- Interview by Steve Ogden (FEB 2007)

Pascal Campion is very good at drawing. Perhaps you would not be surprised to learn that he practices his art frequently... daily, even. For over a year and a half now, Pascal has been creating the most intriguing sketches and little story illustrations on a daily basis. They range from quick doodles while he talks on the phone with someone particularly chatty, to full blown sequential illustrations that put many storyboard artists to shame. Somewhere along the line, he also pounds out quick little charming animations full of imagination and energy.

This 33 year old artist currently hails from San Franciso with his charming fiancé. He grew up in Martiques, a little town right outside of Marseilles, in the south of France, and went to college in Strasbourg, very near Germany. He was struck by how different the two places were, from weather to architecture to the look and feel of the people he met. You can see the vestiges of those observations in his sketches today.

Pascal works as a Lead Animator at Leap Frog, making educational games for kids. He also does quite a bit of freelance design and animation work. Not bad for a guy who began his career as a Chef in a French restaurant, and spent a summer moving furniture on St. Croix.

His drawing collection sounds eclectic, and it is. It sounds creative and inspiring, and it is. But it's also something else: a testament to the power of story in images. Pascal took a few minutes out of his prolific drawing schedule to talk to us about design, illustration and animation.

OGDEN: You seem interested in all sorts of art - illustration, comics, animation. Do you have a favorite?

PASCAL: I never thought much about animation until I got to the states. I was only interested in Graphic novels growing up. That's all I wanted to do.

When I was in my third year in college, one of our teachers introduced us to the Festival d'Annecy. He had a bunch of VHS tapes of the past winners, and on one of the tapes, I saw two films that completely changed my outlook on animation: "The Fish and the Monk", and "When the Cat Comes Back". Both of these shorts made me realize animation did NOT have to be Walt Disney.

I didn't do much about it for a bit, but when I got to the states, I sort of fell into animation and embraced it. I loved it. For a period of time, I wasn't even drawing anymore, I was just doing animations.

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Then, when I moved to the bay area, I met a bunch of guys who were going to Comicon. They all had books of sketches ready for the event.I thought these were really cool, and decided to try and do one. That's when I started doing a sketch a day, so that within a year, I'd have enough sketches to fill a small book. So, although I was an animator by that time, I redeveloped a desire and a love for illustrations. At the beginning the sketches of the day were very simple and very rough, and they gradually began to get composed and a lot more elegant.

Now, I balance both, having, depending on my mood or what project I'm working on, more love for one than the other. It's sometimes hard to decide which one I should be doing though.

OGDEN: What artists have influenced you in your art?

PASCAL: The usual answer is.. too many to mention, but... I like people like NC Wyeth, Rockwell, Tadahiro Uesugi, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, the impressionists in general, Rousseau, Lewis Trondheim, Regis Loisel, Shag, Watterson, Hank Ketcham, etc etc.. There's really a ton of artists out there that have influenced me one way or another, sometimes because I like what they do, and sometimes because I don't. It's funny how that works.

I'm also inspired by Books. I have spurts of time when I read an enormous amount, and periods when I don't. I find phenomenal visual inspiration in the works of Twain, Pratchett, Marcel Pagnol, Jules Vernes and many others. And, for animation,a lot of my inspiration comes from music of all kinds...techno as well as classical, pop, Hip Hop, and what not. The beat is what I usually look for.

"I approach each piece I do by asking myself what the heck is going on? Why is it happening? Where is it? Who is doing what? How? These are the really basic journalistic questions, but they do work very well for me."     - Pascal Campion

OGDEN: Story is obviously very important in your work. Tell us a bit about how you approach your work from a story standpoint.

PASCAL: The school I went to was not a drawing school but an Illustration school. The difference is that they weren't intent on teaching us different drawing techniques, but were stressing the fact that we were storytellers that used a graphic medium. I never thought of myself as a great draftsman, and I still feel like I have major weaknesses in that area.

So, I approach each piece I do by asking myself ... what the heck is going on? Why is it happening? Where is it? Who is doing what? How? These are the really basic journalistic questions, but they do work very well for me.

OGDEN: To what degree does your life figure into the stories you tell?

PASCAL: It's always in there. When I do sad illustrations, that's usually a sign that I have some sadness about me, when they're happy, I'm usually happy. The characters in my work often times resemble me, my fiancé, or my friends. I also think my characters tend to do the stuff I would love to do if I was in a fantasy world.

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