Bob Morane - Renaissance
French comic artist Dimitri Armand was born in Orléans, where he grew up reading both American comic books, manga and Franco-Belgian comic series. With this diverse background, he studied at the Art Academy of Nantes, where he mainly learned the technical aspects of the drawing profession. One of his teachers was the comic artist Erik Juszezak. Near the end of his education, he was approached by the publishing house Le Lombard to work for them on a series scripted by Thomas Chailan. This resulted in the launch of the occult fantasy series 'Salamandre' (2008-2010), which was meant to become a trilogy, but ended after two volumes. Between 2008 and 2013, Armand also drew five books of the fantasy series 'Angor' for Soleil Productions, from scripts by Jean-Charles Gaudin.
Angor
In 2015 he returned to Le Lombard to draw the western one-shot 'Sykes' by Pierre Dubois. The publisher also assigned him for a new comic series based on Henri Vernes' adventure novel character 'Bob Morane'. Written by Luc Brunschwig and Aurélien Ducoudray, the aptly titled 'Bob Morane - Renaissance' took a more modern and futuristic approach to the character than the large classic comic series, which has been drawn throughout the years by Dino Attanasio, Gérald Forton, William Vance and Félicísimo Coria. In the first two books, the backstory of lone wolf Morane is explored by the writing team Brunschwig-Ducoudray. However, the duo was fired by the publisher in 2016, not in the least because of the heavy criticism their reboot received from the character's nearly 100-year old creator.
Dimitri Armand ranks contemporary artists like Enrico Marini, Benoit Springer, Alex Alice, Mathieu Lauffray, Olivier Vatine and Juanjo Guarnido among his main inspirations.
Sykes