Lise Rémon

Can we first get a little intro about you?

I am Lise, I am 25 years old and I am an illustrator, animator and animated film director. At the moment, I am making a film animated by pencil on paper,and appart from this, I draw a little bit all the time : in travel diaries, on holidays, more or less far away… or in my own street, along the ring road. I walk around quite a bit.

Can you share with us some music to listen to while reading the interview?

It might be a little distracting to read the interview while listening to this song, but I’m sharing it anyway: it’s Carcasse, by Anne Sylvestre. It was one of the songs I used to learn by heart in order to sing them while riding my bike. I know a few of them that way, very beautiful french songs lyrics, although I’m not really paying them a proper tribute when singing with my breathless voice, whilst cycling in the middle of Paris.

What inspired your animation, At the Other End of the Table?  

At the Other End of the Table is a film that I kind of made in between two moments, in between two countries. I just had gone through a break up, and shortly after that I started studying at the Tokyo University of the Arts for a few months, from 2018 to 2019. That’s where I made the film. It’s inspired by those in-betweens: the characters are communicating through a video chat wich is materialized by a table in the movie. But this table, although it seems to bring them together at the beginning, it actually participates in creating distance between them. And they inevitably remain on their own, each at the other end of the table.

 How much of your own experiences do you put into your work? 

I draw a lot of inspiration from my recent life and everything around me, it’s more like self-fiction. It feels like a more obvious way to express the right emotion, and to try to find a precise tone. That said, I feel more and more like going towards fiction, and trying to make these lived feelings evolve through less autobiographical stories.

Your sketches look like something seen through a textured glass window. How do you create that effect? How would you like to make people feel with these drawings?

It’s a drawing technique I’m building up year after year, but these particular images are some of the firsts one with this evanescent texture. It’s pencil on paper, faded with a tissue. I drew this series when I came back from Japan. I felt like I went there and came back in the twinkling of an eye, like nothing had happened. I felt like I had been dreaming. Perhaps it is this uncertainty that one can feel in these skectches. I was doing some animation tests at the time, for a little farewell card to Japan that I called “Bye bye Yokohama”: https://vimeo.com/338657565. These were the beginnings of the film I’m making now, which is made with this technique, and is about the confusion between image and reality.

Oh nice. What is that film about? Is it a big project? 

It’s a seven-minute animated self-fiction. So yes, it’s a pretty big project. It’s about images from the news that we see of our own country, when we are far away, and in which we project ourselves. In which we find a greater reality than in the country where we are, because we understand better the codes and the atmosphere. It takes place in the airport of Tokyo-Haneda, between Japan and France. 

Your pencil works embrace movement, when your colored works are very still. Are you in different moods or stages when doing one of the other?

The paintings I made in Japan between 2018 and 2019 are very still, yes. The process is more prudent compare to my pencil work, since these paintings are based on a preparatory sketch.I drew my Japanese environment, I took my time. It was quite a lonely stay, I was inside a bubble as a foreigner who does not understand the language very well and who isn’t staying for very long: I could only reach the surface of things. This is probably one of the reasons why the result is more contemplative.

How do you proceed for these series? 

The frame is of an important matter, whether I draw or paint. I often build up  a drawing starting with its outer lines, by defining its limits. I like the word “build”, like for a construction set. One shape in relation to another, rather than one layer of the picture in relation to another. It’s quite a playful process.

What would be your dream project?

I don’t have a big dream as such, but I have desires concerning my life and my work. I really want to continue making animated films, while evolving my illustration practice. I really want to go back to comics. It was what I did most before I started animation, and I would like to do longer stories with this medium, which I miss a lot. 

Lise Rémon is an illustrator and animation film director based in Paris. You can check her instagram, vimeo and tumblr.