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3DTotal: One of your specialities seems to be cute, stylised animals. Why is this and what do you like best about creating these?
Mathieu: Originally, it came mostly from the orders I received. I had to draw a series of animals for two different games and other separate illustrations, at the same time. So, for a period of time it felt like I was drawing nothing but animals! The subject is really fun though, and luckily they left me free to make my own graphic choices for the games, and so I enjoyed myself a lot. I really enjoyed humanising them... Anyway, I try not to concentrate only on this subject these days. It’s true that they tend to ask me to work more and more on this theme, but I feel personally like working on various subjects and exploring new and different paths. Not because I feel I have explored everything about this subject, or that the cute stylised animals have no longer any secrets left for me, but because I would hate feeling as though I was always doing the same thing. I think I need to give a rest to all these animals, but I’ll be happy to go back to them in some time with a new look and perhaps a different graphical approach to the subject.
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3DTotal: You seem to be able to capture expressions and emotions very well in your characters. Can you give the readers some tips on how you achieve this and which parts of the characters you concentrate on to bring out the emotions?
Mathieu: I firstly try to work on the whole aspect of the character. This global aspect will express the emotion, and at the same time I work on the gaze, and perhaps a squeeze of the mouth... there must be a global coherence. Then I get into the details of a particular part of the body. I try to get as close as possible to the reality of a particular element.
3DTotal: From your online portfolio, we can see you have tried your hand at 3D art, too. Can you combine 3D with your illustration work, or do you do 3D just for fun?
Mathieu: 3D art was my first passion. I discovered it when I was at secondary school, when I realised immediately that I wanted to make it my job. In the end, my art studies did not make it possible for me to practice 3D, and so I had to teach myself using 3D Studio 3 version Dos (it wasn’t Max at that time and is a bit old-fashioned now). I finally got away from it all by learning to draw, although I still did it a little during my first job as a Graphic Artist at Lankhor. However, I quickly put all this away when I |
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went freelance.Today, I use 3D only very exceptionally to help me with the perspective for example, because it’s much easier to move blocks and change the angle of perspective, and to have an idea of what it |
could be like, before drawing the real thing. However, I have started to get interested in it again - the possibilities offered by software such as Mudbox and ZBrush make me feel like getting back into it. They leave much more room for the drawing, and are a sort of mix between 2D and 3D, which I really like.
3DTotal: As one last - and funny - question; if your hand became disconnected from your brain and
grew a mind of its own, what do you think it would do?
Mathieu: It would go on holiday! |
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