Raphael Lacoste lives in Canada, Montreal, with wife and son since 2002. He was born in 1974 in Paris, but lived mostly around Bordeaux, south west of France until he left for Canada. Check out some of these amazing matte painting by Raphael Lacoste who won aVES Award in february 2006.
He studied in 1993 at Fine Arts school, Art and Media option, Photography and Video, at the same time, he was photographer and composer for a theatre company “les Pygmalions”. He was already attracted by the scenery, mood and lighting. The Company Gave him the opportunity in 1997 to work on “the little Prince” of St Exupéry, he did there his first 3D pictures that were projected on giant screens with Pani 6KW projectors, Raphael was also the screening coordinator. It was a funny experience, very intense.
This was now time for him to learn more 3D, CG tools to create what he had in mind, he went to CNBDI school (Angouleme, France) and got a European Master of Art in 3D animation, his movie “Nîumb” was screened at Siggraph 2000, Imagina 2000, Anima mundi 2001…
He had teachers like René Laloux, Director of “Time masters”, “Gandahar”, “Fantastic Planet”… Raphael was very impressed by the work of his teacher and learned a bit of his knowledge…
His movie Gave him the opportunity to start to work on video Game projects from the end of 1999, at Kalisto Entertainment, he worked on several projects that were unfortunately not released (Dark Earth2, Siddhe, Asterix, Highlander Online…)
Just Before the ship went down in 2002 with 200 other French companies, Raph had a good star (like the little Prince?), he had a Call from Ubisoft Montreal that was searching for an Art Director for the licence Prince of Persia… in 2004, Raphael was Nominee for Art direction in prince of persia the Sands of time at the IGDA Awards. In 2006, he wins a VES award for “outsanding prerendered visuals in a videogame”, this is one of the best honor in the CG field.
Raphael Is now Art director in the Ubisoft’s Cinematic Studio and worked on several projects like Prince of Persia the two thrones and warrior within, He does MattePainting in “sparetime” and helps the mattepainters in production on a few plates, he is also teaching lighting in the Ubisoft Campus … feel free to visit all the parts of his website.
http://www.raphael-lacoste.com/
[tags]Raphael Lacoste, Art, Matte painting, Illustration, Fantasy, Gaming Art[/tags]