Xabi Mendoza — Le Stryge Studios — Madrid, Spain

What is the attraction of creating sequential art? “For me, drawing and writing stories became the pastime that allowed me to rediscover the world on a constant basis. Anything I haven’t drawn I haven’t really seen. I don’t know it. When I start drawing something I realise how extraordinary it really is. It’s a little miracle. Picking up a pencil and drawing my weird stories while listening to music is what got me back on my feet during the bad times. It is also what makes me feel most satisfied when I already feel good.”

Xabi Mendoza specialises in illustration, animation and screenwriting and is passionate about 19th-century art in all of its expressions. Having developed Monster Mountain and Owned! web comics, he is currently engaged on a project close to his heart, Viollet, The Chimeric Legend Of A Melancholy Demon (Le Stryge Studios), about French architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.