Jean Giraud (born May 8, 1938) is a French comics artist. Giraud is known by his own name, but is at least as well known by the pseudonym of Moebius. He has also used the pseudonym Gir.
Giraud was born in Paris. At age 16, he began his only technical training at the Arts Appliqués. At 18, he was drawing his own comic strip, "Frank et Jeremie" for the magazine Far West. In 1961, Giraud became an apprentice of Jijé, one of the leading comic artists in Europe of the time, and collaborated on an album of Jerry Spring. In 1962 Giraud and writer Jean-Michel Charlier started the comic strip "Fort Navajo" for Pilote. It was a great hit and continued uninterrupted until 1974. The Lieutenant Blueberry character, created by Giraud and Charlier for Fort Navajo, quickly became its most popular character, and his adventures as told in the spin-off western serial Blueberry, are possibly Giraud's best known work in his native France. Giraud's prestige in France — where comics tend to be held in higher artistic regard than in the United States — is enormous; France has even issued postage stamps to commemorate him. Under the names Giraud and Gir, he also wrote numerous comics for other comic artists like Auclair and Tardi.
The Moebius pseudonym, which Giraud came to use for his science fiction and fantasy work, was born in 1963. In a satire magazine called Hara-Kiri, Moebius did 21 strips between 1963 and 1964 and then disappeared for almost a decade. In 1975 Métal Hurlant (a magazine which he co-created) brought it back and in 1981 he started his famous L'Incal series in collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowski. Moebius' famous serial The Airtight Garage, and his groundbreaking "Arzach" also began in Métal Hurlant.
Moebius has contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science fiction films. In 1982 he collaborated with director René Laloux to create the science fiction feature-length animated movie Les Maîtres du temps (Released in English as The Time Masters) based on a novel by Stefan Wul. In 1988 Moebius worked on the American comic character The Silver Surfer with Stan Lee for a special two-part limited series. Moebius/Giraud is also known to be a friend of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. The two of them recently opened an exhibition in Paris which showcases work by both artists.
Major Works
* Blueberry (1963-)
* "Arzach" (1976)
* The Airtight Garage (1976-1980)
* The Incal (1981-1988)
* Le Monde d'Edena (1985-2001)
* Silver Surfer: Parable (1988-1989)
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Film Work
* Alien (1979)
* The Time Masters (1982)
* Tron (1982)
* Willow (1988)
* The Abyss (1989)
* The Fifth Element (1997)
* Giraud worked on Alejandro Jodorowski's film adaptation of Dune which was never completed.
* Giraud's artwork for the Dan O'Bannon short story comic "The Long Tomorrow" was a key visual reference for Blade Runner.
* George Lucas used one of Giraud's designs for the Imperial Probe Droid in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas' later Star Wars films also share many visual characteristics with Giraud's work, particularly the depiction of the city-planet Coruscant.
Mr.Magnetichead wrote:
* Giraud worked on Alejandro Jodorowski's film adaptation of Dune which was never completed.
lol, i just read about that. sounds like it would have been an utterly awful adaptation of the book (salvador dali as shaddam? wtf?), even more bizarre than lynch's.
Cool Blue wrote:His work kind of looks influential or influenced by some of the Heavy Metal animators.
I believe he did actually work on the European Heavy Metal comics. I remember Ridley Scott mentioning it on the Alien bonus disk in the Alien Quadrilogy.
He reminds me of Roger Dean, also a comic artist who did a lot of album covers. I've got a book full of his stuff, unfortunatly most of the stuff on the internet is gash.
