The hip-hop, electronic, and experimental music duo of Russian origin, IC3PEAK surprises us with their latest release "Worm” in collaboration with Australian singer, Kim Dracula. The video directed by the French graphic designer Mattis Dovier shows us a disturbing story through illustrations where he makes a metaphor about metamorphosis. "Worm” breaks with the tour of video clips that IC3PEAK had previously published and tells us a story based on black and white illustrations. The story is located in a subway stop where he tells us a chilling story with a hidden meaning behind it. From: https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/worm-ft-kim-dracula-ic3peak
IC3PEAK is a Russian music group consisting of Anastasia "Nastya" Kreslina (vocals/lyrics) and Nikolay Kostylev (music). They formed in 2013 after they meet at college. They are known for their unique mix of musical genres, unconventional looks, provocative music videos and politicised lyrics. The group became target of censorship by the Russian security forces with their concerts being suddenly stopped and the members being detained for no reason. Conservative media have accused them of distribution of "subversive" material and their music has been called frightening and destructive. Not scared by the attempts to silence them, in 2019 the group became speakers for free speech in Russia and have guested in multiple rallies. The members self-describe as "Audiovisual terrorism". From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/IC3PEAK
We have already had the opportunity to present to you the work of Mattis Dovier, whose creations adopt a particular style: 2D animation in black and white, close to pixel art, with a striking visual universe rich in visual metaphors. Today we invite you to delve in more detail into the world of this artist. Mattis Dovier agreed to come back for us on his career, his style and his projects, but also on his working methods.
3DVF: What is your background?
Mattis Dovier: I am a graphic designer by training, I did a baccalaureate in applied arts then a BTS in visual communication with a multimedia option. Then I did a year of professional training in motion design at the Gobelins school. Even if my school career gave me a lot, I rather developed my animation and illustration techniques as a self-taught person. This is why I did not continue with schools to concentrate on a more personal practice.
3DVF: You are currently a freelance illustrator and animator; what types of projects do you work on the most?
Mattis Dovier: I don't really separate the part of illustration from that of animation, for me it's more of a hybrid, of animated illustration in a way. And more and more, I consider drawing as a simple medium that illustrates a story. But the common thread in my work is its relationship with music, which is why I work more for music videos.
3DVF: Several of your recent films use black and white rendering close to pixel art. Why this artistic choice?
Mattis Dovier: It was a choice that imposed itself on me because it solves a lot of problems that made making clips difficult, even prohibitive. Being alone working on my projects, I had to find a way to work quickly, this is why I became interested in pixel art, we can cover a larger drawing surface on a low resolution image, and therefore gain a lot of time, which makes frame-by-frame animation less tedious. Finally, in addition to the practical aspect, I found this technique interesting for its digital aesthetic associated with the organic side of traditional animation. For black and white it is also a question of speed of execution, but I have always been fascinated by the radical contrasts and the visual impact that this produces among the great masters of black and white in comics. Especially since the “low res” pixel-art aesthetic lends itself quite well to it.
3DVF: On a technical level, what is your process for creating these animations?
Mattis Dovier: My technique is very rudimentary, I use Photoshop like traditional animation software: I create different video layers which serve as layers: one for the contours, one for each fill. When they are invention drawings I use the onion skin function, and when I use videos as a basis, I redraw the video frame by frame on a layer (rotoscope). Generally I mix the two to obtain a realistic result but with a degree of interpretation important enough not to be “photorealistic” and to highlight the drawing.
To get different shades of pixels, I draw pixel patterns which I embed in a layer to draw with. In this way I use pixel grids as more or less dark areas of gray. But there are several ways to do it, you can directly import the grayscale images as bitmaps, but I prefer the “artisanal” solution which gives less random results. Then I edit the animations on Premiere with sound.
3DVF: Is this workflow relatively fixed, or does it evolve over the course of plans and projects?
Mattis Dovier: I remain fairly faithful to my method to maintain consistency in my work and a certain mastery, but over time I refine it by sorting out what works and what doesn't. I often hesitated between breaking this aesthetic or gradually evolving it, and I finally opted for the second option. With each project I try to learn a new technique, for example I increased the resolution of the image to move more towards pointillism and be able to draw more details. In terms of animation too, I no longer animate all the elements with the same ratio, I realized that certain elements must be more fluid and others can be less animated while in my first works I remained on 12 frames/second constant. The main thing is to find ways to evolve without getting bored and falling into repetition. But even if aesthetics are important there are many other aspects to work on such as
Translated from: https://3dvf.com/redaction/dossier-1320-rencontre-avec-mattis-dovier-html/
