Recommending: Sampler man

In one of the releases of Advanced Creation magazine (it’s in French but if you’re into graphic arts I recommend it!), I read an interview about a French artist that goes by the name of “Sampler Man” and discovered his crazy universe. Originally studying in applied art school, he started making his own fanzine, being very inspired by what was done in France at that time. As he states in this interview, his fanzine being in between a graphzine and a kind of alternative comics, he did not really fit in any movement or collective that was present at the time and decided to produce his zine by himself; which pushed him to create his own style diverging from the traditional story telling of comics.

Although his drawing style is very much inspired from vintage looking comics (see Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman or Chris Ware), he works quite closely with numeric mediums, reusing and modifying comics that have fallen into public domain, and therefore make something new out of it. I personally really enjoy seeing the contrast between his own modern approach while keeping a vintage style to it. It’s very psychedelic, with dialogues that don’t necessarily make sense, and illustrations using a lot of collage that give it this trippy feeling. You feel like you can completely immerse yourself in his art, noticing new details every time you take a look at its creations.

Just like Maria Medem (which I was talking about in a previous article, see here), animated some of her illustrations to make a video clip for groups such as Hovdi or Michi, Sampler Man has also put his art to the service of music, more precisely for a band called La Terre Tremble!!!. I previously said that his illustrations were psychedelic, but to see them animated with the music definitely takes it to another level, playing with rhythms, repetitions, transitions. It feels like a universe you can totally get lost in, made out of vintage aesthetics and trippy storylines.