meeting with Aurélien Ronceray, founder of Bold Brush VFX, and his collaboration on the Intermarché Christmas advert

Can you tell us about your career since leaving the school fifteen years ago?

That’s right, 15 years already! To be honest, I’m having a great time.

After graduating, I spent seven years in London at The Mill and then DNEG, where I learned from and met some of the best artists in the industry, who were always very patient and welcoming. I started out as a Matte Painter and Concept Artist, then progressed to supervisory roles and Head of Department, where I learnt other facets of the job that I’m just as passionate about: building teams, developing artists, helping to organise projects… messing up, starting again, improving.

Through these experiences, I’ve been able to mix advertising projects, TV series and films, both in very realistic styles for VFX and on more stylised projects for animation.

Then, in 2018, I founded my studio Bold Brush VFX, specialising in Matte Painting, Concept Art and Art Direction.

Since then, we’ve taken part in series such as The Crown on Netflix, for which we were nominated for an Emmy Award.

There was also Ridley Scott’s film Napoleon and, more recently, two Apple TV series: Hijack season 2 and Down Cemetery Road. Not forgetting, of course, the famous Intermarché Christmas advert that caused such a buzz last December.

As you said, you started your career with a very formative experience abroad. Was this move to London a choice or a necessity?

It was clearly an opportunity. I was selected during my studies at ESMA to go and do a work placement in London at The Mill, and I went back there after finishing the 3D course. To be perfectly honest, I tried to stay in France for the first year after school: I joined a filmmakers’ collective to learn about live action.

It was fascinating, but productions were rare, so I preferred to go back to the UK. Speaking of mobility, I also spent a few months in Hong Kong to try my hand at a production. The people I met and the city were great!

So the studio has been in existence for eight years, how has it developed since then?

Frankly, when I see all the successive crises in the industry and we’re still here, I feel very lucky and grateful.

We have some incredible international clients, some superb projects, and the team is growing and progressing little by little.

I’d like to thank them for their confidence. Obviously, things never go as quickly as you’d like, but I’ve learnt that you have to be patient and ‘resilient’. I know it’s an overused word, but it’s true. We still have great ambitions and great stories to tell, and this is just the beginning.

You were also a teacher at ESMA Montpellier, and you mentioned having worked with a number of former students on the Intermarché advert, among others.

What is your relationship with school and why is it important to you?

When I returned to France, I offered to teach at ESMA’s international sections in Lyon and Montpellier, in 3D, and then in Concept Art.

It was important to give back to the school and the students what I had learnt and to give them the benefit of my experience.

What’s more, my whole family has been in the teaching profession for three generations, so I felt I had to honour all those discussions about teaching that I grew up with! Joking aside, there’s a bond that develops when you’ve done the same training: you know the doubts and worries that students may have, and it’s easier to guide them.

It was also an opportunity to identify and support talented individuals, some of whom went on to join the studio and are still with us today. ESMA opened the doors to the industry I’d always dreamed of, and for that I’m extremely grateful.

Let’s take a look back at this recent collaboration with Intermarché, which has gone viral.

Can you tell us about your role in this project and the period during which you were involved?

Illogic got in touch with us quite early on to talk about the project and get us involved in the set design, which is our speciality. When we saw the artistic direction, we were instantly charmed. We had to wait until the very beginning of September to start work on the backgrounds.

Initially, we were only going to do around twenty shots, but the assignment grew and we were lucky enough to work on over fifty shots, as well as the posters, over a period of two and a half months.

Bold Brush specialises in Visual Development, Concept Art and Matte Painting for VFX and animation projects, whether for films, series or commercials.

For Intermarché, it was important for the directors to maintain the ‘painting’ and ‘kids book’ style of the initial research throughout the film. So we painstakingly painted over beautiful layouts and 3D renderings to give the backgrounds their final touch.

Our mission was really to help the film have the artistic direction of an illustrated children’s book. Finding the right brushes, graphic style and level of detail required us to go back and forth a few times to be faithful to the concepts.

Once we were approved, we could put on our helmets and get down to doing what we love best: painting!

What technical or artistic constraints were involved in this work?

