20 Artists Gathered To Unleash your Creativity

Ready to discover for one of the most impressive line-up for digital artists in Europe? Browse this list of 20 digital artists that will be gathered in Paris from March 17th to 19th for IAMAG Master Classes. Get ready for some serious Inspiration and prepare your portfolio to Meet the studios looking for new talents!

 

#1- Ryan Church – Lucasfilm Concept Design Supervisor

Ryan Church worked the last 15 years honing his professional craft but has spent a lifetime drawing spaceships and monsters. Ryan has been employed by many of his inspirations during his career, having been part of creative teams with James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ann Druyan and JJ Abrams. Ryan has worked for Lucasfilm, ILM and the Los Angeles Local 800 Art Directors Guild, among other film, video game and architectural clients.

#2- Raphael Lacoste – Senior Art Director

Art Director of Assassin’s Creed, Raphaël Lacoste was the Art Director of Ubisoft for games like Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed. He won a VES Award in February 2006 for his work on “Two Thrones” from Prince of Persia.

After this experience, Raphael worked as a Matte Painter and Senior Concept Artist on movies like Terminator Salvation, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Death Race, Immortals 2011, Repo Men, and Jupiter Ascending. In 2009, Raphael returned to the Video Game industry as a Senior Art Director for Electronic Arts Montreal.

Today, he is the Art Director for the Assassin’s Creed games for Ubisoft.

#3- Goro Fujita – Oculus Story Studio Art Director

Goro Fujita is an Art Director, illustrator and visual development artist based in the Bay Area California. In 2008 he joined DreamWorks Animation as a visual development artist and worked on Merry Madagascar, Megamind, Madagascar 3, Penguins of Madagascar and upcoming Boss Baby. Additionally Goro has illustrated numerous book covers, published children’s books and mobile games. .

He is currently an Art Director at Oculus Story Studio in San Francisco where he art directed the VR experience “Henry”. Using innovative software and hardware such as “Oculus Medium” and “Oculus Quill”  to create art he is a truly pioneer in the VR field.

#4- James Clyne – Senior Visual Effects Director at ILM

James Clyne has worked as a film industry artist for well over a decade.  James has collaborated on well over thirty film projects. Highlights include working with Steven Spielberg on a number of projects in various capacities related to visualization. On A.I. and Minority Report James not only designed specific production assets but also created imagery that was used to inform the look of the movies through the relationship between light and emotion.

 James was selected by Steven Spielberg to put together an art team for the development of a television series. James has also worked with James Cameron on Avatar and Battle Angel, JJ Abrams on both Star Trek films, Robert Zemeckis, as well as projects with Michael Bay, Darren Aronofsky, and Terry Gilliam, to name a few.

In 2013, James joined Industrial Light and Magic and was given the opportunity to work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens as an Art Director. He’s currently enjoying exploring further worlds in the new Star Wars film universe

#5- Ash Thorp – Director & Graphic Designer

Ash Thorp is a graphic designer, illustrator, artist, and creative director for a multitude of media, including feature films, commercial enterprises, and print. With an exceptional style of his own, Ash quickly gained recognition for his astounding UI (user interface) graphics in Ender’s Game and Total Recall.

Thorp has also contributed to the design direction and concepts for Spectre (James Bond), Person of Interest, Prometheus, X-men First Class, the Amazing Spiderman 2, Call of Duty, and many more games and films.

#6- Ian Mcque – Art Director

Ash Thorp is a graphic designer, illustrator, artist, and creative director for a multitude of media, including feature films, commercial enterprises, and print. With an exceptional style of hi

Ian is a concept artist/illustrator. He spent over 20 years working in the video game industry as lead concept artist and assistant art director on the bestselling Grand Theft Auto series.

Now freelance and working mainly in visual development for film, his recent clients include 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros and Sony Pictures.

