Collection Ten - Fotolia - Mr xerty

Hi, I’m Brice Chaplet, also known as Mr. Xerty. I’m 27, and I live in Clichy, France, and I’m a freelance graphic designer. I’m pretty much self-educated, although I’ve had some formal training. After studying geography and cartography in University, 7 00:00:25,972 --> 00:00:27,972 I pursued professional training and completed a six month internship. After that, I accepted a contract, and then became a freelancer. I started developing an illustration style about 3 years ago. 11 00:00:39,784 --> 00:00:44,159 It’s a style that involves photographs called photo-illustration. I draw sometimes, but I’m not very skilled at it. I can’t draw a self portrait… Regardless, I’ve always had a good eye for proportions. I used to do graffiti - super fun stuff… My friends used to encourage me but then one day I was introduced to Photoshop, and the rest is history… I instantly fell in love. How could I not ? A lot of my main influences come from cinema, comic books and graffiti. There are some film directors I like a lot, like Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet… I’m also strongly influenced by the steampunk style, and by comic book writers Enki Bilal and the late Moebius. I started off by making flyers and CD covers for friends, which I still do, but just in small spurts on the side. I’m really into press work lately. I do a lot of illustrations for magazines, like "Science et Vie Junior" (a scientific youth magazine), "Que choisir" magazine (a consumer advocacy magazine), the INRS (workers’ security national institute), and Oracom magazine. Mostly tutorials and covers… I recently designed some book covers, which I’m very proud of. You can see some of my work on books such as "Around the World in 80 days “. I also do some advertising work on occasion. Since I use so many techniques, I’d have to say that my style is definitely mixed media. I mix photomontages with textures, vector shapes, and most recently with 3D. I tend to rely on basic shapes. I find they complement my illustrations better. I guess you could also say my style is kind of quirky, crazy, and very colorful. Do I have a process? Absolutely! I try not to repeat my style too much so I try to freestyle as much as I can, but there are certain steps I follow to go faster and maintain professionalism. Besides, the more work you do for clients, the more you get into habits, and a process naturally happens. I deal with the photomontage first, and then I focus on the backgrounds for a bit before I adjust the photomontage again and start adding the little details. My first go-to tool is Photoshop, but I use Illustrator when I’m working with vectors, which makes up about 30% of my work. I also use C4D when working with geometric shapes and 3D objects. I chose “mobile” as my TEN Collection theme. I began by searching for pictures that would be perfect for photomontages with impact. Once I figured out which elements would work best together, 5, 00:03:45,014 --> 00:03:47,206 I made sure to store them on my PC, in addition to the lightbox on Fotolia.co.uk I started making montages from that point on. My vision was to create an illustration where there’s tons of stuff happening, with lots of details, little technical tricks, and an assortment of pictures that would be visually appealing to other designers. As for the creation process, I focused on the background first to make it colorful, playful, with lots of sunshine. I made the background blue to imitate the sky, and added a beach and dunes. I love anything related to the desert, especially the contrast between blue and cream colours. Then, I integrated an element of depth by adding a pontoon going towards the phone. I took some time to isolate the pontoon and added a number of effects to the phone once it was isolated. I used some filters on it, like the Glowing Edges filter, to highlight the white edges surrounding the phone. I changed the screen by adding pictures, different shades, and all the small details to the mobile phone, like the flying SIM cards with motion blur to give off the illusion of speed via Gaussian Blurs, shadows, and lots of overlays in the sky. There’s colourimetry too, which is important, and I can adjust it quickly if need be. I have good color orientation here because the sky is already put in place. Then I added seagulls with little traces on their trail, I added some light effects that I hand drew with Photoshop, and after that I used the Motion Blur and Distort filter to add some dynamism. I finished by working with lights and shadows. I used Clipping Masks on the characters, and I put the layer I had painted with the graphic tablet in Overlay mode. A touch of white for the light, a touch of black for shadows, reducing opaqueness and using the Overlay mode. I have two upcoming projects. They’re both exhibitions… One is a collective that I can’t disclose too much about, and the other one is called ‘*** my Vinyl’. It’s about vinyls and cover customization. On the personal side, I’m going to keep on freelancing for the time being and will probably showcase a new exhibition in the next 6 months. A big THANK YOU to the Fotolia team, to Thomas from AMKA Shop, and to the GANG Corp team for the video.