PUNKSHEEP: Bio Jerome LIGNIER

1) – First steps in computer science: (the 80s)

At the end of the eighties, when I was still a child, I took a curious look at the computer embodied by a TO7 that sat at the end of my class of cm1. Being very curious, computer science has sharpened my thirst for learning and technology. In parallel of that, lulled by the science fiction series and films of the time, I grew up with the intuition that technology would take an ever more prominent place in the life of modern man. Artistically, the cartoons of the time including the excellent Ulysses 31, plant monsters etc were fertile ground for my child imagination and even adults.

2) - From the arcade to the state of the art

The arcades then freshly opened in my city have dug in me the desire to play these games but also and especially have initiated a vocation that allowed me to see the possibility of a career, especially when I saw my friends there. To swallow the coins of 10 francs with a turn of arm. Video games also offered me the opportunity to combine computer science and graphic art, my two main centers of interest. It is therefore quite natural that during my wishes for a 5th year orientation, in 1989, that I indicated my wish already well matured, and to which my "counselor" orientation had answered me that the computer was "bite" and "anecdotal" and therefore without future .... we were in 1989 I remember ... I persevered in following my intuition by perfecting myself in drawing, bitmap graphics, and even some programming on my trusty CPC 464. I remember a teacher from my school that I went to wear in the computer room where he used to hack a little TO7 and other MO5 college during the lunch break, a punishment duly accomplished. Quite proud, his eyes moistened by the screen and probably also by the pride of "discovering" the world of computer science to a little schoolboy, he showed me his little personal project which consisted of an educational video game of question answer featuring the characters of Tintin. Game entirely programmed in basic language ... and whose graphics suffered from a slowness of unbearable display, for example the pupils of the eyes of the captain Hadock were drawn with a function plot, draw sinus cosine and a fill in basic. .. In short almost a minute of rendering ..., I told him that it was wrong and my humble assembler routines pumped on the magazine "Hundred Percent magazine" capture and display graphs to the frame in a beat of eyelash.
Man's answer: "uh, what's the assembler?"
Therefore, he must have understood that day that his relative knowledge could potentially come from young middle school students, and I understood myself that what I wanted to learn later would probably not come from the national education ... :) and that an in-depth self-learning work was needed ...

3) - Profession "Video game designer": (from the 90s to today)

So I continued my passion every day, weekend and holidays until the end of my studies. And once I finished my military service, I went back to cryo interactive where I met my colleagues Eric Gachons and Michel Janicki with whom I was to make games on gameboy. Then I worked for 'magic pocket' where as a scenery artist I participated in licensed games like harry potter, popeye, baldur's gate, F1 grand prix, etc. I then moved to an Artistic Director position in a Lille company named Zigzag Island where we produced a dozen NDS and wii games altogether. Subsequently I became AD for the company Neopica where I participated in the creation of original games on 3DS, wii and PS4.