 

#7- Joaquin Baldwin – CG Layout Supervisor at Disney

 

Joaquin Baldwin is a CG layout supervisor, photographer and animator, known for his award-winning independent animated shorts and his work at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. His films have earned him over 100 awards in festivals such as Cannes, Student Academy Awards, Cinequest, USA Film Festival and Cinanima. He was nominated for an Annie Award in 2008 for his short “Sebastian’s Voodoo,” alongside Disney, Pixar, Aardman and Plympton.

Joaquin has a bachelors in animation from CCAD, and a masters in animation from UCLA. He has been working at Disney since 2010, where he’s played a part as a layout artist and layout supervisor in films such as Zootopia, Moana, Big Hero 6, Frozen, Feast and Wreck-It Ralph.

#8- Alexis Wajsbrot – VFX Supervisor at Framestore

Alexis Wajsbrot worked on visual effects for the past 13 years. He served as CG Supervisor on Shane Black Iron Man 3, Doug Liman Edge of Tomorrow and more recently supervised the visual effects of Dean Devlin Geostorm and Scott Derickson Doctor Strange. In 2014 he won a Visual Effect Society Award on Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity for Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in a Live Action Motion Picture

Alexis Wajsbrot is currently VFX Supervisor on Taika Waititi Thor Ragnarok.

#9- Andrew Schmidt – Director at Dreamworks

Andrew L. Schmidt is a director at Dreamworks TV Animation with over 25 years experience in both traditional 2D and CG animation. Throughout his career, he has amassed a long list of film credits which includes The Prince of Egypt, The Iron Giant and the Academy Award winning films Wall-E, Ratatouille, Up, Toy Story 3 and Brave.

Schmidt joined Pixar Animation Studios in 2000 where he worked as an animator and supervising animator as well as writing and directing commercials and promotional material for the Disney Pixar feature films Cars 2 and Brave.

He supervised animation for the VES award winning Ratatouille themed ride for Disney Pixar Theme Parks in Paris and was Head of Animation and Story on the upcoming Finding Nemo ride opening in Japan in 2017. In May 2015 Schmidt joined Dreamworks TV Animation and is currently a director on the upcoming Guillermo Del Toro Trollhunters series.

#10- Marc Simonetti – Concept Artist

Marc Simonetti (born in 1977 in France) is a French concept artist/ illustrator. Best known for his work on GRR Martin’s books “A song of Ice and Fire”, and his Iron throne, he’s also illustrated some of the most well known fantasy and SciFi novels, such as the Discworld by Terry Pratchett, The Royal Assassin trilogy by Robin Hobb, Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of truth”, or Frank Herbert…

He’s also worked for many video games companies such as Activision, Ubisoft, Magic The Gathering, EA, Square Enix and King Isle Entertainment. He’s just released an art book “coverama”, and is currently working on several projects such as long feature movies, and doing some concept art for video games, as a freelancer.

Marc has spent most of last year working on Luc Besson’s next movie “Valerian”

#11- Mike Blum – Director

Mike Blum is an Emmy-nominated director and has won many awards in his multiple capacities as director, writer and producer. 

Mike worked as an executive at Walt Disney Feature Animation and also served as the Technical Supervisor on Disney’s version of the animated feature TOY STORY 3. Mike’s numerous animation credits include CHICKEN LITTLE, LILO & STITCH, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, ATLANTIS AND DINOSAUR.

Mike’s crew at Pipsqueak Films has completed animation projects for clients including Comedy Central, Netflix, MTV, DreamWorksTV and Explosm Entertainment.

Mike is the creator and showrunner of the award-winning animated series FIFI: CAT THERAPIST (DreamWorks TV) and GET MY GOAT (DreamWorks TV). Prior to that, Mike was the creator and showrunner of the hit animated digital series, SAMURAI! DAYCARE (Defy Media/SMOSH), producer and director of the Emmy nominated THE ADVENTURES OF BAXTER & MCGUIRE (Comedy Central) which screened in competition at Sundance and Annecy, and writer/producer/director of THE ZIT (PBS) which screened in over 100 festivals and won numerous international awards.  

