CGSociety :: Special Feature 5 May 2006, Paul Hellard The EXPOSÉ 4 Grand Master Award winner, Stephan Martiniere, is an internationally renowned science fiction and fantasy artist. An accomplished concept artist, Martiniere has worked on movies such as ‘I Robot’, ‘Star Wars’ (episodes Two & Three), ‘Virus’, ‘Red Planet’, ‘Sphere’, and ‘The Time Machine’. About 25 years ago, Stephan started his career as a young man working with DIC, the French company that was making the animated series Inspector Gadget. DIC was outsourcing animation to Japan and they hired Martiniere as a character and background designer with still a year to complete in animation school. “What started as a one month proposition turned out to be seven years!” exclaims Martiniere. “After ‘Inspector Gadget’, I was traveling back and forth between Asia, America and Europe.” As a young French man trying to finance his studies Stephan had no hesitation about traveling for work. Stephan admits to being completely unprepared for the Asian culture. “I had never left France. My vision of Japan was of bamboo, samurais, geishas and the old-looking traditional Japanese look. I was catapulted overnight into downtown Tokyo in the Blade Runner universe. I had no idea such an environment existed. My visual senses were overwhelmed but in a very exciting way”, admits Martiniere.             Stephan worked on “Gadget” for six months, and then was sent to the States to work on ‘Heathcliff’ then back in Japan to work on ‘Jayce and The Wheel Warriors’. For seven years he was sent by DIC to work between LA, Tokyo and Paris. While growing up in France, Stephan was already very familiar with American comics and artists such as Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Bernie Wrightson and Will Eisner. The American influence on his drawings was strong. Manga and Anime didn’t exist in France or the US yet, and he had never seen anything like it before going to Tokyo. At age 19, Stephan was thrown right in. “Anime made an impact on my style but more so in the way I visualize and convey an emotion in a design or a story” he explains, “Anime’s technical simplification in particular has a way to quickly and effectively convey an emotion with minimal information. It’s like a stylistic Zen approach to design and story telling. I found it fascinating.”             After spending eight years in animation and later moving to California, Martiniere found himself directing various animated TV shows for DIC. Most of the time these jobs were an exercise in problem solving. There was very little creative joy built-in at the end of every mission until one day he was handed a kid’s show called ‘Madeline’. “It’s funny”, Martiniere adds, “because the only reason this show ended up in my hands was because I’m French and the show is about a little French girl who lives in Paris. This turned out to be very lucky. Because of the small size of my team I ended up wearing the director and art director’s hat as well as designing characters, background and props, doing storyboards and writing. It was extremely enjoyable. The show became a tremendous success and won numerous awards. After that I knew it would be very difficult to have a chance like that again. I decided that it was the right time to move on.” Martiniere had a strong urge to go back to design, and, right on cue, Landmark Entertainment hired him as a concept designer and illustrator to work on two theme parks in Japan. The job was demanding, but he was able to refine his skills as a concept designer. After two enjoyable years Stephan went back to animation for a little while and directed five more ‘Madeline’ animated specials. During that period Stephan started to establish some contacts within the film industry and was contracted to work on ‘Star Trek: The Experience’. ‘Star Trek: The Experience’ was a motion ride film in Las Vegas. Martiniere was doing storyboards and concept drawings while Craig Mullins was doing the paintings based on Martiniere’s concept drawings. “Craig was one of the first artists using Photoshop as a painting tool in the entertainment industry. When I was shown Craig’s paintings my jaw was on the floor. The results were immediately impressive. I knew this was what I was looking for”, explains Martiniere. He dived into digital painting with no hesitation. At the time, he didn’t know anything about computers or Photoshop: “I had just spent close to $10,000 on computer equipment and I didn’t know how to turn it on.” With Mullins’ help over several months, he learned very quickly. “Photoshop created a major shift in my career”, says Stephan. He met more and more people in different creative fields, and now with Photoshop under his belt, a wider variety of freelance job offers came his way.