-Men characters with a manga style characterization!

When did you start in a artistic career in drawing and coloring...?

My artistic career started in october 2009 when I began to attend the "Scuola Internazionale di Comics" in my hometown, Rome, in Italy! There I attended a "traditional animation" class for three years to became a cartoon animator.

But during the last of those three years my interest towards painting and digital coloring grew even more.
I've started to use Photoshop for the very first time in 2011 and I fell madly in love with it.

All the things that I couldn't do or achieve exactly as I wanted them to be on paper, using pencils or paintbrushes in the past, now were possible to me...and in a much more funnier way than before!

And so I ended up achieving also a Master in digital coloring in 2012 with artist David Messina as teacher!
From that time onward I started working on various illustrations and various projects, above all, one with David, written by Mark Waid, which is still in progress.

Who are the artists or colorists that influenced your work or you admire more?

There are many artists I admire:
David Messina, Stuart Immonen, John Romita sr., Adam Hughes, Todd McFarlane, Sara Pichelli, J. Scott Campbell, Humberto Ramos, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Gerardo Sandoval, Simone Bianchi... to name just a few!!

And, regarding the coloring, mainly I follow and admire Alex Ross, Adam Hughes, Edgar Delgado, Justin Ponsor and Marte Gracia.
I've got a soft spot for Marte's coloring style! XD

And now, what comic-book creators are you more interested in or who do you think are the main ones?

I just want to tell you this...I think (in my personal opinion and taste) Moore, Miller and Waid!

Moore's "Watchmen", Miller's "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" and Waid's "Kingdom Come" are the works that have influenced me the most, much time before I even began to think about an artistic career!

In a perfect world, which characters or projects would you love to work with?

SO MANY! Ahahah :P Mostly I would love to color Deadpool (but would he like to be colored by me..? ;) Ahah!) and absolutely to work on "X-Force" comic book series!!!

Have you done any previous work you want to tell us about?

So far I have worked on various small projects, but the two works that I'm very proud of are: The animated short movie "Anomia" which I made with my classmates when I was in the academy, and the story, still in progress, with David Messina and Mark Waid for the "Elizabeth's Canvas Organization"! :)

What do you think that an agency like Men of Bronze Studios can do for an artist like you?

I just started, so MOBS can help me to develop a career in order to improve myself and achieve high goals.
Working together, we can increase our visibility in the world of publishing and comics; we should be able to get noticed thanks to the collaboration with the other members of the agency by proposing works of consistent high quality! :)