Then... now: Cork artist’s humorous look at how our world is changing

To be frank, I never expected one day to publish a book of my drawings, just like I never thought I would be living and settling in Cork.

But life is like a box of you know what...

I have been working, and still do, in the film industry for many years now, as a Second Unit director and Art Director for feature films and TV shows, as well as directing commercials and cutting scenes for video games.

While directing Second Unit on Hostage, an action-packed movie with Bruce Willis, I met scriptwriter Doug Richardson and his wife Karen who happened to be Irish.

I got to hang out at the Richardsons’ in Sherman Oaks in California quite a lot during the pre-production of the film, while Doug was rewriting the script from his man cave, which I am still so envious of today. So we naturally bonded over work.

As Doug wrote away, I was turning his script into storyboards for my good friend, the director Florent E. Siri , visually shaping with thumbnail drawings of the first draft of the film.

Karen, also a writer, would then feed me her wonderful home-made baking.

Ten years ago, I moved to Cork, where I am living today with my partner, who is from Cork, and our two wonderful children. We decided that it would be best for our two girls to grow up close to their Irish cousins.

I get a call out of the blue from Karen, now the manager of a non-profit group, The Mentoris Project.

She asked if I would consider doing a book of illustrations.

The idea was to depict various topics, events, or casual day-to-day life situations with double pages of humorous illustrations: to the left what it was like THEN and to the right what it is NOW.

No text or comments, just the images.

I was touched that Karen thought of me and accepted to do a couple of drawings as a try-out. I sent them over to Los Angeles.

Robert J. Barbera, founder of The Mentoris Project, and Karen loved it. She then sent me 150 topics to work from.

For three months, I got to draw whatever I wanted. Carte blanche, total freedom.

It has been an interesting challenge. Some of the topics at times would come easily, as for the others - the more sensitive, more political or emotional themes - they would take time to land on the page.

Now that the book is out, I do hope you will have as much fun to ‘read it’ - again, there are no words, just images, as I had to do it. That it will make you smile or reflect.

You don’t have to look at all the pages at once. It is a book that should be left on your coffee table and that you randomly pick-up when the mood strikes you.

Now, this is my first publication ever. And I have no clue on how to let people know about the book, so, many thanks to Cork man and writer Eamon O’Leary, author of the excellent book I’m A Big Boy Now, for his encouraging words and suggesting that I reach out to the Echo.

The book THEN & NOW by Dominique Carrara is available on Amazon.ie.

******

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Paris, Dominique studied at L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratif de Paris and then moved to New York City to complete his fine art studies at Cooper Union.

There he learned on his own the art of storyboarding and went on studying acting at the Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof - H.B.Studio - with at the time the amazing teacher and actress Sandy Denis, and studied as well as in Harlem with the great Hal DeWitt.

Acting eventually took him to London to work for the BBC on Grange Hill for two seasons.

But it was in New York that his career took on as Storyboard Artist /Art Director and Second Unit director after meeting on a set with film director Florent Emilio Siri, with whom he collaborated on his music videos and all his feature films, and still does today.

Dominique also worked for Ubisoft Entertainment, creating trailers and cut scenes for AAA games such as Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia, and Splinter Cell.

Today, he works with his friends from New York City and new friends in Ireland, directing and storyboarding with AV3, an Irish production company in Cork. He has created his own company, Carrara Ltd.