Interview with Salchipunk, winner of "A Comic Book Christmas"

By day, he's Mauricio E. Moreno Flores, a 38-year old graphic designer for a web company in the second biggest city in Mexico. By night (or even sometimes during a spare moment in the office), he's salchipunk, the winner of the publicly voted Foldees "A Comic Book Christmas" greeting card competition.

His design, "Don't Forget", won by a significant margin during the voting period for the contest, which invites the public to rate the cards in Foldees contests (as an incentive, voters who voted for all the designs would get a free card). It featured 3 steps to remember while preparing for a visit from Santa, as shown below.

 

We recently had a chance to interview Mauricio over MSN, and found him to be a surprisingly humble (almost shy) person. Primarily because English is not his native language, we found ourselves talking alot more than he was. However, after a few minutes of conversation, that's when he starts displaying a wicked sense of humour that just peeks out on rare occasion (thus asking him to tell us a bit more about himself only at the end of the interview once we warmed up). Here's the transcript from that interview (which has been edited for readability) :-

Foldees Hi Mauricio! How's it going man?

salchipunk Fine thanks how about you?

Foldees Great! Are you ready to be interviewed?

salchipunk Yeah is okay but remember my English is not that good

Foldees No worries... we'll edit before it goes out. So first, I wanna ask you how you got into graphic design?

salchipunk Well, I don't about know this career before, and I was looking for a career that don't have mathematics and my brother tells me about graphic design. So here I am!

Foldees Did you study it?

salchipunk Yes I did , but for technical level only, in fact was a short time

Foldees Wow... but from your work it looks like you already have a lot of experience. Do you sketch it out first and trace it or do you draw directly into the computer?

salchipunk I sketch first and then I trace it in illustrator with a digital tablet.

Foldees WACOM?

salchipunk Yeah but my tablet is not profesional is a wacom graphire - only the smallest model.

Foldees Hahahah... we were offering the big A4 one for our first competition. You should have joined :) Your art style is very cartoony and simple, yet there's actually quite a bit of attention to detail... what are your influences?

salchipunk Yeah, I saw it in your blog but I didn't know about that contest. I love the actual cartoons, the cartoon network style is so static with strong outlines and short characters. My favourites are Puka, Courage, Sponge Bob and Fairly Oddparents.

Foldees Now the serious questions. How did you find out about Foldees?

salchipunk A friend of me told me about it

Foldees And how did he find out about it?

salchipunk I don't know, he just told me.

Foldees Oh. That doesn't make a very good story

salchipunk Hahahaha... ok let me ask him

Foldees Hahahah. ..Yes please. Lemme know when he gives you an answer. Meantime, let's continue. Have you entered any other contests before and have you won?

salchipunk Once, in my city. And I won a motorcycle. That was about 7 years ago! It was a contest run by one of our local radio stations to draw one of their radio announcers. The drawing was in water paint over paper, so that means i don't have it anymore.

Foldees What was the model of the bike did you win?

salchipunk Vespa Ciao.

Foldees That's awesome! It's one of those italian scooters, right?Are you still using it? 7 years is a long time man... means you must be older than i think you are

(At this point, Mauricio proceeds to draw it out for me using the crude-at-best MSN mouse drawing function. Unfortunately, MSN doesn't save that in its history, so the drawing is gone. Rest assured, it was a very decent rendition of an italian scooter)

salchipunk Like this. I love my motorcicle.. until I fall jajaja and I sell it

Foldees You had an accident?

salchipunk Yeah a little accident. But I did preffer don't risk in that way so I sold it

Foldees So uh..how old are you?

salchipunk 38 years and counting

Foldees Wow... that IS alot older than i expected What is your job?

salchipunk Guess.... graphic designer

Foldees What kinda company are you working for? Does it have a website?

salchipunk website not, only impress you know the habitual, invitations, magazines, etc... But i learn by my own to make websites and i work sometimes freelance, just for extras.

Foldees What's the graphic design scene like in Mexico? Are there alot of graphic designers there?

salchipunk Yes, in fact at this time we're so many that the pay is bad.

Foldees Hahahaah. I'm sorry to hear that. But now with the web, there are so many ways to market your work!

salchipunk My friend told me that he know about your contest by this page http://www.graphiccompetitions.com/

Foldees Foldees ahh... yes. we know them quite well :) Did he join too?

salchipunk Yeah he's mdavict. He draw a thin Santa.

Foldees Awesome! So when you guys joined, did you think you could win?

salchipunk No. In fact I didn't know if I should get in because i'm so negligent sometimes and i sent my work the last day.

(sound familiar anyone? for the record, Salchipunk's latest entry, "I Don't Need" is already in for "The Game of Love" *hint*hint*) 

 

Foldees Glad to see this time you submitted VERY early! Are you submitting any more entries?

salchipunk I don't think so because I don't have another idea that I really like me

Foldees No worries... so before we finish, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

salchipunk Well I'm not married but I have a kid and I live with my girlfriend and I think that I live in 2 ways because I love the punk music but I love too pop music and I like a lot the animation movies of Pixar and Dreamworks but I like too the most bloody disgusting movies... jajaja

Foldees And where do you stay?

salchipunk I live in the second city most big in Mexico and like any big city is a mess. The city's called Guadalajara - you can see it in Google Earth... jajaja.

Foldees Last thing. Anything you want to say to your fans and the people that voted for you...because you won by a very big margin?

salchipunk Oh.. I want to thank every single people that voted for me. Ouch. I try to say a lot of words but I don't know too many, I should be study English. I think that was my purpose of this year

Foldees HAHAHAHAAH. No worries man. Thanks for your time, Mauricio

salchipunk i just want add that I honestly didn't think that I've won because there was may good works there

Foldees Yes there were. Don't worry though, I'm sure that they'll give you a good fight for this next competition G'night from Malaysia...

salchipunk And good morning from Mexico.

- end -