Alexis Nesme

After earning a high school diploma in applied arts in Lyon, Alexis Nesme enrolled at the École supérieure des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg. In 1996, he won the Alph-Art “Graine de Pro” award at the Angoulême Festival. A dazzling career unfolded in illustration for the press and children’s publishing, before he dove into comic art. Starting in 1999, he co-created three Gamins albums with Éric Omond (Delcourt), before creating the Grabouillon series entirely on his own, produced entirely digitally. This wide technical range—from pencil to computer-generated imagery—already hinted at his graphic curiosity and his ability to switch mediums depending on the project. 

In 2009, he embarked on his own adaptation of a Jules Verne novel, Les Enfants du capitaine Grant, which he reimagined as a trilogy featuring anthropomorphic animals. Returning to ink and brushes, he employed a palette of vivid, luminous colors, producing an album whose artistic and narrative virtuosity was universally acclaimed. His signature style was thus firmly established—that of a colorist and illuminator who treats each page like a painting. He illustrated Le Maître des tapis with writer Olivier Bleys, before contributing a series of tributes to the golden age of American animation in the “Disney by Glénat” collection, starting in 2019: Horrifikland with Lewis Trondheim (2019), followed by Terror-Island in 2022, an album he wrote and illustrated entirely on his own, blending a love for early Mickey Mouse comics with nods to Spielberg. In 2024, he reunited with Trondheim to bring the Marsupilami to life in the guise of its ancestor, El Diablo (Dupuis). From one project to the next, he remains driven by the same obsession: working with light and color by blending inks, colored pencils, chalk, and gouache to create meticulous and baroque worlds.