* Note to my Italian friends: Clicca (QUI) per leggere l’intervista in italiano!

Happy Sunday friends!!! Today I’ll be talking with a comic artist and illustrator with so many years of experience in the field! While editing this interview I ''had to'' read and reread his answers several times. PURE GOLD! It's hard to express how important certain words were to me, so I'll let you read and grasp what resonates most with you.

Also, have the merriest, sweetest and most inspiring Christmas! *^•^*

For those just finding me - I’m Madalina, an artist and illustrator who loves discovering and talking to many fellow artists. I now share these conversations through monthly interviews available to read for everyone :)

Jérémie Almanza is a French illustrator and cartoonist known for the Eco trilogy, Au chant des grenouilles, Les Royaumes Muets and many other books. His drawing style is luxuriant and poetic. The atmospheres are intriguing and contrasting. It makes you want to dive into one of his illustrations and explore every nook and cranny!

☆ Hi Jérémie and thank you for joining forArtists. How would you describe your artistic journey that led you to where you are today?

I’ve loved drawing since I was a child, and my artistic path is linked to an infinite number of creators. As a child I was inspired by a wide variety of creators and universes: Tomi Ungerer, Akira Toriyama, Rumiko Takahashi, the Ninja Turtles, Mickey Mouse.. My drawings were a nameless artistic mess.

Growing up, I was drawn to authors like Taiyo Matsumoto, Minetaro Mochizuki, Nicolas de Crécy, and Régis Loisel. I was discovering the work of Studio 4c, and the film “Mind Game” had a huge impact on me. My mind was totally focused on animation, comics and illustration, even though I’d just completed a master's degree in Macroeconomics. My class sheets were full of drawings on the sides!

Drawing was a necessity, not a way to entertain myself.

At the same time, there was a great creative effervescence thanks to the rise of drawing blogs. There was a very healthy emulation among many young draftsmen, which stimulated me a lot artistically. I was able to meet an author I admired, Maya Mahindou. We have a blog together, and that helped get us noticed by Barbara Canepa, whose work I also admired. It was also through this blog that I met Séverine, with whom I now work on “Les Royaumes Muets.” We signed our first comic book project quite quickly. Quick enough that I forgot that I had finished my studies in a completely different field.

☆ Working with art can sometimes take the joy out of it. Does this happen to you, too? And how have you kept your passion alive over the years?

That's the difficult part of this craft: keeping the passion spark while making drawing a profession you can live with.

When I compose an image, I roughly know where I’m going, but never completely.

This leaves room for surprise and allows me to immerse myself in the drawing: I’m not only the creator, but also the viewer, who gets lost in it. This gives the impression of traveling rather than working.

☆ What is your favorite part of creating a comic book?

I think the beginning of a book is my favorite part, where all the most important stages take place: the design of the characters, the creation of the universe.

It's the moment when you can draw on a whole array of inspirations to enrich your own universe. Whether it's through classic works or recent cartoons. This is the crucial moment when everything comes into play: will I be able to create a coherent and interesting universe, or not?

It is also the most stressful and time-consuming part of the process.

☆ Can you share with us the process of creating one of Les Royaumes Muets pages? How long did it take you to finish it on average?

Les “Royaumes Muets” took me a long time, at least two or three years. I thought a lot about the world building and the technique I was going to use. I gave myself time to really have fun and work on very large formats to get a pretty refined end result. One page took me a week of intensive work.

First, in a very traditional way, I create the storyboard. The storyboard already allows me to see if certain design approaches work.

Then, if I’m happy with the composition, I enlarge my little drafts to A2 format for a full board. From here I produce a more detailed sketch, but not too detailed. From there I start inking, a part of the process that takes a long time but feels like a little journey: the illustration is taking shape and I don't necessarily know what the final result will look like. Because it takes so long, there are always little accidents, a stain of ink or coffee for example.

When the inking is done, I use brushes with water tanks to spread the ink in some places.

Then the color is produced in Photoshop, where the priority is to work on the lighting effects.

