Were you inspired by the face of Terry Hall from the group "The Specials"? Your man really reminds me of him... :)

I've never heard of Terry Hall, but there certainly is a slight resemblance. I think, subconsciously, we're inspired by everything that surrounds us and that until now, all my characters have been inspired by well-known actors (Will S, Denzel W, Tom C, Al P, etc.)
These are actors I really admire and you can very easily find reference pictures on the internet or in magazines, however I will be "personalising" my characters a bit more in the future.

Your most recent character, the old man, how was he created?

He's one of my first tests using a combination of LightWave and ZBrush. I started with a relatively basic model in LightWave.
Then I exported it to ZBrush in OBJ format (including UV textures).
Once in ZBrush, I slightly modified the base model and sculpted some details to allow me to generate a displacement map that I could export as a TIFF.
Once back in LightWave, I loaded the displacement map using the 16-bit TIFF loader plug-in from Lynx3D. After a few subdivisions and using Lynx3D's Normal Displacement plug-in, I was set. There's nothing like it to add detail and credibility to models.

Your image of the subway station is perhaps your most well-known picture. How did you do it? Was it for a particular project and was it the reconstruction of somewhere real?

Cinema is a huge source of inspiration for me. After having seen the film "Mimic", I just wanted to reproduce the same kind of subway station.
The models used in the scene are pretty simple. In fact, all the work was in shading, texturing and above all lighting.

Do you do animation at all?

Up until now I've just studied lighting, shading and texturing in general. However, I do have several examples of animation, but I would rather wait until I've attained a quality I'm happy with before showing them. It shouldn't be much longer now...

Have you made high-resolution renders of your characters for print at all, or are they intended solely for the screen?

At the beginning, because I didn't have a big, powerful PC I always worked at video resolutions or slightly higher (1k images).

Now that I'm freelance I've invested quite a lot of money on new equipment. I've therefore decided that each new personal project will have a high level of detail and an increased texture resolution to make print renders from.

What has your work with Benoît Sokal involved on Lost Paradise?

Just on characters, for a change... :) In fact, I've worked on two characters and an animal - the heroine, an ex-dictator and a leopard.
Benoît Sokal is very professional and true to his style - I love working with this sort of client.
In addition, the experience I gained working on the game Amerzone is still an excellent memory for me. I've become a real fan of his work and the style he bring to these games. Don't forget to have a look at his latest illustrations, they are truly promising.

What are you working on at the moment?

I've just finished several ad projects and various jobs for different games companies working on games for the PC, PS2, XBox and so on. So, I'm taking a week off!