Vinea - Origin

Origin

According to the sixteen-page appendix of L'Astrologue de Bruges (album 20), Roger Leloup had seen an ad of Nivea cream when he was a child, misreading it as Vinea. Because the poster was old and discolored, only the blue had remained, a girl on the poster was all blue. Leloup thus believed that this cream changed the color of the skin into blue. He recalled all this when he built the Vinean universe.

Vinéa est un univers qui peut exister, mais que j'ai créé de toutes pièces. Son origine remonte à mon enfance. Dans le salon de coiffure de mon père, une publicité vantant la crème Nivéa - que, dyslexique, j'avais transformée en Vinéa - avait attiré mon attention. Avec le temps, l'image s'était décolorée et seul le bleu était resté. Une fille, sur l'affiche, avait donc la peau de cette couleur. J'étais convaincu que cette crème rendait la peau bleue. Et quand j'ai imaginé ce peuple venu de l'espace, je me suis rappelé tout cela. Il faut - hélas ! - parfois attendre d'être adulte pour pouvoir raconter ses rêves d'enfance.

"Vinea is a universe which could exist, but I have completely created it myself. Its origin stems from my childhood. In my father's barbershop, there was a poster ad for Nivea-cream - which I, dyslexic, misread as Vinea - that always caught my attention. Because of its age, the picture was decolorized and only the blue had remained. A girl on the ad thus had skin in that color. I was convinced that the cream would make your skin blue. And when I created these people from outer space, I remembered all that. It appears that, sometimes one needs to wait until adulthood to be able to recount one's childhood dreams."