Born in Paris in 1971, Pascal Blanché is a french artist who grew up in the south of France. Blanché studied traditional art, photography and video at Marseille’s Fine Art School and graduated with a degree in Visual Arts. In 1994 he began his adventure in the gaming industry. By 2000 he moved to Canada where he worked on a movie production ‘Kaena the Prophecy’ before he joined Ubisoft. He has now been in the gaming industry for over 20 years. He is Senior Art Director at Behaviour Interactive and Ubisoft Montreal. He defines himself as an illustrator, concept artist, and world builder. A world builder is someone who constructs and designs an imaginary world, or a whole fictional universe. This includes inventing the entire universe's settings, such as the geography, history, and ecology. His work is based on science fiction, defined as the future technological advances and social and environmental changes happening in space and planets. Blanché uses his world building to create concept art, or illustrations produced for use in animations, video games, or films.
In 2019 Sci-fi-o-Rama interviewed Pascal Blanché and asked him several questions regarding his artwork. When asked about his universe he is building through his art pieces, he states, “I call it my Derelict Planet and I put in there all the aliens, monsters, warriors with blue skins, and giant robots I want.” Blanché bases his pieces off of comic books and Sci-Fi that was created when he was a kid. The world-building he is working on dives deep into the space between the fantasy, or imaginary, and the reality. His make believe artwork connects these two worlds together and pushes individuals to to view his universe as reality. Blanché connects space and humanity to create visions that are absolutely stunning and terrifying. He tends to stick with the color palette of oranges and greens or reds and blues. Blanché limits himself to a minimum of colors, that way the work has a bigger influence on an individual.
Wandering through Pascal Blanchés work there are a few aspects seen in each piece. The fantasy world he created has no set timeline, each individual could be walking through space at this moment in time. The characters he creates are covered in armour, but not the shiny knight armour. Instead each set of armour looks as though it has been used heavily and is starting to get worn out. Characters in his work tend to carry machine parts that have turned into weapons. He uses filters on his work to generate the dusty or rust like image his artwork represents. Not only does he create and design characters with armour, he also creates fictional machines and structures. He uses the appearance of noticeable technology to engage the viewer into thinking the image is reality. The small and large details he creates makes the image seem as though it was made in the near future. By putting rust and age like details into the artwork it is almost impossible to tell if the piece was made for the future or the past. He not only creates artwork but he works with movies and video games. One of the productions he worked on is James Camerons ‘Avatar’ video game, helping design and produce the effects. He created Thanator, the huge black panther-like creature. In the game the creature wears heavy armour and looks terrifying. This game design sticks with the unique style Blanché has produced for himself.
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