Stephane (Born 1970) was born in France near Paris. His striking digital landscapes reflect his work as an Art Director and a Concept Artist. He has directed video game production for Electronic Arts and Ubi Soft. Belin lived in Montréal, Canada then moved back to France. He began his career as a freelance videogame designer in 1989, with no formal art training. He created two games on the Amiga and Atari ST platforms called Indigo and Outzone (published by Psygnosis and Lankhor respectively). He then focused on 3-dimensions, because he had the feeling it would become the next century’s medium. Belin started working on the Amiga with Real 3D, he then moved on to 3D Studio MAX and LightWave on the PC and Mac. To help him plan a composition, he creates several buildings, then, to create a quick color sketch in Photoshop, he duplicates the renderings.
This helps in refining the placement and proportions of the objects, before he creates the full 3-dimensional scene. Belin gathered photographs of New York from 1930s as reference for planning the buildings in the foreground. He also collected the views of modern Hong-Kong for the background skyscrapers. Belin took his time to look at buildings in real life. He describes the observation and decisive steps as essential before starting a picture. Before anything else, he always tries to keep in mind basic rules of symmetry, weight, and paths to focal points. He chooses the aspect ratio of the picture, because a vertical or horizontal picture can lead to different visual or emotional results.
