Interlacing 

(my first painting)

I called this piece "Interlacing" and it's about paradox :

- Wrestling vs. dancing.

- Misunderstanding vs. connecting.

- Frustration vs. love.

I wanted to express the paradox and complexity of human connections through the pose of these two people entrenched in a lot of passion and a touch of fight, flowing from one emotion to the other in an endless motion. I wanted to use this red/ orange color as it is my favorite: I like how red is also packed with paradox in the way it expresses love but also violence. War but also life. Anger but also health.

I wasn't sure what to paint at first but I knew I wanted it to be about the human form as this subject is a big favorite of mine. As I was looking for inspiration online I discovered the piece “Sunset Nude” from the artist @francorama and I was blown away > Go check out his work, you're in for a treat! : https://www.instagram.com/francorama/

The way he stylized the shapes in his "Sunset Nude" piece, his use of color and the way he sectioned the body parts were striking to me. I decided to reuse an old sketch of mine and to treat it in this style. Like a blend of my drawing and Francorama's illustration and it became this final piece I'm sharing today.

It was a very long process :

1/ Brainstorm sketches in my sketchbook then cleanup drawing in Animate 2/ Learning how to paint and which paint or pallet to use 3/ Building the canvas from scratch with Jay 4/ Recreating the digital drawing on the big 4 by 4 feet canvas (1m20) with the grid technique 5/ Learning which brushes to use, how quickly acrylic paint dries and how it affects the color (thanks Youtube for being my teacher) 6/ Matching the digital colors with acrylic (you can see in the pictures the many pallet I explored before finding each color) 7/ Figuring out a way to paint that won't leave too many strokes so the look of the painting is clean.

It was all very difficult but I have learned so so much while working on this personal project. Thank you @francorama for the inspiration!!

Roller Champions!

During my time at Ubisoft, I was lucky enough to work with the great Roller Champions Team on creating this Cinematic/ Trailer for their video game! One of my favorite thing about directing is how I get to work with all the different stages of production (script, thumbnails, storyboard, animatic, visual development, layout, animation, editing, render, sound effects, music mix) and collaborate with many different people from all departments. Big big shout out to all the wonderful humans at Roller Champions, Helix, Mathematic and Alice who worked on it! I feel so incredibly lucky to have worked with all of you on this! 

Hopefully the excitement and fun we were all having while making this cinematic is showing in the final result :) 

 

 Photoshop Paintings 

I've been learning about painting tricks in Photoshop with some tutorials online and explored while making the 2 pieces below. 

The one below is a human puzzle I came up with while waiting in a line for a while (see cleanup pass and original sketch under the final render) :

And the piece below was done for the Virtual Employee's Art Gallery organized by Lucasfilm and ILM for May the 4th. I love Grogu and Ahsoka from the Mandalorian and wanted to create something about them. See cleanup pass and original sketches under the final image : 

Human Puzzles

I've been drawing a bunch of "human compositions" in Animate lately. Combining bodies together is a good way for me to push the silhouettes and see how far I can distort them. The sleek vector drawing tools in Animate help simplify shapes and make them even more graphic than what I first got on paper. Here are a few samples 🙌💗

 Puma x TATY x 123KLAN

Words from 123KLAN : 

"We had a lot of fun collaborating with Tatyana on this collection.

We especially discovered many similarities between her artistic approach and ours. The way she creates her compositions and the way she puts the bodies of her characters in movement is very similar to our process when we realize a graff or a logo. She makes them swing by playing with their bodies, their forms, in the same way that we play with the composition and the creation of our letters."

"No letter is ugly or too elegant, it's only the way we put it in value that will reveal all its natural beauty. Like Tatyana's characters, whole, with their little flaws, fat or skinny, small or big, nothing equals more than natural beauty in its raw state, without artifice, in total agreement with oneself, true beauty is the one that we give off naturally by sharing the best of ourselves, disregarding all the contradictions or the canons of beauty. True beauty is our difference, with our advantages and all our little "imperfections" that make us all unique and magnificent."

Scien & Klor

Words from me : 

Getting to collaborate with 123KLAN was an unforgettable experience! What stroke me about SCIEN & KLOR's creations was the explosive richness of their graphic shapes, the neatness of their letter work, the energy of their colors and their smart embezzlement of cartoon and manga art.

They created a unique style which they express with panache in every single new project. I was undeniably thrilled when the opportunity to collaborate with them arose.

I vividly remember spending time losing myself in the pages of their sketchbooks during a brainstorm afternoon with them and thinking that I love the way they think and create.

In their sketchbook's line work, I discovered a beautiful exploration of aestheticism and shapes which is a big part of my creative process as well.

One component among many others that I find so interesting about them is the ingenious simplicity of their visuals. A simplicity that one can only acquire after many years of practice and tenacious passion.

It is not an every day event that you get to meet artists who inspire you and with whom an effortless understanding and accord develop. 

This collaboration was the occasion to experience exactly that and so much more!

Star Wars Shows I've worked on ❤

Here are posters of the shows I've been boarding on ... And I can't wait for the world to see the new stories we're currently creating at Lucasfilm ❤ 

Angular Shapes Exercise

Sometimes I like to push the shapes to get as graphic and bold as I can. On the right is the photoshop version I did of this exercise and on the left is my original sketch on paper.

Sketchbook update!

I'm sketching every day but don't post a lot of it. Here's an update of some of the sketches I recently did. Watching people every day keeps me inspired ❤

Character Design!

Some character design work I did on Star Wars: Forces of Destiny! While directing on this show I also had the chance to work on some turnarounds. I love studying volume through anatomy so this was like a dream job to me! I then got to create the mouth comps and supervise the rigs for all the characters of the show. It was very technical but also fascinating!

Line of Action Exercise!

Line of Action exercise! This is the kind of exercise I enjoy doing: I start with a line of action (yellow lines) and then build around it (blue lines): 

Experimenting some cleanup in Animate

After a very long and intense day of work, I wanted to clear up my mind with some "comfort zone art" that would require little effort. So I picked a page of my sketchbook and cleaned it up in Animate. I kind of like drawing in Animate as the drawing tools tend to be crisper and cleaner than in a pixel softwares like Photoshop.

Free flow animation and sketches update!

Animating on my long metro commutes is my current obsession. I use my tablet Fire and the App FlipaClip.

Working on morphing different people together is a way of expressing that despite our differences, we all are connected through movement, that we all share the same air that keeps us alive: All in One!

I've been doing a lot of sketching while in France (when visiting my family) and wanted to share a few here: