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3DTotal: Hello Morgan, thanks for taking time away from your canvas to chat with us. Can you briefly give us a little insight into your background as an artist, and how it all started for you?
Morgan: First of all, thank you for allowing me to share my experience as a concept artist, and furthermore for explaining the way I capture the environment in which I have been for almost two years. As far as I am concerned, my debut to the art world was similar to many of us, for I began drawing very early - I would
say from the age of 3 - and have never stopped since. My grandfather was an oil painter and my mother an architect, and I believe I have inherited their artistic genes. I went into artistic studies from the end of secondary school, where I followed an illustration training course in an art school in the city of Lyon, in France. These four years of studies were, for me, the true beginning of my artistic learning, when I was able to practice subjects such as sculpture, anatomy, illustration, animation and traditional painting.
Every year reinforced in me the idea that I had really found my way.
Then, the young provincial that I was, I went to the capital and I made my first steps in February 2006 at Quantic Dream Studio as a character designer, where I was able to build on what I had learned at school and discover the world of digital illustration. By going through art books, websites and forums, I realised that the world into which I had just stepped was going to teach me a great deal of things, make me discover an incredible number of talents, and be an endless source of inspiration. Working every day, side by side, with talented artists, combined with the emulation that this team creates, generates a ceaseless motivation and a constant urge to progress.
After two and an half years in the video game industry, I joined the visual effects studio “The Moving Picture Company” in London. Currently im working as a concept artist at Darkworks Studios. |
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3DTotal: You said you explored sculpture, anatomy, illustration, and so on, at art school, so how applicable is this knowledge and these skills to your present day digital work?
Morgan: I believe the knowledge of perspective and anatomy has been the most important and the most constructive part in my learning process. Indeed, everything is useful and present in the illustrations I create today. Anatomy enables me to be as coherent as possible in the creation of characters, and thus it becomes a necessary basis in my cartoon style, for instance. Therefore, and thanks to perspective’s notions, I can stage these characters and create the images I have in mind. Sculpture was a good way to learn 3D and shapes in space. I believe there is no better way to understand anatomy than by doing sculpture.
During my first school years, we learned, over and over again, how to draw and erase the draftsman’s |
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tricks, which we had through working the academic drawing. Afterwards, the programme approached problems of storytelling, framing, colour and so on. It is like a complete formatting of our past as a draftsman, and a new foundation.However, it becomes harder not to be seduced by the digital tools we have to avoid those constraints.3D modelling removes any problem of perspective, and digital painting allows us to begin over and over again at will, which is why I try from time to time to keep the drawing basis I have whilst sketching. My studies gave me a basic experience and my drawing abilities, which grow day after day through training by feeding off all the images which I see every day. That’s what I find so exciting in this profession: its constant and never-ending questioning. |
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3DTotal: Looking at your portfolio examples of your latest works, vast landscapes seem to be a recurring theme, within which we often find single characters swamped by their surroundings. I get feelings of loneliness and isolation from these images. Is this something that you wanted to convey, and if so what are your reasons for this type of imagery combining man and nature?
Morgan: I have always had huge difficulties in approaching sets, and this lack of experience quickly
caught up on me. Then I began uncountable tests of forms, perspective and scale, quickly executed in Photoshop. Being more and more familiar with digital tools, I also discovered 3D where I was able to quickly set up perspectives and rid me from these constraints which somehow hampered me. My latest works result from these tests, in which I stage characters almost eaten by their environments. It is
always, for me, a true challenge to imagine spaces where the viewer can feel the gigantic sizes, and be intrigued and unhinged by them. I also enjoy challenging my characters; confronting them with their environment and trying to let the viewer imagine his own story stemming from the place and characters I have designed.
I have also been very inspired by video games, in particular “Shadow of the Colossus”, which to me is a true artistic masterpiece where designers have been able to play with scale to create incredible scenes. Cinema is also a strong influence for my latest works; I find in epic scenes a poetic connotation which I like trying to transcribe in my illustrations. |
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3DTotal: What were the “difficulties” that you faced when first approaching landscapes?
Morgan: Sets are for me a true challenge. Bringing to light a scene in order to better convey the feelings that we want to, is a truly hard test for me. As I said before: perspective, and each problem which derives from it, puts me under pressure because the errors which we can commit are visible and it is a work which demands a lot of attention and time.
On a few occasions, I did not take the time to think about which way the scene should be lit. I thus focused on details and told myself that the light would come afterwards. When I was almost finished with my picture, I tried to catch up with the light as best I could by tinkering with things from right to left. Huge mistake! Since then, I have tried to make this work at first-hand. I define my light source in the first step and try to keep that constantly in mind. Details are also things which seem important to me in order to create images as well as possible. To keep a global coherence in a picture is very difficult, and to captivate the reader on the foreseen elements is another one.
In my case, interior sets are delicate to do because light is very important; the way it is put in, the
way objects interact with it, what it connotes, etc... For all of these questions I have to find answers in the starting process. On the other hand, exterior sets have other difficulties. Light is very important too, but
so is the colour scheme and the way these colours match. Even there, the pictorial food of images and references is, in my opinion, truly necessary to approach this kind of decoration and challenge. But there is no secret: the more we practice, the more the automatisms build themselves up, and questions find their answers. |
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