IA: What have you learned from working in the game industry?

RL: It has been good to meet so many talented people, good to work on challenging projects and good to earn a living. But, it is also an industry I am not very happy in any more. There are huge teams and never-ending meetings and you have to deal a lot with the game design, technical constraints and tool development. There are a lot of technical problems that can push you away from your first goal, to make a piece of art!

I must say that I met incredible artists while working in the game industry and you won’t find easily such creative teams in the movie industry but I think I’ve done my time in videogames. And I’m just not enough of a hard core gamer ;)

IA: You've worked on numerous well-known games. Can you tell us about the working process of 2D artists in such environment?

RL: The 2D Artists are really involved at the beginning of the production and after that they are more like marketing assistants for a while. The more exciting work happens while we are still searching for style, picture composition, character designing, etc. Sometimes, concept artists are really important during the preproduction because they are Art Directing with the Art director.

IA: Now that you've joined Rodeo FX will this be a chance for you to advance in the animation/VFX industry or will you focus on developing your directing skills?

RL: As I said before, I am a bit tired of the Game Industry. I loved the projects I worked on but I’m ready for new challenges. I want to concentrate on details, image composition and create plausible worlds even if they are completely digitally formed. I now work with very talented matte painters, like Mathieu Raynault, so I can be pretty sure that I will make some progress. So, yes, I have moved on to evolve, to discover new things and also for the change. Film and vfx have always been fascinating to me.

IA: What defines you the best? Photographer? Matte painter? Artistic director?

RL: Well, I am photographer but not professionally. I am a professional illustrator; matte painter is my job and the more technical definition of what I do. I guess you could simplify things and call me a digital artist. But I do know that I am not a character designer for instance! I think that good matte painters need a lot of different skills. For example, take a guy like Michael Pangrazio who was the artistic director on Peter’s Jackson King Kong, he was also one of the famous traditional matte painters for Star Wars. The job of a matte painter is to create a scene including image composition, lighting, mood, textures etc. A good matte Painter is potentially an art director, an illustrator and very often a photographer.

RL: Digital Art is just technical stuff; it will never make an artist better. The medium is not the concern of art, the concern for figurative art and illustration did not change: composition, lighting, proportions, storytelling, settings, etc.
For instance, I love the art of Craig Mullins. This guy is using new technology to create classical paintings. I love his work because it reminds me 19th century paintings with modern topics.

IA: How do you see this evolution?

RL: I think that good artists will always be the ones who have a traditional background. You can always tell if an artist has a background in traditional art, even if you are looking at a digital work. So I don’t think there will be a real evolution except that sometimes tools are too slow, maybe the evolution could be that tools are closer and closer to artists’ real needs.