Jonathan

Our 2 year old, French/American toddler Jonathan is a bottle of joy! His favorite activities are:

- sitting on his potty
- wearing my shoes
- turning everything into a hat
- destroying books
- repainting our house with crayons
- dismantling his Buzz Light year
- and playing with toilet paper

I love this little guy.

Here is a Christmas card for my wife Tanya.

Shhhh, don't tell her... two more days before Christmas!

Cars 2 Wii Style

We were trying to find a cool look for the Wii version of Cars 2. We experimented with a cell shaded look. It didn't work out at the end but it would have been really cool to have an entire game in that style!

Little Hair Study

For fun

Link

I had some good times playing Zelda on my gameboy... It was a long time ago!

Take that!

Italy Country Side

Even on a piece with not many details you can still use a lot of visual help!
Why wasting time guessing what something looks like when you're one click away from knowing exactly what it is (that click for me is mostly Google Image). Then you have more time for what really matters: composition, look and feel, gameplay requirements, lightning etc.

Research, research!

Here is a piece I made for the city area of the Italy track. I wanted to point out the amount of research that goes into a piece like this. Gathering the right reference is a big part of a concept artist job.

Follow the arrows!

Tokyo Industrial Area

I'm just a big fan of Steam-punk. Everytime I've got to draw a rusted pipe or an old factory, it makes me happy!

ITALIA!!

Look and Feel Piece

Cars II - Tokyo Imperial Palace track

Drawing, Black & White Study and color

On the bottom left corner of the color sheet, you'll see the block-out I started with, (provided by the World guys) It's what they do first to test the fun of the gameplay then it goes to us, concept artists for a visual pass.

Cars II

When I first heard I was going to work on Cars II the video game, I have to be honest, I was not super excited! Cars is my least favorite movie in Pixar's history.
So I was pleasantly surprise by how fun this project was. "Caryfing" environments and everything around was a real challenge and surprisingly enjoyable!
Here is some concept I did for C.H.R.OM.E., the secret spy academy facility which was used for the main menu of the game. Big responsibility!
I'm joining to this post the car research that went into it and a few explorations.

Velour's Battle of the Band Finals

Hello everybody!

My band Searching for Celia made it to the Finals of Velour's Battle of the Bands in Provo. We are playing there tomorrow with 4 other amazing bands. You're all invited!
It's going to be an awesome show!

Seb

45 min warm up morning exercises

We (the concept team here at Avalanche) started those morning exercises to stretch ourselves in the morning. We come up with a new topic every day:

First day: take the given landscape and apply a challenging color scheme of your choice. I choosd red and purple. I didn't know what to do with it after 20 min so I stopped there. :)



Second day: take a movie poster of your choice and recreate it using a stylized/graphic flat shapes style.
That was a real stretch for me since it's so far away from my natural art inclination.

Ghosts and Goblins

Do you guys remember that game?
One of my great childhood memories! Seeing him fight in his underwear never got old! :)

Last Post on Toy Story III

At the end of every project, when the need for concept slows down, we start helping out in other areas of the game.
This time, I worked on U.I.(user interface), icons, load screens etc...
It was a new experience for me.

Here is a sample:

Objects

Even simple objects can be fun to concept!
It's rewarding to see them coming to life in 3D, like this dead tree toy for example:


Pretty accurate modeling huh!?

The Gargoyle

This is one of those characters I thought was going to be easy to design but was not! We did sooo many versions of it!
Here are two of the first versions I did:

Cheap action Figure version:



Collector Toy version (okay, I went a bit too far there, but it would have been fun to see him interact with Woody, no?! :) )




And the "Sid" version that we ended up with - version #200 (you can feel the frustration here! :) )

Environments

I like doing environments but I'm really not that good at it. I need some practice. Here are some concept and paintovers I did for the Sand box section of Toy Story 3.
Our very talented renderers and world builders here at Avalanche made it look great in game.

Stage Coach

One of those assignments that I solved quickly:

First try:



Second and final:



That was easy and turned out pretty good in game.

The Slime Modifier and a Statue of Ham as a Western Mayor

When a concept artist wake up in the morning, he has no idea the random stuff he's going to have to draw!

100 followers! ... and a Zurg Bot.

That was a fun assignment! The goal: take the robot design at the start of Toy Story 2 (the scene where Buzz is in a video game)and revamp it to make it feel like it came from the Zurg toyline.

To summarize: I had to Zurgified a Zurg Minion! :)

From Toy Story 2, the movie - Copyright Pixar




and mine:

Haunted House Interior

Yet, another collaboration for the Haunted House Interior look and feel.
Viginia Critchfield layout - Color and lightning by me.

Collaboration

Here is a piece that my friend Dave McClellan started. He painted the whole Haunted House (the building itself). Later on, the World Builders needed reference for the surroundings. That's where I came in. Those trees and tombstones were fun to paint!

30 min

Sometimes I work on a piece very quickly and it turns out okay. That's one of them.
Most of the time... it doesn't! :)

Bath Toy

Thanks to all the people who came to our show last night, we had such a good time!
Thanks for your support!

I'm feeling like posting my little Dragon toy today. Isn't he cute!?

My first Show

A little bit of shameless self promotion:

My band "Searching for Celia" is playing its first show at Velour, Provo UT on Wednesday, February 16th. We're opening for "90's Television" and "Billy and Julie" who are headlining the show.

The show starts at 8pm and the ticket price is $6.

If you like Alternative British rock ala Radiohead with some Soundtrack feel and French music influence, you should come!!

See you all there!

Seb

Velour's address: 135 N. University Ave

Le Temps des Origamis

"Le Temps des Origamis". L'histoire de Seb qui reviens à son premier amour, la BD!
J'ai presque bouclé l'histoire, quelques recherches de personnages, une couverture (peut-être? - jugez-vous même) et 11 pages de dialogues. C'est un drame en un volume de 56 pages.

Donnez-moi vos impressions!

La couverture est-elle accrocheuse ?

N'hésitez pas a me donner votre avis.

Le but: finir le manuscrit dans les 6 mois pour l'envoyer à tous les grands éditeurs Francais.

Delcourt, Dargaud, les Humanoides Associés, Paquet, Vent d'Ouest... J'arrive!




"The Time of the Origamis" or I'm back to my first love: Graphic Novel
I'm almost done with the story, a few character developments, a potential cover (see above) and 11 pages of script. It's going to be a Drama in one album of 56 pages.

Give me your impression on the cover.

Catchy enough?

I need feedback!

The goal: finish a manuscript to send to all the big French publishers in 6 months.

Delcourt, Dargaud, les Humanoides Associés, Paquet, Vent d'Ouest... I'm coming!

Enchanted Glen and its Fairy

More Toy Story 3 Art. The very first pass on the Enchanted Glen and its Fairy character. It evolved quite a bit from there.

Kirby

Here are two marketing pieces I made for a children book called "Kirby Puckernut and the Christmas surprise" that came up last month.

A lot of fun to do!