Underground city- Fumie Kamijo

Every part of the book tells about one same town seen in different ways: prospects, moods, protagonists change. The final result consists in a book that collects loose trip notes, just as pages of diaries written by a thousand of travellers who, acting in a completely foolish way of thinking, trace out the outlines of a city that sometimes seems quite real, very often surreal.

What we ask you, Fumie, is to work on the section that is dedicated to the underground city. We first decided to tell something about the night, not considered in a simply material meaning of a dark blue sky with stars shining. We’d like to show an upside-down city, different from the real ones, bound to oneiric, fancied, often forgotten night places.

That’s why we decided to use the underground train as the leading element of the story, because it easily takes us into the bowels of the earth and allows us to start from there to discover a mysterious and invisible- to everyone London.

Just as in the underground map, this tale takes us from a step to another, discovering several underground sceneries. It’s not a bunch of fragmentary tales, but rather a whole narrative tale, where a protagonist ( who may be either an underground train driver or a simple passenger who has fallen asleep while riding the last homebound train) who, when it’s late in the night and the underground train stations are going to shut off their entrance gates, gets taken by train through several stations: something is got to give in each station, a little tale that gets its main title from the main name of each station. These so called stations really exist: we chose some pretty evocative and funny ones, anyway, you are completely free to decide whether you like or not the ones we chose, and to choose ones more.

Possible underground stations:

Piccadilly Circus: it reminds us a circus that is located right under the city, an animal tamer who goes out and, meanwhile the whole city is sleeping up there, creates a new and funny world.
Waterloo ( Nelson): maybe only when it’s late in the night you can eat an apple pie slice dining with Admiral Nelson…
Seven sisters: seven sisters live here…
London Bridge: a few people knows about a subterranean bridge..
Swiss cottage
Victoria, Queens Way, Royal Albert, Prince Regent: We thought we may choose a stop among those which remind us kings and queens.

So, the story you are asked to tell is about the night subterranean trip of this character, through real underground stops where amazing things happen. We let you the chance of creating and inventing; if every indecision will take place in you, please feel free to call us, because we are here to collaborate with you the best way we can.
You have to choose about six stops, and you ought to draw no more than twelve plates.
Please remind that the book is 15x30 cm.

We hope that the plot we showed you will be clear. You are also asked, after reading and thinking about the chapter you’re going to work on, to give us your sincere opinion about the story. In this first step it’s very important that Basbleu and the illustrators share the starting point of view, because this sharing will be the only way to make the final book liken both by you and us. So, we wait for your opinion as soon as possible.
In particular, we believe that the collaboration with Oscar Sabini may be really relevant, because he works on a section dedicated to maps, and a plate of him will precede the tale: that’s why it would be good for you both to meet and try to create a good and strong bind.