'Brown Sugar'.
Walter ("Wally") van Looy is a Flemish graphic artist, who has mainly worked as a background designer and graphic artist for the movie industry. He was also a member of the Antwerp-based underground comix artists collective Ercola from 1970 on.
'Les Risques du Métier'.
Born in 1945, Van Looy studied arts at the Academy of Antwerp. Inspired by the magazine Hara-Kiri and American underground comix, particularly the work of Fred, Jean-Marc Reiser and Robert Crumb, he wanted to make underground comixs himself. For De Weekbode, he made the comic strip ' 't Alvermanneke' (1966-1967), based on the popular Flemish children's TV series "Johan en de Alverman" (starring Jef Cassiers, 1965-1966). The comic was a mix between drawings and a photo comic. In 1970 he joined Ercola (Experimental Research Center of Liberal Arts), an Antwerp-based art collective that solely represented the Flemish underground movement of the 1970s. Ercola was founded in November 1968 by the artists Jean-Claude Block and Jean-Claude Buytaert, author Dominique Donnet and photographer Piet Verbist, and was joined in the 1970s by Van Looy, Werner Goelen, Luk Carlens, Suzzy Bailleux and Georges Smits, among other people. Van Looy cooperated with the group's own magazine Spruit (six issues in 1971-1972), participating in group productions and making solo comic stories like 'Brown Sugar' (based on the Rolling Stones song of the same name) and 'En whaer de sterre bleef stille staen'. He also contributed to publications like Tarzan, De Fluwelen Kater and Mornix. For the Belgian edition of Pilote he made four news-of-the-day related pages and for Kuifje, he made the gag strip 'Snoby' (1974-1975) with M. Noirret.
'Snoby', from Kuifje #46, 1974.
Van Looy has been mainly active in set and costume designs for films by Robbe De Hert ('An Old Story', 1964), Patrick Lebon ('Salut En De Kost', 1974), Luc Monheim ('Deus lo volt', 1978), 'Verloren Maandag' (1974), Harry Kümel ('Het Verloren Paradijs', 1978) and Roland Verhavert ('Rubens, Schilder en Diplomaat', 1977). He remained active in Ercola's atelier in the Wolstraat under the group name Decoratelier Ercola with Block and Frank Daniels, working on set designs for TV and theater productions. This includes designs and sets for the Belgian broadcasting company BRT with Bert de Leeuw, and for the E.W.T. theater in Deurne.
'Le Cauchemar de Charlie B.'