It was important that all our paintings respected the Illogic workflow and that their compositing department could integrate them quickly and easily. We therefore had to respect layering and put in place a simple workflow to enable our artists to paint quickly, without the constraints of excessively heavy exports or colour space conversions, which can quickly waste time and create errors. Here too we went back and forth a bit to find the best compromises for our two studios.

Illogic gave us clear guidelines for each shot, but we always had carte blanche to make the backgrounds easier to read, or to add detail and amplify the brush strokes effect.

We knew that the food shots would be very popular with the public (and certainly scrutinised a little more than the others), so special care was taken with them.

At the same time, the tracking shot of the wolf wandering through the forest was also a bit of a challenge, because a lot of parallax effects inevitably require more layers, so the silhouette and repaint work is all the more demanding to get a super-legible shot.

I’m infinitely grateful to Illogic for this collaboration, which was a great deal of fun and passion, and a special big up to their compositing department!

How do you approach this aspect within Bold Brush and with your partners?

It’s often said that communication is key in this business, and that seems to have been the case here too.

We either take part in our customers’ daily meetings, or we talk to each other very regularly (if possible on a daily basis) to share work in progress (WIPs).

We want at all costs to avoid the surprise of discovering artwork after several days without creative feedback. We are our clients’ Art Department partner, and we adapt to the pace and workflow of projects. Within the studio, we use project chat rooms to share WIPs and work easily with teams remotely if necessary.

What did you learn during your training that was of direct use to you on this project?

There was a certain resonance when I was presented with the project: at the time, I had painted and repainted all the sets for my graduation film. So I was confident in our ability to have fun on this assignment while delivering the plans on time. I’m delighted to have been able to show that we can be trusted with a fair number of animated sets. And that we have the team and talent in-house at Bold Brush to deliver this kind of project.

How do you feel today, now that this project has travelled the world?

I’m especially happy for our client and the teams. It’s a superb spotlight on the industry and on Montpellier, on which many studios have bet to make it a major ICC centre. So we’re very, very happy, and it’s a huge boost to our motivation for 2026.

What would you like to explore in your next projects (artistically or technically)?

We are currently developing a children’s and family series, in the writing and artistic bible creation phase, with strong transmedia and 360° IP potential. The challenge is to successfully produce and direct it. So the stakes are high, artistically, technically and economically! Today, films such as Arco and Mars Express, and series such as Les Kassos and Samuel, support and inspire our work. These are indie, SF, inclusive and poetic projects, with a touch of provocation – daring projects, in other words.

What advice would you give to a student who wants to follow in your footsteps?

I’ll try not to sound like a wise old man, but one thing is clear to me: don’t wait for permission to do things. Be really passionate about the job. Cultivate yourself, be curious and learn to be proactive as quickly as possible, whether at school or in the studio. Do as many personal projects as you can – it’s probably the best investment I’ve ever made. In short, have fun!

What do you look for in someone with a background in concept art illustration? What opportunities do you see for these profiles today?

We’ve taken on a lot of former Illustration/Concept Art students. For these profiles, I always give the same advice: be real “Swiss Army knives” for the studios. Not everyone can be a “main character designer”, so develop your talent for sets and props too. Show your iteration and design skills, not just your key arts.

The people we have been able to offer long contracts to are those who can also adapt to different artistic styles depending on the project. On a more personal note, we always welcome artists with a strong sensibility, a well-placed ego and the ability to solve problems as part of a team.

And what about the schools that are training students today?

I think it’s essential to place more emphasis on developing ideas, iterating and building a solid artistic culture. Of course, mastering the tools and software is essential, but it’s no longer enough to make a difference, especially as workflows are evolving so rapidly.

Today, many people know how to manipulate software, but few really develop the ability to listen, analyse feedback and iterate creatively. We’re in an industry where every day is full of artistic and technical challenges. We’re not just looking for technicians, but craftspeople and designers with sensitivity, culture and a real ability to adapt.

The industry changes fast, the tools evolve, but the essential remains the same: we’re looking for passionate artists who can tell stories and solve problems together.

Come and join us on our networks, and don’t hesitate to contact us for your Matte Painting and Concept Art needs!