interview Creator Spotlight - Ben Ayad Hatim

In this month's creator spotlight we meet a young creator from the beautiful and charming Morocco. In this interview, Hatim talks about his upcoming work and ongoing campaign - Lying Mirrors, Broken Glass.

Q: A Brief background about yourself and how you got into comics?

I'm Hatim from Morocco. I'm 28 years old, and I'm a PhD student studying mental health assessment. I'm an optimist determined man who has wild imagination and attractive storytelling.

During the quarantine in 2020, I had enough time to work on a novel that I started years ago, and while I was doing that, I got the idea of turning it to a manga. As a result, I started learning about manga industry and manga-making process to discover later that it's something very hard and very awesome. I'm a determined man and there was no way for me to learn Japanese, so telling my stories could be through comic books. The more I learned about the industry, the more I was eager to make a work of my own.

Currently, I have no preference in comic books. However, I know that lot of amazing characters are out there in both i die and mainstream, so I may pick one in the future. 

But, if you asked me about my favourite character from my stories, I will tell you it's Tian from Lying Mirrors: Broken Glass. He is a straight honored altruist man who believes in the good human nature. He is was a true leader who puts the interest of his people before anything else.

The orphan character is my main excitement source. It's the fact that an individual rise up from bad emotional and sociological situation to become a strong person is something that I appreciate.

They should expect lot of fantasy and Sc-Fi, slice of life, and mystery. Probably in the future, I may try some comedy and romance 

hidden society, but I didn't finish it though because I started reading a manga

Lying Mirrors: Broken Glass is a fantasy story that talks about the transformation of several people to people with deformed appearances after they were touched with a piece of sacred crystal. It happened because of the failing of a scret organization rituals to summon a king of the dark king to earth. Tian, the main character and a father to a deformed kid, must move to find a cure, but his journey turns to a survival mission against the secret organization.

Here's the campaign link.

First of all, it was an idea about a special crystal that connects worlds (human worlds and dark world). This concept had been in mind for a long time, so I only added some mysterious events (deformed people and their magical powers), and then let my brain explore the possibilities.

Currently, we have Nirmansyah Winzaldi from Indonesia who is a very talented artist. He does the designing, the penciling, and the inking. 

We also have Nicholas Fitzgeral who is our colorist, and helps me with editing the book and the drawing.

Q: How was your experience collaborating with the rest of the team?
So far so good. We work remotely using messenger, and we discuss things using documents, messengers, and examples. They are great people I'm blessed to have them on board, and I'm a nice strict man too, so thing are pretty professional.

First, I have a project in progress with another writer and artist in the mecha genre that we may be able to start its campaign in September or October. 

For my bran, Ben-Zaldi Comics, we have three other titles on hold. They are fully written znd just wait their turn. So we will plan to produce one of the titles once we finish our current title, or maybe if we grow up enough to handle two titles.

Q: Where can people buy your books (apart from Crowdfundr)?
Currently, we still have no published work yet. However, our first issue will be available on this link where we have several pages for preview

Don't rush things because there is always room for improvement!