#12- Jean Baptiste Monge – Concept Artist

Jean-Baptiste Monge is a French Illustrator, author, painter since 1994, creating his own illustrating stories in books. In 2010 and he moves to Canada, and then continues to explore further and develop its expertise and imagination of the characters.Whether for their early concepts or later in the project directly on 3D, JB Monge has designed characters for companies such as Walt Disney Imagineering, Sony Pictures Animation, Digital Domain, Blizzard entertainment to name a few.

Member of the Society of Illustrators NY,  JB Monge’s work received several nominations and awards in the last years. Since 2016, JB Monge is back to illustration with his publisher Goblin’s WAY, created with his wife, translating his entire bibliography for a worldwide distribution of new painting & books projects.

#13- Nikolai Lockersten – Concept Artist

Nikolai Lockertsen is a ConceptArtist and Illustrator based in Norway. He has worked in the film industy and vfx since late 90’s. For various companies like Qvisten, Filmkameratene, Gimpville and Storm Studios. on more than 30 feature films, tons of tv productions and commercials.

Nikolai is currently working a a freelancer. In edition to film-related art, he is also doing illustrations for book covers, children-books, theater stage-design, promo-art and more. With costumers all over the world.

In 2012 he started doing all his professional and private artwork on the iPad with the painting app Procreate. Nikolai is a pioneer in iPad art, and sharing as much of his knowledge as possible. Teaching Illustration, ConceptArt and painting with Procreate is very important to Nikolai. He teaches at art schools, film schools and holds lectures and demos worldwide.

#14- Neil Blevins – 3D Artist at Pixar

Raised on a healthy dose of scifi and fantasy films, books, and videogames,Neil Blevins started off painting and drawing traditionally, and then got into 3d graphics while neil still lived in my hometown of Pointe Claire, in Quebec, Canada. After getting a BFA in Design Art at Concordia University, Neil moved to Los Angeles where I worked for Blur Studio, creating graphics for video games, commercials, TV, feature and ride films.

Neil now lives in San Francisco working as a Digital Artist for Pixar Animation Studios, primarily creating Environments.

#15- Nathan Fowkes – Concept Artist

Nathan Fowkes is a veteran entertainment industry artist with credits on 11 feature films including: The Prince of Egypt, Spirit, several projects within the Shrek Universe, How to Train Your Dragon and The Legend of Puss in Boots with additional projects from Disney and Blue Sky Studios. Nathan is also well known as a teacher of color, light and design; he teaches at The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, online at Schoolism.com and is a regular guest lecturer at Art Center College of Design.

Additionally Nathan has been sought after as a consultant for game studios to enhance the quality of their theatrical presentation. He has worked with numerous clients including Blizzard Entertainment, Infinity Ward, Disney Interactive, Riot Games, Ubisoft and Rovio. Nathan is currently a design lead at Paramount Feature Animation and is color-scripting their upcoming animated feature.

#16- Allan Mckay – VFX Supervisor

Allan McKay is an Emmy award winning Visual Effects Supervisor, originally from Brisbane, Australia – living in Los Angeles, California. Allan has over two decades of experience working in the visual effects industry for many leading studios such as Industrial Light & Magic, Pixomondo, Blur Studio, Atomic Fiction, Prime Focus, Ubisoft, Activision and dozens of others.

McKay is responsible for many visual effects sequences including hit projects like Transformers, Blade, The Last Airbender, Star Trek, Superman, Flight, The Equalizer, and dozens of other films, as well as many of the top video games worldwide including Halo, Destiny, Call of Duty, Bioshock, Prototype, Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, and dozens of others.

Allan’s studio Catastrophic FX is located in Los Angeles, as well as running many online courses, and his mentorship with over 1,000 members. Throughout the past two decades Allan has spoken in front over 100,000 people and spoken at events in over 15 different countries including Paris, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Singapore, Helsinki as well as master classes at SIGGRAPH and many other events.

