David Revoy

David Revoy
David Revoy in December 2017
Born	1981 (1981) Reims, France
Occupations	illustrator paintor art director
Awards	CG Choice Award (2010)
Signature

After work in traditional painting, Revoy started using digital tools in 2003 and moved to use free and open-source software around 2009.

Revoy publishes a great deal of his work under free licenses, allowing his work to be

Revoy said about his webcomic Pepper&Carrot (left) that "I'll never regret making Pepper&Carrot so open."^[6] One page of episode 36 page 2 (right).

In May 2014, after more than 10 years of freelance work, Revoy published the first episode of the

The webcomic is free (CC-BY^[9]) and is financed using crowdfunding. Revoy suggests the business model allows the comic to stay independent and does not have to resort to advertising.^[10] Revoy publishes all panels for the comic^[11] and often publishes links from his blog to derivations of the comic and characters, such as short animated films, cosplay, a card game and several video games. Revoy has expressed excitement that his work is re-used, saying "I'll never regret making Pepper&Carrot so open."^[6] and that he is happy to see other people make money from it.^[9][10] On the webcomic's webpage he extensively explains his philosophy, the reasons for wanting to cut out intermediaries between artist and audience, and why he does not put any content behind a paywall.^[10] He attributes some of the success of the webcomic to the release of its source, and highlighted the translations into some 50 languages.^{[7]: 24m42s} Reviews of the text in the comic and the translations are performed in GitLab using Markdown.^{[7]: 41m49s}

When the publisher

About working on the webcomic, Revoy said in 2015 that it was a dream come true and that "Every artist I know would love to make their own comics. Would love to get paid for making it, and to keep the control of it".[12]

Free software

In 2012, Revoy started using Krita exclusively and In 2022, Revoy made an interpretation of Krita's mascot, Kiki (left), and published an 82-minute tutorial for how the drawing was made.^[13] In 2022, as a side project for testing a new set of brushes and workflow, Revoy remixed the mascot Wikipe-tan (right). He wanted to portray her as "a focused reader and editor".^[14]

Revoy uses free and open-source software (FOSS). However, even since having paid more than €3000 on software licenses for proprietary software, he rejects the notion that it is primarily a question about money.^[15] Though practicality, low cost and possibility to work on lower end hardware were initial motivators for Revoy to move from proprietary software to free software, in 2020 he said that there were even better reasons.^{[7]: 10m41s} He then rather referred to the benefits of control, performance and standards, transparency, and control over data and privacy.^[16] Among the cons he listed that he depends on hardware being compatible with Linux, which may be more difficult to find and not well documented.^[15]

Background

In a 2016 interview, Revoy conveyed that he used

Other than just using Krita, he reported bugs (over 200 bugs as of May 2015), helped other artists with it, and demonstrated new features.[4]

In 2018, the Krita foundation sponsored Revoy to work on the default brush kit for Krita 4.0. Revoy merged his brushkit with brushes made with feedback from the community as well as brushes submitted by several other users.^[18] In 2023 he shared an updated pack of 38 brushes^[19] and published a video explaining how they work.^[20]

In 2023, he updated an ongoing article which chronicles his more than 20-year-long use of

In 2016, Revoy had his own render farm that he used for rendering the pages of Pepper & Carrot, then ImageMagick and Inkscape glue speech bubbles to the images on the render farm.^[6] Using a GitHub repository, Revoy collaborates with the translators and other parts of the community and shares assets.^[9]

Other work and use

External image
Yin and Yang of world hunger, published in September 2010, is one of David Revoy's most famous works and one of few of Revoy's works licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND.

External image
Fantasy Landscape, published in January 2007, won the CGallery Trophy in 2009[16] and is another one of few of Revoy's works licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND.

Revoy mostly creates original work, but also

October 23–November 11, 2023, Bulles à croquer organized a large exhibition at an E.Leclerc supermarket in Plérin. The exhibition was called "Un monde magique" ("A Magic World").^[31] 70 of Revoy's work were displayed in large print. Quality upgrades were required and upscaling was performed using G'MIC.^[32]

Inspiration and aspirations

Revoy has expressed admiration for artists like Yoshitaka Amano who are able to work in several fields.^[4] After Akira Toriyama passed in 2024, Revoy wrote that Toriyama was probably the artist that influenced him the most when he started drawing.^[33]

In 2015, Revoy expressed a long-term vision to create an animation studio which only produces works under free licenses.^[9] For the top tier, named "Hereva studio" on one of Revoy's crowdfunding sites, Revoy aspires to hire CG professionals to make an animated web series and an open online school.^{[12]: 36m38s}

Financing

To finance his work, Revoy accepts donations via Patreon, Liberapay, Tipeee, PayPal, and wire transfers.^[34]

Image gallery

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1. Concept art for the animated short film Sintel (2010) 2. A 2018 illustration of Pepper and Carrot 3. A time lapse video by Revoy, showing his work process 4. 2010 artwork from the Open Movie Workshop "Chaos&Evolutions" about digital painting 5. "Mission" (2011), an illustration of a futuristic aircraft on a landing pad 6. "The after rain smell" (2023) illustrating petrichor 7. The character Carrot in an illustration of several paywalls 8. "Liberapay Lantern" (2017) illustrating Revoy finances his work via donations 9. "Electron Donor" (2010), a sci-fi illustration for which Revoy drew inspiration from Blade Runner, Miyasaki, and Pixar 10. "Narcissus & Echo", a 2022 remix of Revoy's own work from 2006^[28] 11. "Grow your own ideas" (2013), a plea to, when forming an opinion, doing so independently 12. "MAY I JOIN YOU" (2023), a comment on a contemporary online culture event

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to David Revoy.

Wikiquote has quotations related to David Revoy.

• davidrevoy.com – David Revoy's blog
  • "L'héritage en couleur" and "Making of the webcomic l'héritage en couleur" – a one-episode webcomic
• peppercarrot.com – the official Pepper&Carrot webpage