Comic book workshop celebrates French book festival [Archives:2008/1214/Last Page]

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December 8 2008
Angoulme International Comic Book Festival award-winner Fabien Rypert demonstrates to students how to draw a comic strip.
Angoulme International Comic Book Festival award-winner Fabien Rypert demonstrates to students how to draw a comic strip.
Khaled Al-Hilaly
In celebration of the French book festival 'Livre de Fete', the French Cultural Center, the Cultural Department for International Cooperation at the French Embassy and the French Department at Sana'a University organized workshops on drawing and writing comics in Sana'a recently.

French comic book artist and 1997 Angoul'me International Comic Book Festival award-winner Fabien Rypert is in Yemen for the first time to conduct the workshops.

Rypert designs famous comics for children and adults. Although he started out as an electrical technician, he used to collect comics and that's how he was inspired to produce his own. As an intern in a drawing studio, he started creating characters for postcards and T-shirts, the most popular of which was 'Boogy' the frog, now a main character in his children comic books series of 'Boogy and Rana'.

Participants at the workshops learned how to create a one-page comic strip step by step. Stressing the need to compliment talent with a solid education, Rypert said, \”Reading is essential for children and education is very important as you can't always depend on your talent.\””

He praised the talent of participants and said