Inspiring Artists: Fabrice Parme

A few years ago, my friend Ahmed introduced me to a french artist by the name of Fabrice Parme. Like many European artists, Fabrice is an expert cartoonist and storyteller. One of the biggest things that struck me about his work though, is his amazing sense of design. It's in his characters, backgrounds, props, and in his compositions.

He's got a very keen eye for shape, proportion, and pattern. Check out that awesome bed and toys.

I LOVE the plane in this shot. Very caricatured.

His cars are very fun as well. Especially the Number 08 car. Hilarious!

The first series of his I hunted down was "Le Roi Catastorphe" , which roughly translates into "The King catastrophe". There are nine books in the series, and just loaded with lots of fantastic artwork. Luckily enough I found a place back in Montreal, Canada where the price was very decent with the exchange (~$15 Canadian), and very fast shipping. Great store...check it out here.

Some covers and interiors:









So not to be a one trick pony, after Le Roi Catastrophe Fabrice decided to change gears a little and do a book called Venezia. The style's a little more comic bookish but still full of lush designs.


In my quest for even more Fabrice, I came across a very early graphic novel book he did called "Sang de Vampire". You can tell he's still struggling with finding his style, but the foundation is there. Still great character design sensibilities.


A great lineup of characters! Each one has a unique shape and is easily identifiable as that character if the lineup was all in silhouette.

My favorite page in the whole book ;)

So flash forward to the present! What's he been up to recently? Well at comicon, I came across his newest book, "Ovni".

In this book, he changes pace again with a sort "Where's Waldo" type layout. Each spread follows a little alien that crash lands on earths...over the course of human evolution. Caveman, Aztec, Roman..all the civilizations are in there.



So that about sums up my fascination with Fabrice Parme. Hope you guys liked it. If I get enough people interested, I'll see if I can put together another posts outlining another one of my favorite artists. Maybe some Jolly Roger Bradsfield, or Mel Crawford.

Goodnight Miss Munroe...

My piece for the LA Myth show over at Meltdown comics this weekend. It's a little darker than my usual stuff but I had lot of fun trying something new. If you're in the area, then drop by and check out out the show...oodles of amazing artwork from some very talented people. Thanks to mi amigo, Kyle for the invite!

Design graveyard..

So my friend Robin told me at comicon this weekend that I've been severely slacking on my blog duties. The ironic thing is that I'M usually the one ripping on my friends about being slackers. Ha!

So to keep things fresh, I'll introduce something stanky I call, "The Design Graveyard". Here's a collection of designs that have been rejected, cut (because of time constraints), or just plain tossed out. Some are finished, and some are rough. Hopefully they find a home with you guys!