Personal Information:
Name: Ferran Rodriguez
Job: Artist
Sonic projects worked on: Sonic the Comic

Interview Date: 05/02/11
Note: You can click on most of the Images for a larger view
Manic Man: A good place to start would be at the beginnings in Spain. How did you get interested in taking up drawing?
Ferran Rodriguez: It was quite casual. I was studying Biology at UB (University of Barcelona). I was picking up information for a nesting birds book and I, almost accidentally, showed the drawing of a Peregrine to the teacher in charge. He immediately offered me to draw for the book.
You seam to have had a very keen interest in wildlife, was there ever any time when you wanted to more take up something just in that field?
Although it’s not very common in my country, I’ve been studying birds since my early fourteens, even I was given an important international prize (“Holland Prize” sponsored by Phillips) for a migratory birds study.
I also have been teaching wildlife more than ten years at the Educational Department of Barcelona’s Zoo. I always liked to teach wildlife and make my own field books.
You say on your site that your first non-wildlife illustrations were due to Sonic the Comic, and unlike alot of the staff, you didn't come to STC via 2000AD, How did you get involved with the comic then?
Casualty again. I was in Kenya studying animals and we met some people from Barcelona, one of them knew an agent who worked in Norma Ed. I showed my art to him and as they were looking for an artist to do Sonic, this was the start point.
You mostly seamed to do Covers and Posters, but you also did comic strips in issues #6,#20,#29, #39 and Summer Special 1994. Did you more prefer doing Single images to Comics or were you just given the chance to do posters and covers more?
These were my beginnings , I used to read comic strips but I wasn’t used to draw them. I know they liked the treatment I did to the characters but I’m not sure they liked how I treated the full story. Now I would do it in a quite different way.
While you only seamed to work on the comic for a short time, your credits there go on for most of the comics life as various images were used for Posters, gifts, Cards, even Covers (including one for issue 158 which was a piece used much earlier for the spin off Poster Mag). Did you just do a whole load of images at first or did you do various little bits for the comic over the years?
As far as I can remember everything was going fine, they passed me story after story adding posters and covers, gifts but, and I don’t know how, they stopped. As I was working for them through an agent I never knew which was the problem.
I notice, from some of the artwork on your site, that there were some changes to pieces between you doing them and them going to print. Mostly, these are visible on the Cover to Issue 3 where not only have the shadows been redrawn and darken but a fair amount of colouring detail has been lose and Sonic's Head has been changed to be at a different angle, along with other tweaks. Where these done by you, either for personal reasons or editorial reasons, or where they done without your knowledge and skills?
I don’t remember to do changes over it . I remember that they ask me to reserve some areas for the title and gifts.
After Sonic the Comic, I believe you teamed up with Dr. Xavier Costa to create Professor Planet, something which appears to have been mostly created by Dr Costa about a Talking Planet that would teach kids about stuff. How did you get involved on that?
I was involved from the start. My first contact with Xavier was while I was doing some art for Atrox (Poisonous snakes exhibition who was at the Zoo). We tried a couple of projects and became friends. In the beginning this was an animation project, a plasticine one, but after the years it became a multimedia one. Xavier and I have created all the entire world and its spirit.
Come into the late 2000s, I believe you went to work for DIC Entertainment where you took on a more Cartoony style with the Horse-land comic, based on the DIC TV show. Did you enjoy working on this?
It was used to work for Disney, as this was my meaning work the last ten years so trying a non-Disney was something different , you can call it funny.
Other then the above mentioned work, is there anything you have worked on that enjoyed or hated?
I hated nothing and I’ve enjoyed everything, you must love the “pencil”, if you don’t leave it to the ones who done it. The pity is that I can’t try Sonic again, I’m sure it would be fun and the results would be much better.
Thank you for granting this interview.
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