Stéphane Zinetti - Lead Character Designer

Raymanzone: Could you introduce yourself briefly?
Stéphane Zinetti: My name is Stéphane Zinetti, I'm 33 years old, and I'm in charge of graphic creation and production for the characters in Rayman 3. At the outset, my work involves 2D design (sketches and colored drawings) to find original graphic ideas. When the whole team's happy with the 2D sketch, I produce the 3D character. But it doesn't stop there. There's then a long adjustment phase, with lots of work on the settings required for the character animation to work as well as possible.

How does one come to be a creator and producer of characters for a game like Rayman 3?
There are surely many ways of getting there. In my case, as far as education is concerned, I have a vocational training certificate in applied arts and I'm a graduate of the ECV (Ecole de Communication Visuelle). First of all, I worked for five years in an advertising agency before joining Ubi Soft more than four years ago. I worked mainly on producing graphics for different levels of Rayman 2. Then I was delighted to follow through with Rayman 3, though this time round my job was to create and produce characters.

What made you want to work in the video-game sector?
I'm very keen on the graphic universes of video games, so my main motivation for joining this sector was pleasure. And it's a job which appeals to the imagination and leaves you loads of freedom. What I like most of all are the phases when you're looking for original concepts using sketches and doodles - with Rayman 3, for example, there was all the preliminary work involved in creating the Hoodlums. It's really exciting to work in a cartoon universe as whacky as Rayman!

What advice would you give to someone wanting to become a graphic designer?
I don't think there's really one single royal road for getting there, but it's pretty much compulsory to have some kind of artistic education. Self-taught people are rare.

Thank you Stéphane !