Tickle Artists #122: Interview with Madcriminal

1) Would you like to tell us something about yourself and your art ?

Hi, my name is Paolo, but as an artist on deviantart I am known as Madcriminal.

What can I say about myself? Well first of all I am an industrial technician over forty years old and I have various passions and hobbies and among the various there is my passion for tickling that I manifest both with stories and drawings.

I am super passionate about anime and manga, comics in general from which my graphic art is taken but I also love so much to read books, both literature and essays of all kinds of subjects. I love writing short stories, not only in tickling theme, but more widely of spy and fantasy adventure plots and doing roleplay with other users. 

2) What techniques do you use to draw ? Do you have a favorite artist that inspires you ?

Then I mainly take inspiration from manga style although I also enter various contaminations of European style drawings .

My favorite artists are Monkey Punch ( Lupin III), Rumiko Takahashi ( Lamu, Ranma 1/2… ), Tsukasa Hojo ( Cat’s Eyes, City Hunter… ), Hideo Azuma ( Pollon, Nanako SOS aka by us Nana’ Supergirl ) and many other very good and talented mangaka .

3) How much was the passion for drawing born in you ? And the one for tickling ?

The passion for drawing came during my late teens and adulthood, I started out as a technical draftsman to which I then moved on to drawing models of ships and airplanes and then, thanks in part to Starcomics and Kappa Magazine editions, I came to know the beauty of manga and fell in love with it.

First I collected hundreds of manga and then slowly started drawing faces and then doing the scenes I like.

As for my tickling passion, however, I would say it’s innate, I’ve always had sort of a somewhat sadistic side of me, but the trigger that brought it to light for me were tickling scenes seen on TV like the very famous one of Fujiko in the tickle machine and the one of April O’Neil being interrogated by Don Turtelli.

4) What are your favorite tickle scenarios to draw ?

I have a real passion for DID scenes ( Damsel in Distress) i.e. damsels in distress, scenes then of traps in which then the heroine on duty is rescued or where they are tormented by original and imaginative methods, an example of these scenes can be found in the old Euro spy movies in films like Dick Smart 2. 007 or in Special Agent with the beautiful Diana Rigg who played the perturbing secret agent Emma Peel or even Linda Thorson who played Tara King who starred in a famous Chinese drop torture scene that I fell in love with and include everywhere in my drawings. Another point of inspiration for my tickling scenes are the old Italian Peplum films, that is, those set in Greek mythology or during the Roman Empire from which I extrapolated the famous rack, stretching board, which I also put everywhere in my drawings.

But my favorite scenario of all is the tickle machine, I have a real inordinate passion for it, so much so that as a technician I even did some personal study on how to build a real one, maybe with today’s technologies you can actually build it 😀 (Big Grin) .

5) What are the aspects of tickling that you intend to represent with your art ? For example: the laughing, the wiggling, the relationship between the tickler and the sufferer ?

Well tickling scenes, in my opinion, fall into two categories.

1) scenes taken from real life where two partners play, perhaps in bed, or real tickling scenes with chairs, benches, etc. where the ticklee, well-tied, is tickled in various ways

2) DID tickling scenes ( Damsel in Distress) where a secret agent, or a policewoman, or a scientist but also a thief or a meddlesome journalist is tickled, or punished with tickling, or left in a death trap, again tickling.

And these are the scenes that I prefer and depict , that is, pure fantasy scenes.

And from this mode of scenes are also born my tribute drawings to female artists and users of deviantart or the tickle forum, all fantasy scenes in which there is a considerable part of irony .

And in these scenes I stage playful glances between my Mad and the ticklees, he tickles them by teasing them a little bit, joking and they, who were reluctant before and thought they could resist, melt into laughter but always in a playful way to which they respond with playful jokes or grimaces .

6) Online there are countless photos and videos of tickling sessions. In your opinion, what do illustrations offer more than real life images ?

Well the pictures first of all help to draw well planks, chairs, bindings, faces and feet but real life gives the experience of tears, looks of complicity between tickler and ticklee, in short in real life you have the soul of a tickling scene while in photos or videos there might be considerable fiction .
In fact, I am made to smile by all those videos where the ticklee laughs and screams but then actually one realizes that he must suffer very little .

7) In your opinion, what makes tickling so interesting for fans of this phenomenon ?

Then for me there is ALWAYS a sadistic side in every human being, the fact that punctually in movies, TV series or in cartoons themselves scenes of damsels in distress or of interrogation and torture or various traps to super heroines are inserted says a lot, they are scenes inserted to tickle the interest of the viewer.

Let’s then say that some of us viewers have a much more developed sadistic side and that manifests itself in our fondness for tickling, we like the ligatures, the fact of inflicting a torture that is safe but whose effect is still to make the person inflicting it ask “ enough is enough, I can’t take it anymore ”.

That is why we are fascinated, in our subconscious, with tickling .

That’s why even those who don’t really have an inordinate passion for it are intrigued or intrigued to use it playfully.

8) What are your works that you are most proud of ?

Aside from all my tribute drawings to users of the tickle forum and Deviantart I am proud of my “Talk Batgirl Talk !!!, a three-table mini comic in which Batgirl is interrogated by Don Turtelli, in collaboration with the Joker, to make her reveal the true identity of Batman .

But in the end, even though Batgirl gives in and confesses, she is rescued by the Ninja Turtles with April O’Neil who wipe, with the Men in Black flash device, the memory of the two swindlers .

9) Do you have any particular artistic goals for the future ?

Actually no, let’s say I would like to continue writing and drawing my stories. For me it is a pastime after all, I have no real artistic aspirations, everything was born as for fun and as such I want it to remain.

A job is a job, sometimes you even come to hate it, I don’t want that to happen with my artistic passion for tickling, for that I turn down commissions or requests, I do what I like and with all the time I can devote to it, I have other hobbies, always artistic, such as crafts that take over 2/3 of my free time.

10) Do you think AIs will end up enriching or impoverishing the art of tickle representations ?

Unfortunately, AIs are a tool and, as such, can also be used in the wrong ways as was already the case with 3D representations made with the poser or with Second Life .

Whatever tool is used there has to be the soul of the creator, I am not completely against AIs but I would use them in conjunction with traditional 2D systems and with 3D, to make a “real” scene it is not enough just to type “I want April O’Neil tickled ”, also because I am seeing around scenes with weird ligatures or even body parts embedded in the pillories, they are scenes yes of tickling but very painful that unfortunately are invading both deviantart and especially its Japanese double Pixiv.

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