| C2 Mtl...

Ubisoft has been an early partner of C2 MTL and this year they've decided to give all the in-house artists (~400 people) a chance to participate in decorating the warehouse. Unfortunately almost none responded which is honestly quite disappointing, consequently, most of the Art Directors had to be involved despite the fact that we already are on overtime for the E3 period. Anyways the goal was to pick one of the 7 pillars you see below and illustrate the corresponding sentences (top area). I've partnered with Benoit Massé, co-Art Director on our project, and here you can see our rushed answer, it was fun though and the conference was hosted at the beautiful Arsenal Gallery near the Lachine canal.  Kudos to the organizers :)

| Crunch time!..

Summer is upon us or it feels like it, I've started rock climbing again and I forgot how great the sport is, tough to get back into it but a very rewarding lunch break during those long working days! Now, this is usually a very busy period for all of us videogame bees, E3 is coming soon, we have to work twice as much to produce some exciting trailers, or demos for an hungry audience, let's call it an official rush time... and how boring when the sun has decided to come back. Anyways I wanted to say that I unfortunately had to cancel my participation to the Steambot Workshop in New Orleans due to the rush time at Ubisoft, this is such a bad timing it's not even funny, all my friends and fellow artists will be having so much fun there :-( I miss you guys! In the meantime, some old stuff from WARP...

| Tumblred...

I've decided to open a Tumblr account with more images and less bla-bla, unfortunately I couldn't post this animated Gif of an illustration done for TRON: Legacy, so it'll only appear here. The 3D SketchUp model was done by the set designers.

And a rejected sketch that was made for an Ipad game pitch... Mecha+kid+square brush fun time!

| Workshop SB...

Long time no see, guess who's back at Ubisoft working on a... fitness game, yes yes indeed??? I was very sceptical when they contacted me to be honest, until the two Charles and Caroline got me excited, very surprising but thanks a lot to bringing me on board, it's a lot of fun!

In the meantime I teach the Environment design class at the Centre NAD  for the winter session. Here is a little sketch done tonight in class #8. Thanks to my students for their patience and motivation.

I'm also excited to announce that I'll be part of the instructors' crew at the 1st Steambot Workshop in New Orleans, Louisiana. So please check this out and I hope to see some of you there in May! 

| Heist guards...

Happy New Year to y'all, 2012 has been very interesting and hopefully was a good wake up call for all of us, it's time to make changes in this world, we can do our part with more interesting content in our art pieces too. 

More things from Heist, corporate militia and researches for the Guards, we had to incorporate some gameplay parameters like the weakness areas (blue lights). More on the Hero character development (base models by Kevin. D and Gabriel. C!

| Heist...

More things here, you can see some early researches for the main characters and the basic guards. After the demo ended I decided to change the overall look of the characters for something more unique in terms of proportions and textures, we wanted a different approach and started experimenting with shaders and silhouettes, unfortunately the project stopped before we could finalize it. (P.Os over Gabriel, Mike's base models).

I wanted to do something different for the Hero's love interest, to move on from the traditional sexist and stereotyped representation and the female tropes in the game industry. She was supposed to be a thief too, probably even better/fun than him, however I didn't have enough time to spend on researches, such a shame, she was my favorite character. (P.O over Martin's Citizen base model).

| R.I.P...

Trapdoor has now officially closed its... doors, it's been a great ride for 2 years and a half with an amazing team and some fun, original and creative projects. We've worked on a few games, some were cancelled, some will probably never see the light of your monitors but at least we've had some good times!!!

Heist (codename) started right after WARP as a side-scroller stealth-action game for XBLA and PSN but due to a weakening online console market (for us Indie developers that said) we canned it after about 6 months worth of work and cool visual experimentation,  it was a devastating but justified decision. I'll be posting some of the things we've done. Check this demo!

Early concept art and POs (paint-over) for the demo and the main characters. It was a great team effort!

| Hey voleur...

Some illustrations done for a rushed game-pitch at Trapdoor about 2 years ago while working on WARP.

| Freedom...

What a crazy day!!! more info coming soon about it but for now I only think about the time I was riding dirt bikes around Bamako in Mali.

| Judgement...

While painting an environment I accidentally mirrored one of my layers which gave me an interesting symmetry to play with, problem is that it looked better than the original one so I decided to finish it first, the other one is coming soon. I forgot to post a speedpainting done during lunchtime last week so here it is!

| Ring grrl...

Character design research...

| Mudtown brush...

Here is a rapid sketchy painting done entirely with the same square brush that I forgot in the large stack of custom brushes, interesting technique and I'll try to use it again... soon. Happy Halloween!!!

| Riverside show...

September 30, 2012 - January 10, 2013

The Riverside Art Museum (RAM) is proud to present Painting in Pixels: An Exhibition of Concept Art that explores the work that defines this genre and showcases exemplary pieces of character design, vehicle design, and environment painting. I'll have a piece included among an incredible array of works from amazing concept artists, check it out! A big thank you Nicole and Thomas for giving me a chance to participate.

| Planet rash...

Flying over São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro is quite an inspiring feast for the eyes, the way Nature and human constructions are intrinsically blended is somewhat striking yet mesmerizing... but I can't stop thinking that we are the cancer of this planet.

| Old poster...

Oi, tudo bem?

I just came back from a 10 days trip to Floripa, Brazil and it was unbelievable, what a nice place! Not so much to say but here is an old poster I have digged out from my back-ups, it was supposed to be used at the CG CON 09 in Hollywood but never really saw the light of day. Definitely a stereotyped sexist theme but hey, sometimes you don't get to choose a contract.