#17- Jonny Duddle – Illustrator and Concept Artist

Jonny Duddle is a writer, illustrator and concept artist based in Wales. After finishing art college dazed and bewildered, he lived and worked on a pirate ship for a year, entertained kids in Majorca and taught art in the Kalahari desert before settling into the computer games industry. Jonny worked for three major British studios over eight years before freelancing for SCEE, whilst writing and illustrating his own picture books. His award-winning books have now been published in more than twenty countries. Between 2008 and 2012, Jonny was a character artist on Aardman’s stop-motion feature film ‘The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!’, designing many of the lead characters, props and creatures.

Jonny’s time is now split between concept art for film and television, writing his own books and illustrating work by other authors, most recently creating new covers for the ‘Harry Potter’ series.

#18- Dan Roarty – 3D Lead Character Artist

Dan Roarty is currently a lead character artist at Microsoft on Gears of war 4 in Vancouver. Previous to that Dan Worked at Crystal Dynamics aiding in building Lara Croft for the recent Tomb Raider Franchise. With 12+ years in the video game industry.

Dan has worked for companies such as Activision, Lucas Arts, Square Enix and now Microsoft. Known for his personal realistic portraits, Dan also has publications in ‘The New Yorker’, ‘Discover’ and “3d artist magazine” to name a few.

#19- Clay Kaytis – Director

Clay Kaytis is a director and animator, making his film directing debut for Rovio Animation with The Angry Birds Movie, based on the number one app of all time. Before Rovio, Kaytis developed his talent as a film maker at Walt Disney Animation Studios, starting as an intern in the Talent Development Program in 1994.

Kaytis animated on hand-drawn films including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan, Fantasia 2000, The Emperor’s New Groove and Treasure Planet. In 2004, Kaytis transitioned to CG animation to animate on Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. He was quickly promoted to Supervising Animator on Rhino, the hamster, in Bolt.

For his work developing Rhino for the screen, Kaytis was awarded a U.S. Patent and Disney Inventor Award for his invention of a “distance based mesh deformer.” Kaytis strongly influenced the culture and artistic standards at Disney as Head of Animation on Tangled, a film that set a new standard for CG animation. Next Kaytis designed and directed the end credit titles for Wreck-it Ralph. He also worked on the academy award wining and record-breaking feature, Frozen and was Head of Animation on the short, Tangled Ever After.

During his career at Disney, Kaytis was fortunate to work with legendary animators and film makers including John Lasseter, Glen Keane, Eric Goldberg and Ken Duncan. In 2011 Kaytis directed two live-action/animation hybrid commercials and promotional materials for Illumination Entertainment’s feature film, Hop. Kaytis is also the creator of The Animation Podcast, a series of interviews with animation legends that is enjoyed by students, professionals and fans of animation. Kaytis has been nominated for an Annie Award, and two Visual Effects Society Awards.

#20- Jason Scheier – Concept Artist and Design Instructor

Jason is a conceptual illustrator and design instructor. His lifelong enthusiasm for narrative storytelling, visual development, and picture making informs all his professional experiences. He is a keen observer of both the natural world and the man-made world, always attempting to reverse engineer the fantastic details.

Jason brings his strong instincts for design, composition, color, and lighting and his experience in cinematography to his passion for virtual environment creation. He has worked with a number of studios including DreamWorks Animation SKG, Warner Brothers Feature Animation, Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment, and Walt Disney Imagineering. He has also taught at the Art Center College of Design, Brainstorm School, Concept Design Academy, Laguna College of Art and Design, and Computer Graphics Masters Academy.

A graduate of California State, Fullerton, with a bachelor of arts degree in fine arts and illustration, he also studied media arts and animation at the Art Institute of California and entertainment design at the Art Center College of Design.

Jason Scheier is sponsored by The Creative Talent Network

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 Schedule

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Seat Option : Get your Pass for 3 Days to Learn, Share & Connect with hundreds of artists from all around the world, including Master Classes, Portfolio Reviews and Recruitment Sessions in Paris ( *Video Ticket Included until Penultimate Batch ) 

Video Ticket Option  : Hours of Videos from the Master Classes Available for Download or Stream, recorded in two versions : On Stage + Screencast

 

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