#influences

As a kid, I also read a lot of old comics (never Thorgal, which is weird for a fantasy nerd, but I'll come back to it later), I absolutely adored Franquin's Gaston Lagaffe (and still do) ; we also had a whole bunch of Astérix and Tintin (classic french kid education ^^).

(this has to be one of my favorite images EVER)

Also, honorable mention to F'murr's "Le Génie des alpages", this page lives rent-free in my head :

Now, FANTASY : then, boom, at 10-ish, I discovered Le Tendre & Loisel's "La Quête de l'Oiseau du Temps", which was WILDLY inappropriate for my age, but I think a lot of illustrators and artists my age have similar stories, and it made a huge impact on me and still allows me to flex to all the old dudes that populate comic festivals in France (but that's a whole other can of worms), soooo I guess things turned out all right.

A few years later, I also got into Dufaux & Rosinski's "La Complainte des landes perdues" (same artist as Thorgal !) and Bourgeon's "Les Compagnons du crépuscule" :

(I have trouble finding pages of La Complainte's OG series because there were a ton of spin-offs, but the first 4 books are a banger, as far as I remember)

Concerning "Les Compagnons du Crépuscule", I first got into Bourgeon's work through "Les Passagers du vent", because if there's one thing I'm just as obsessed with as fantasy, it's SHIPS and adventures at sea [intense look towards Black Sails and The Terror], but LCC left more of an impact on me, I think.

A personal note about La Quête and Les Compagnons du Crépuscule : these comics are OLD and I have complicated feelings about the way they depict their female protagonists. Yes, they're not the absolute worst I've seen, they do have a mind of their own and some cool moments (oh boy is that bar LOW), but eeeeehhhhhh growing up as a girl and going "ah, so THIS is the role I can have in a story that I otherwise like a lot ?" was not... super fun, let's say. (another can of worms for my queer ass to open later)

Fast forward to 2012 and my very first year of art school : I got super obsessed with Cyril Pedrosa because my aunt lent me her copy of "Trois Ombres", which has the disctinction of being the first book that made me cry :

(ooh look, a ship, whoops that was an accidental coherent segway)

Around the same time, I also really got into Mathieu Bablet's "La Belle Mort" because I was right in the middle of my Tekkon Kinkreet (the animated film, not the source comic ; it took me a while to get to it) phase and these backgrounds looked so good :

BUT the biggest thing for me that year was that our comics/narration teacher, Joseph Lacroix, was a huge Mignola fan, and, well, you can guess what happened...

He showed us this :

And boom, brain chemistry altered (@totheredandblack this one's for you 👀)

I also need to show you his own work, because every time I bring him up in french comic festivals, I get a blank stare -

- and he was also a huge influence on me along with Mignola (maaan I wish I could draw battles and skeletons like he does)

Also, let's circle back to Mignola : I love Hellboy like everyone and their mother, but my real soft spot is for his Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser adaptation, which I stumbled upon at the Cité de la bande dessinée's library in Angoulême back in 2013 :

(here, have two pages as a treat, because I couldn't choose between a cool action scene and the page that has a 'who doesn't chill next to their bestie while they're taking a bath' moment)

(we're almost done I swear, I only have two left)

Number 1 : Around 2013-2014, I discovered Jake Wyatt's work (he has a tumblr, @jakewyattriot , but he seems more active on instagram nowadays), and boom, once again, brain chemistry altered.

(just in case not everyone here knows about Necropolis, just LOOK AT THAT)

Number 2 : in 2020-ish, while I was working on Les Songes du roi griffu, I was kinda struggling with mountains, and I remembered an artist my dad had told me about, Cosey ; I still haven't fully read a lot of his books, but his backgrounds are incredible (it's also interesting to see how his line changed over the years, which is actually true for a lot of the artists I mentionned above).

That's it ! @laserbobcat thanks a lot for your question and for giving me an excuse to yap about artists I like 👌