Nina Ruzicka

Nina Ruzicka (born July 29, 1972 in Vienna ) is an Austrian freelance draftsman who became increasingly well known through the comic series Nina in the magazine Die Wienerin and Der Tod und das Mädchen , the first part of which appeared on the ORF website .

Life

Nina Ruzicka was born on July 29, 1972 in Vienna. After graduating from high school , from 1990 to 1992 she studied theater studies and art history at the University of Vienna . She dropped out of this course without a degree. Attending the college for fashion and clothing technology also took place in 1992/1993 without a final exam. This was followed by an apprenticeship as a secretary in a law firm from 1994–1995 and another study at the University of Vienna ( Russian , Czech ), which she also dropped out. From 1999 she attended the higher technical college for chemical professions in Vienna, where she graduated in 2002.

When looking at the educational path, it is noticeable that she never attended an art school or similar institution, and even opted out of drawing lessons in school after she was able to do so in the seventh grade in favor of music lessons . After graduating from high school, she aspired to become a painter / artist, but this failed when she created a presentation folder . After a short visit to theater studies at the University of Vienna and the fashion college, she rediscovered drawing comics for herself. According to her own statement, the reason for the failure of her artistic career until then was that she did not want to portray the world and individual scenes in silence, but was primarily interested in telling stories. Over time, she acquired all drawing skills independently, which contributed significantly to her own, rather special style.

Nina Ruzicka has worked in various professions, such as beer waiter in a country and western bar, secretary in a law firm, service clerk in a cinema, parquet layer and finally chemical-technical assistant

Since 1997 she has also worked as a cartoonist.

It is probably thanks to the multitude of professions and training courses that the characters in their stories often appear to be taken from real life. In addition , her work as a legal assistant or secretary inspired her to characterize Nina in the comic series of the same name.

Comic series

Nina

The Nina comic series appeared between 1997 and 2002.

The cartoons were published in the journal The Viennese erstabgedruckt and found themselves in early 2010 on the site of the ORF.

The original Nina, which is quite different from the later character of the series, was created, according to the illustrator, during a very frustrating time as a secretary in a law firm, where she felt completely out of place despite the friendly staff. Ergo this original NINA was a frustrated secretary in a law firm full of paragraph heads and similar superficial colleagues who was always in a bad mood.

The final character then became a 25 to 30 year old Viennese who works as an editor in a medium-sized publishing house . Over the course of the series, the character of the main character gains more and more depth and develops into an emancipated, often from the hardships of everyday life, especially plagued by typical women's problems and the male world, but mostly surprisingly optimistic woman, the cartoons typically sarcastic and never on the Mouth fell.

The pool of people who always appear in the Strips includes Nina herself, who should not only resemble the author in first names and looks, Britta, her best friend, the neighbor she falls in love with, David, the roommate of the same neighbor who is again in love with Nina, Ingrid, a work colleague, the boss and the disgusting package, an unpleasant employee at the publishing house. As already mentioned at the beginning, the figures are z. Partly inspired by real people.

One of the peculiarities of the figures in this series is the continuous lack of pupils in the eyes. The signature of the strips with the abbreviation "Нина", often read as "Huha" out of ignorance, is simply the name of the draftsman, Nina, in Cyrillic spelling.

Death and the Maiden

This comic series was inspired by the traditional subject Death and the Maiden , which can be found in painting as well as in poetry and music since the Renaissance . She made a significant contribution to the illustrator's fame.

It was first published on the Internet: since 2001 weekly on the comic pages of the ORF and after they were discontinued in 2005 on its own website. The first, already completed part of the series has also been available in printed form since September 2005.

→ Main article : Death and the Maiden (comic)

Other artistic activities

In addition to the two comic series mentioned above, there are also some smaller series, as well as more artistic drawings and pictures, whereby the motifs usually have a rather gloomy atmosphere and can be described as morbid to macabre . This side of the artist is underlined by a series of pictures in which, among other things, she worked with blood as the material.

In the last few years the interest in art apart from comics has decreased more and more, so that the last pictures are already a few years old.

In 2007 Nina Ruzicka drew the illustrations for the book edition of the undertaker weblog.

Others

Influences

In addition to the children's cartoons of her childhood such as Maya the Bee and Beetlejuice, she cites mostly films as influences, be it early German talkies, American sitcoms and silent films or horror films .

Comics themselves had a rather minor influence, such as Spider-Man and the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman .

Signatures

Various signatures can be found on different strips , which has to do with the unwillingness of the author to sign at all.

There are a large number of signatures, such as Нина, the Cyrillic spelling of your first name, in the Nina series, the signature Winston C., especially in the years 1990–1999, and Rinzicka, which came from a misaddress of a magazine.

The subject of death

Death is not only a recurring theme in her pictures and comic series, but also occupies the author outside of her works. So she is z. B. Member of the European Dance of Death Association .

interview

A detailed interview was published in the satirical magazine Rappelkopf in January 2010 .

Publications

• Death and the Maiden - Vol. 3 , The Library, 2006
• Death and the Maiden - Vol. 2 , The Library, 2006
• Death and the Maiden - Vol. 1 , The Library, 2006

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Story "Nina" on comics.orf.at ( Memento from December 13, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Undertaker weblog
3. ↑ Nina Ruzicka: Dances with Death ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.