“I’m a Stubborn Optimist”: Frodo De Decker Talks About His New ‘Otto’ Album, His Influences and Doing the Right Thing (Part One)

Angry dwarves, frozen queens, giant cakes, vengeful aliens, a visit to hell, orang-utans and Noah’s ark. I’m not talking about the new Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, but the universe of comic sensation Otto, created by Frodo De Decker.

Otto is a hilarious wordless comedy series for young and old, starring the eponymous down-on-his-luck everyman. With the series already on its third album, Frodo De Decker has created an imaginative slapstick universe where “anything goes” is the rule rather than the exception.

I’ve covered Otto 1: Keep on Rowing  and Otto 2: Better the Devil You Know in Crossing Borders, so instead of just tackling the next album, Otto 3: The Chosen One, I probed creator Frodo De Decker on his influences, way of working and drawing style.

BROKEN FRONTIER: How did you become interested in telling stories in the comics medium?

FRODO DE DECKER: First and foremost I’m an artist; drawing is a very instinctive process for me. I always have drawing material on hand to pass away the time while watching TV or waiting for my computer to start up.

Telling stories came later, though this is becoming more and more important to me. I already have a well-filled folder on my computer full of ideas for future stories.

I literally devoured comics in my youth because we didn’t have a television in our household; that only arrived when I was around 15 years old. That’s why my graphic language is mainly influenced by comics.

Even after these years, I’m still a big fan and I feel it is one of the most interesting mediums out there. The possibilities are truly endless. And, even better, it’s something that you can create on your own, unlike animation for instance. I once read that “All great art is personal”, and I feel that that is absolutely true. I’m not implying that Otto is great art, though!

Otto finds himself smack in the middle of a great tradition of surrealism and slapstick. How did you come up with this character?

The character of Otto goes way back for me. Originally he was a character I created to put on a t-shirt for the local boy scouts club, though he looked quite different then. Later on, when I played with the idea of creating a wordless comic, he popped out of my memory and schwung himself onto the page.

Are there characteristics of yourself in Otto?

Not consciously, no, even though I’m an optimist and probably a bit naive as well.

Do you share Otto’s eternal optimism in the face of a deterministic universe seemingly driven by karma and pettiness?

I am a stubborn optimist. I’m well aware that there’s a lot things going wrong in the world and that I’m only one guy trying to do his best. It’s something that I struggled with for a long time, and I came to the realisation that you can only try to be nice to your fellow people, spread around some love and to get in the right vote around election time.

Your drawing style has some ligne claire characteristics, by way of Hergé and Lewis Trondheim. What is the attraction of this style?

Hergé is indeed a big influence, even though I read just as many Lucky Lukes by Morris and Astérix by Uderzo, whose drawing styles are more loose, with fluid lines. I think I’m just attracted by the cleanliness of the ‘clear line’.

In my opinion, well-thought-out elementary line work makes a drawing much more powerful. If an artist handles a style with lots of shading and cross hatching, it is less pure, since there’s more room to obscure errors made in the drawing.

On your blog you showcase a much looser style of drawing. How difficult is it to concentrate on Otto’s clear line work?

I’m interested in other drawing styles apart from the clear line, and often it’s a matter of fitting the line to the subject. There are other characters with different stories than the one from Otto that I want to explore, and it’s a matter of finding the right line for them.

With Otto, I feel the tight line work communicates best, and after three albums, the style flows rather freely from my fingers.

Come back next week for part two of our interview, where we discuss the future of Otto and how Frodo deals with the challenges involved in creating wordless comics. Check out the artist’s website at frododedecker.com.

Otto 3: The Chosen One (Otto 3: De Uitverkorene) by Frodo De Decker is published in Dutch by Syndikaat. It is a full-colour hardcover graphic novel counting 48 pages and retails for €16.95.