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Sketches from Up, Up, Up in the Tree<\/p><\/div>\n
2. When did you first become interested in drawing and illustrating?<\/p>\n
It goes back to when I was little, my dad was the most creative person I knew. He used to work in a superstore, and sometimes they would ask him to create decorations to promote the big blockbuster movies that were coming out. He would work on it at home, and we used to have papier-mach\u00e9 sculptures of King Kong\u2019s body parts here and there, bits of Star Wars spaceships all over our living room. As a hobby, he was doing comics, caricatures, and portraits. He would build us a shadow theater to tell us stories on a weekly basis and build us cars out of cardboard boxes and yogurt pots.<\/p>\n
My childhood was magical, and I guess my dad inspired me so much that I fell naturally into this career.<\/p>\n
3. What sparked your interest in illustrating children\u2019s books?<\/p>\n
While at art school, I wasn\u2019t actually that interested in children\u2019s books. I was reading a lot of comics by Claire Wendling, Philippe Buchet, and R\u00e9gis Loisel, which were all drawn in a semi-realistic style. That was where I wanted to go at first. Over the years my interests changed, and I got more and more interested in visual development on movies made by Pixar, Disney, and other studios. Over the years in art school I progressively changed direction in what and how I wanted to draw.<\/p>\n
4. What is your favorite medium?<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m producing everything with my tablet and my computer, my favorite medium to use on a daily basis is definitely digital, but using Kyle T. Webster\u2019s brushes gives me the feeling of \u201creal painting.\u201d I really like the look that gouache gives to illustrations, the sort of traditional texture to it.<\/p>\n
5. What is your creative process? For example, how many times do you draw a character before you decide it is a success?<\/p>\n
I often do a lot of research about the places, the animals, the characters, etc. I create moodboards on www.niice.co<\/a> for example. I think that provides the material we need to then create, shape, and explore things. So creating characters, for example, can be really straight forward. Or sometimes I can spend a long time playing with shapes and trying my best to do what I have in mind visually. I know my characters aren\u2019t the best they could be, but they are the best I can do at that moment. I\u2019m constantly trying to get better at it, to go forward and upward!<\/p>\n Illustrator Maxime Lebrun<\/p><\/div>\n 6. What inspires you?<\/p>\n What I love about inspiration is when it doesn’t come. At that very moment, when this happens, I can\u2019t just sit down and wait for inspiration to come; I just need to chase it, and one great way of doing so is to go on social media. One thing I do a lot is this exercise \u2014 if you don\u2019t have inspiration just do this, you\u2019ll see it works magic! Go on Instagram for instance, look at the first picture\/photo, look then the one under it. How can you link both of them to do a picture, what story does it tell visually? That exercise can work on Twitter and Facebook, too, I\u2019ve used this as some basic ideas for illustrations.<\/p>\n 7. Tell us about the creation of your favorite character (that you created).<\/p>\n A while back, I was doing the weekly Colour Collective challenge on Twitter. I wanted to get challenged even more, so I started to create one adventurous 8 year old boy and do a story from there, not really knowing what could happen next, considering the color would change the story in a way. To this day, I think it\u2019s the character I most enjoyed going back to and creating a world of his own.<\/p>\n 8. What is your all-time favorite children\u2019s book that you think is a must-read for children now?<\/p>\n You always remember the books that introduced you to \u201creading for fun.\u201d At school we were asked to read a lot of books, but I don\u2019t think I ever enjoyed any of them as much as I enjoyed a book I read when I was 14 by Terry Brooks called: Magic Kingdom for Sale<\/em> \u2014 Sold! A real page turner for someone like me who didn\u2019t like to read much. But I equally enjoyed reading A Series of Unfortunate Events<\/em> at that time, which I think is more of a children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n 9. If you could collaborate with one person \u2013 dead or alive, fictional or not \u2013 who would it be?<\/p>\n Every few months my answer would probably change; I guess it depends on whether it was about collaborating with a writer or another illustrator. If I had the chance to work with anyone, I\u2019d love to work with Mac Barnett \u2014 such a funny writer. And I\u2019d like to collaborate with Dice Tsutsumi or Chris Sasaki, my all time favorites from Pixar.<\/p>\n 10. Explain the feeling you get when you are drawing.<\/p>\n Mostly tiredness, as I\u2019m working weird hours and for a long time. Or frustration if I don\u2019t manage to get what I want. But once that stage is over, it\u2019s fun creating things and playing with the characters, coloring them and giving them their final touches.<\/p>\n Find Maxime Lebrun online: Facebook<\/a> | Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.silverdolphinbooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/photo-2-300x300.jpg\")
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