'AMATEUR'.
Maurice Hof is a Dutch commercial illustrator and visualizer, working mainly for clients and agencies in the Randstad region. Creating comics in his spare time, Hof started out writing and drawing woodcut-style noir comics like 'Foxx Tracker, The Spear of Longinus' (Oog & Blik, 2001-2003), before turning to eroticism with 'In Articulo Mortis - De Droom van Icarus' (Sombrero, 2012) and 'AMATEUR' (self-published, 2020-2022).
'De Laatste Soldaat' (Zone 5300, 1997).
Commercial art career
Born in 1966 in the naval city of Den Helder, Maurice Hof followed his high school education with a two-year course at the Amsterdam Graphic School (1984-1986). In June 1989, he started working as a "visualizer" at the renowned design agency Keja Donia, providing presentation sketches for packaging design, shop interiors and house styles. On 1 October 1992, Hof became an independent visualizer/illustrator, and in the following year found representation by the Amsterdam-based agency The Rep's. Based in Alkmaar, he has worked for many advertising agencies in the Randstad region, specializing in sketching presentations for advertising campaigns, B2B, storyboards and everything in between. In September 2001, he made the switch to LEV Visualizers. During his decades-long career, he has worked for hundreds of clients, in later years mainly for event agencies.
'Foxx Tracker, The spear of Longinus'. The image is a parody of Rembrandt Van Rijn's painting 'The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp'.
Scraperboard comics
In 1997, Maurice Hof saw his first comic story published in the alternative magazine Zone 5300. Set in the First World War, his short story 'De Laatste Soldaat' ("The Last Soldier") was made entirely with the scraperboard technique. At that time, before the digital revolution, Hof used this technique a lot for his packaging design assignments, creating landscapes, still lifes and ingredients for clients like Calvé, Honig and Nescafe. He liked the material with its woodcut-like appearance so much, that he decided to create a longer comic story in scraperboard. His "comic noir" 'Foxx Tracker, The Spear of Longinus' (2001-2003) was published in three parts by the publishing house Oog & Blik.
'In Articulo Mortis - De Droom van Icarus'.
In Articulo Mortis
It took until 2012 before Hof's Roman-themed erotic comic 'In Articulo Mortis - De Droom van Icarus' was released by publisher Sombrero. For this comic, Hof used the pseudonym Alexander Halo, and he switched from scraperboard to graphite pencil drawings with digital coloring.
'AMATEUR'.
AMATEUR
By then time 'In Articulo Mortis' was released, Maurice Hof was already working on his next comic project, 'AMATEUR'. Eventually containing 210 pages, the story deals with a maintenance engineer of photocopiers who ventures into the world of erotic photography, but eventually ends up in a mysterious intrigue and a police investigation. The idea for 'AMATEUR' arose because Maurice Hof himself briefly photographed such models and discovered that there was a strong story behind them. The story, started in 2010, has been set aside several times and knew at least two different elaborations before in February 2020 part one was self-published in its final form under the AMATEURGRAPHIC label. The decline in work offers during the prevailing COVID-19, AKA corona, crisis allowed Hof to complete the concluding installment of his comic within a shorter period of time. It was published in April 2022.
Illustration announcing Maurice Hof's signing session at comic shop Lambiek on 12 August 2022.