Kako | The Girl Is Here! A Donzela Sem Maos E Outros Contos De Fadas On Sale Now!
April 17, 2013 Kako
The girl is here! And so begin’s KAKO‘s introduction to his book (finally out!) “A Donzela Sem Mãos e Outros Contos de Fadas” (The Girl Without Hands and Other Fairy Tales) written by Helena Gomes and published by Escrita Fina Edições
It took Kako a lot of time to finish this book, way more than one could expect. Tough times. Donzela was conceived amongst many doubts about Kako’s work and profession, surviving the ups and downs of this crazy market and submerged in long periods of stress and exhaustion. Each line was a little victory and each victory was shared and cherished with the ones closest to him. Many others cheered Kako up whenever he showed some WIP in his Instagram feed (Thank you all!). And in this whole process he could always count on his dearest friend and publisher Laura van Boeckel, who supported him since the first of my many “I won’t make it through this” calls.
The book was a huge experiment in order to find something fresh, one of Kako’s attempts to break away from his style and breathe new air. Inspired be letterpress printing and limiting himself to the use of only four colors with no variations, this book lead him to a more careful kind of planning, thinking ahead all the compositions, layers and contrasts, and looking for new colors by creating line patterns using a fixed grid and mixing them on top of other colors. A big colored puzzle.
Kako used everything he knew about art nouveau and the 19th century fairy tale illustrations. He let some of his main inspirations come out without restrictions, combining Alphonse Mucha with Ivan Bilibin and throwing Mike Mignola in the mix just to give an edge. As for concepts, Kako wanted to place all heroines and princesses far from what we are used to regarding fairy tales. He wanted new homes for them, placing the girls from Eastern Europe to the far Mongolia and so on. He really believes fairy tales belong to the world and that they could have happened anywhere.
The book has a small first edition published in Portugese. Kako hopes someday he’ll have editions in other languages too so cross your fingers! Your copy can be obtained through the publisher so inquire if interested.
Meanwhile all Kako can say is that he’s seeing a king coming in the horizon…
Kako will be featuring one chapter at a time so stay tuned for more!
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