Biography
I grew up in France. At the age of sixteen, while I was still in high school, I went to evening classes everyday to draw life model in the Beaux-Arts of Marseille. At the age of twenty, I started to paint and sell my watercolors during the summer holidays in the south of France to pay my studies at the University. I obtained a BA in Arts Plastiques at the University of Bordeaux III and then passed the Teaching Certification competitive exam (CAPES). I became an Art Professor and taught in a high school at Le Havre in Normandie. While I was teaching, I passed a competitive exam and attended Ecole Nationale Supérieure Des Arts Décoratifs of Paris, cinema department, and started to make some personal animated cartoon movies.
My first movie “Parfum de Nuit” received some French awards: Grand Prix du Jury at Marly Le Roi National Animation Movie Festival, Prix du Public at Belfort Movie Festival, Grand Prix at Sarlat Movie Festival, and Prix French TV Antenne 2 at Clermont Ferrand Movie Festival.
French TV Antenne 2 purchased my movie “Parfum De Nuit” and offered me to begin making cartoon movies with Cabu, a famous French cartoonist, for their children TV shows programs. To view click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2g5xE_G5Vs
I then departed from the Art Professor job and started the career in the Animation industry, working for different companies as director, animator, storyboard artist and layout artist. Some of my movies received awards in different movie festivals.
In 1994, I was sent to Vietnam to create a French cartoon studio, which became a Humanoid Group studio. It was the challenge of my career. Vietnam did not have any prior experience in the animation industry. I hired the best artists graduating from The University of Fine Art of Ho Chi Minh City and began training them for 2D animation jobs.
I say this was a challenge in my career, for in France, Gobelins Animation School trained graduates for 4 years to become an Animator. While in the context of the Vietnam Studio, I had to train my artists directly on the production, freshly out of university. I was the teacher, the head of production, and the general manager of the studio. Everyday I checked, fixed, and enhanced tons of animation key drawings, layout drawings, and backgrounds painting on Photoshop.
The studio worked on many French and Canadian films. In 2002, the studio staff reached 140 people and it was able to produce 4 films of 26 minutes by the month. The French and Canadian directors then ranked the studio as “The Best Oversea Animation Studio” with a high quality of animation work.
I returned to France and worked as a director and a storyboard artist.
In 2007, I moved to the United States and continued to work on storyboards on my computer, and wrote movie projects. In 2014, I decided to come back to the painting that I had withdrawn from long ago and moved to Florida.
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