Cartoonist Heo Yeong confessed that he wants to be active forever.
On the 1st episode broadcast on tvN 'Yu Jae-seok on the Block', Heo Yeong appeared and talked with Yu Jae-seok.
The master of Korean comics, the lend of the comics world Heo Yeongman introduced himself as "It's embarrassing to be called the lend. An old master who insists on being active forever." Heo Yeongman, who started serializing a cartoon called "The jumak" on SNS, said, "If I serialize a cartoon under the title Heo Yeongman, even I smell bad. There is also the meaning of trying to get away from that, and the good thing about SNS is that even if you're not popular you don't get cut. My mind is very comfortable."
Heo Yeong, who is also a distinctive writer for depicting taste, said about digital work, "We are analog after all, so moving to digital is not an easy task. These days we draw on monitors and it's slippery. I'm concentrating on work in a new environment and I'm getting used to it, but when I do it sometimes the drawings all disappear. I'm striving. I don't necessarily want to adapt. I want to remain analog."
Seventy-nine-year-old active cartoonist Heo Yeong instantly drew a caricature of Yu Jae-seok. To Heo Yeong, who said there is no compromise with the model, Yu Jae-seok asked, "Please draw me like the protagonist in your work," and Heo Yeong completed a character that highlighted features by drawing the teeth large. Yu Jae-seok, because of his exaggerated front teeth, said, "It's not a backhoe, it will get caught on something," but Heo Yeong laughed, "Life doesn't go as you want."
Including his apprentice days, Heo Yeong, who has been active for nearly 60 years, is known to have drawn 140,000 manuscript pages so far, causing astonishment. Originally dreaming of becoming a painter, when his father's anchovy fishery business declined and he could not go to college, he decided at 19 to draw cartoons. Heo Yeong said, "Comics were part of my life from childhood. After graduating high school I came up to Seoul with 35,000 won. I got a job as an apprentice to a cartoonist I admired, and the first apprentice studio closed after six months. I couldn't go home, so I was introduced to a shoujo manga artist's house and suddenly ended up drawing shoujo manga, which didn't suit my aptitude. After that I entered the apprenticeship of master Lee Hyang-won and stayed for about six years."
Heo Yeong, who debuted as a cartoonist in 1974, first worked on 'Looking for a House.' Heo Yeong, who presented about 200 works including 'Beat', 'Mr. Q', 'Tazza', 'Bridal Mask', and 'Sikgaek', originally aimed to be the fifth-ranked cartoonist. He said, "When serialized comic magazines were in vogue, about 25 writers were in one issue. Among them, you had to be in the top five to avoid editors' touches. So I wanted to be in the top five." Yu Jae-seok sympathized, saying, "When ratings drop we also get interference."
Serializing on various themes such as history, food, stocks and physiognomy, Heo Yeong said, "In war you need lots of ammunition to win. Creators always have conflicts about material. Constant effort in collecting is necessary. Out of such effort 'Tazza', 'Sikgaek', and 'Kkol' were born." Heo Yeong said, "The world is changing very quickly. You shouldn't try to compete with the webtoon artists who are drawing wonderfully now. When I was doing well as a cartoonist, new generation writers came out and how to survive was a concern, and the conclusion of that 고민 was to show my own skill that they don't have."
Sikgaek took three years just for reporting. Heo Yeong said, "My imagination alone was not enough. So reporting was necessary. After coming to live in Seoul I kept thinking about hometown food. It started from basic questions like why such foods disappeared. Food connects to all memories, so I thought it was a good subject. That's how 'Sikgaek' was born." About 'Tazza' he said, "The publisher's president asked if I would think about doing a gambling manga. At the time hwatu was a social activity, and a retired gambler became the motif for Goni. He said he lived at the edge of Jirisan, so I went, and two of the three Tazza people lived there. I saw it with my own eyes and started."
Heo Yeong said he wanted to "climb the mountain called comics and remain as part of the staircase embedded in the middle."
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