☆ Your painting technique is really interesting. Do you prefer traditional over digital tools?

I don't think I have a preference, I like to combine both digital and traditional tools. It's difficult for me to work only in traditional format, just as it is difficult for me to work only in digital.

I find it interesting to combine the two tools because you can get a result that doesn't match either one. And I think it's interesting to leave some doubt about the way the drawing was made.

The final use of digital also allows me to be more relaxed during the traditional phase, knowing that I can eventually fix my mistakes. Knowing that I have the right to spill a whole cup of coffee on my paper and still be able to correct.

Finally, digital also allows me to work on more complicated compositions, to do the characters and backgrounds separately, if I need so. For example, the character of Death in “Les Royaumes Muets” was often created on a separate sheet of paper and then integrated digitally.

☆ How did you develop your current art style? Who were your main inspirations in the beginning?

My drawing style today is the result of thousands of influences from all fields and art styles. There were several key moments, I think. The love of the old Disney films, the graphics of 101 Dalmatians or Merlin the Enchanter, the cartoons of Chuck Jones. The UPA style of animation.

Then Nightmare Before Christmas - was a huge shock - and the short film Vincent were my first contact with gothic world.

Then the discovery of the cartoonist Moebius, Régis Loisel and Nicolas De Crécy, and the sculptor Valérie Hadida were all major influences.

Adventure Time and Over the Garden Wall were a huge graphic shock. The world of cartoons is still an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

Independent video games have also had a huge influence on me: games like Cult of The Lamb, Daniel Mullins' games (Inscryption, Pony Island), Hollow Knight, the incredible Undertale, Cuphead, Animal Well and Dredge.

If I limit myself to comics or illustration, lately I’ve loved discovering the world of Sarah Andersen, Haranikala, Zoe Thorogood, Crom, Loputyn, John Kenn Mortensen, Kotaro Chiba, Ma-ko, Hina (@ukairuu), Varguy, Carles Dalmau. I can predict that my style in the future will be fatally influenced by them, whether I like it or not.

And it hurts me not to mention the other 1000 artists that come to mind.

But it must be said that it all started with the Mickey Mouse and Uncle Scrooge comics from my childhood, which I tried to copy. I was very proud that I was “almost” able to draw Donald Duck's beak (too hard to do, ToT) when I was 9.

☆ What would you suggest to beginner artists who want to pursue a career in the publishing industry?

First of all, I would ask you if your life is related to illustration, if you have a deep love for drawing. I get the impression that it is not just a matter of enjoying drawing a little bit, but a deep identity. Drawing is a constant source of ups and downs, and I think that you need a deep-seated passion to overcome all these trials.

So I would advise you to find your style, through a very slow process of trial and error. And then to overcome it.

To love drawing so much that you don’t stop admiring other creators. To have an endless appetite for other people's work, and to be able to feed off it positively.

To be able to show your work and always find a way to have fun.

☆ Do you have a sketching routine or drawing practice that has helped you hone your artistic skills over the years?

I don't have a routine, because I very rarely force myself to draw.

But I can draw anytime I feel so. And I can draw and have fun without worrying about the result- I like to do a little bit of everything. If I start trying to get a presentable result, I get stuck and lose interest in drawing.

I like to draw anything with pencil, but also with ink, and I love working with a pen. On the other hand, I wouldn’t dare to show the result to anyone!

I also do small tests, often tiny drawings that no one ever sees. But they help me move forward technically.

☆ What would you like to accomplish in 2025?

I've got a sort of shopping list of things I'd like to do, but it could be complicated:

-know how to make little animations and post them on instagram
-know how to vary my colors and improve my technique a bit
-know how to make my comics more dynamic and more fluid to read
-know how to script my own stories and write dialogues
-work harder, come up with lots of new ideas for comics and worlds.

☆ What people don't know about you, the person behind the art?

Being an illustrator is a pretty lonely job, but I love talking all the time. It's a bit hard sometimes !

☆☆ To learn more about Jérémie's work you can visit his Instagram. His books are available on Amazon and in bookstores.

Subscribe to forARTISTS