Ph7labs Blog

Interview with McBess

portrait

1 – To Start, tellus a bit about yourself where you were born and where you live…

My name is mcbess , it’s a short for matthieu bessudo . I was born in 84 in Cannes , south of France , I left France to work here in London where I’m having much fun .

2 – How did you get started in the arts?

I was into music , but south of France is usless when you’re into rock’n'roll , so I went to 3D college because I really like images too . There I ment a bunch of guys that taught me most of what I know today , we all developped our style and move to london as a gang .

3- Where do yo draw your inspiration from?

Everyday life mostly and what I would like to do for the next day , I like my inspiration to be true to what I know to feel confortable talking about it .

4- Can you describe for us what a regular day is like for you?

Wake up around 9 am , sometime take a shower , get on my bike to go to work , there I go for cognac and croissant with my directing partner and the rest of the day is pretty much a blur , but it involes drawing and avoiding work .

5- What is your most common approach for completing a project?

It’s very simple , always start on paper with basic drawings , then a second sketch on the computer that is more flexible in term of position and scale , when I’m really happy with my composition and where I’m going to add details I do the final inking , most of the time on photoshop because I’m very messy with brushes .

6- Out of all your work what is your favorite piece and why?

I think it might be godster , because it fits what I want to do right now , which is play music and for once it was very easy to do .

7- Is it easy to make a living in the work that you do?

I don’t know if it’s easy to live from illustrations because it’s not my only job , I want to preserve this from money problems so I never have to compromise on what I want to do , I direct commercials for a living wich can be interesting but mostly isn’t .

8- Who is your biggest influence?

There’s a few , I really like the work on Dave cooper , Chris ware and kid acne .

9- How important is technology for the work that you do? What tools could you not live with out?

We I’m a nerd so I really enjoy my daily dose of internet , and I really like to work with my tablet and photoshop because it’s very quick and you can experiment a lot .

10- How important is color in your work and why?

It’s actually very important , even though I only do black and white , when I’m using a color or several I’ve got a lot more options to make element nice and readable , with black and white if you want you’re character to have a black shirt with a long and black beard it becomes a problem , but I quite like that as well , makes me think , it’s healthy .