300px, The remixed into animated short films by the Morevna Project, here "The Potion Contest".">remix culture">remixed into animated short films by the Morevna Project, here "The Potion Contest". David Philippe Revoy (; born in 1981 in

Reims Reims ( ; ; also spelled Rheims in English) is the most populous city in the French Departments of France, department of Marne (department), Marne, and the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 12th most populous city in Fran ...

) is a French artist best known as the creator of the free webcomic series '' Pepper&Carrot'' which is translated into 27 languages to a degree of 90 percent or more. It is published as books via Glénat. After work in traditional painting, Revoy started using digital tools in 2003 and moved to use

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

around 2009. Revoy publishes a great deal of his work under free licenses, allowing his work to be remixed even for commercial use. This has led to derivations of mainly ''Pepper&Carrot'' such as

animated film Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

cosplay Cosplay, a blend word of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and Fashion accessory, fashion accessories to represent a specific Character (arts), character. Cosplayers often i ...

, a

card game A card game is any game that uses playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, whether the cards are of a traditional design or specifically created for the game (proprietary). Countless card games exist, including famil ...

and several

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

s. Revoy has expressed excitement about the derivations and often links to them from his web page. He has interpreted freely licensed works and works in the public domain. In 2010 he was awarded the CG Choice Award for an illustration of ''

Alice in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...

''. One of his most famous works is "Yin and Yang of world hunger", a remix of the

yin and yang Originating in Chinese philosophy, yin and yang (, ), also yinyang or yin-yang, is the concept of opposite cosmic principles or forces that interact, interconnect, and perpetuate each other. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary an ...

symbol. He has published several tutorials, time-lapse videos, and speed-painting videos showing his work process and has described his hardware and software setup.

Early work

Revoy started as a street portraitist in

Avignon Avignon (, , ; or , ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the Communes of France, commune had a ...

at the age of 18. Later he worked in traditional painting, illustration, concept art and teaching. In 2003 he ended his career as a traditional painter and started working with digital tools.

Film work

In 2009–2010, Revoy worked as

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

on the Blender short film '' Sintel'', which was the first major project that used free software to produce

free culture The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content, otherwise known as open content. They encourage creators to create such content by using ...

that Revoy encountered. He would later also work on the Blender films '' Tears of Steel'' and ''

Cosmos Laundromat ''Cosmos Laundromat: First Cycle'', developed under the code name Project Gooseberry, is an animated Absurdism, absurdist Science fiction, sci-fi fantasy short film directed by Mathieu Auvray, written by Esther Wouda, and produced by Ton Roosend ...

''.

''Pepper&Carrot''

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

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or ...

'' Pepper&Carrot''. Pepper is a young orphan witch disciple at Chaosah, the smallest of the six schools of magic on the magical planet Hereva. She is aided by her cat Carrot, and lives with her mentors Thyme, Cayenne, and Cumin in a house in the forest of Squirrel's End. Her peers are Saffron, Shichimi, Coriander, and Camomile. Revoy aims for each episode to contain a small

story arc A story arc (also narrative arc) is the chronological construction of a plot in a novel or story. It can also mean an extended or continuing narrative, storyline in episode, episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strip ...

where a character evolves and learns. The story bible is available on the website. The webcomic is free ( CC-BY) and is financed using

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

. Revoy suggests the

business model A business model describes how a Company, business organization creates, delivers, and captures value creation, value,''Business Model Generation'', Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, and 470 practitioners from 45 countries, self-pub ...

allows the comic to stay independent and does not have to resort to advertising. Revoy publishes all panels for the comic and often publishes links from his blog to derivations of the comic and characters, such as short animated films,

, 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." and that he is happy to see other people make money from it. 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 A paywall is a method of restricting access to content (media), content, with a purchase or a subscription business model, paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their website ...

. He attributes some of the success of the webcomic to the release of its source, and highlighted the translations into some 50 languages. Reviews of the text in the comic and the translations are performed in

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

using

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used ...

. When the publisher Glénat reached out to Revoy about publishing ''Pepper&Carrot'', he declined their offer of a traditional contract with

royalty payment A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or ...

s in favor of keeping the Creative Commons attribution license, something that caused confusion in the legal and financial departments of the publisher. Glénat then offered to be the top patron of the webcomic, and Revoy retained the

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

and creative control over it. He considers Glénat's published books as just one of many other derivative works of the webcomic. 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".

Free software

Revoy uses

(FOSS). However, even since having paid more than €3000 on

software license A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Since the 1970s, software copyright has been recognized in the United States. Despite the copyright being recognized, most companies prefer to sell lic ...

s for

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

, he rejects the notion that it is primarily a question about money. Though practicality, low cost and possibility to work on lower end hardware were initial motivators for Revoy to move from

to free software, in 2020 he said that there were even better reasons. He then rather referred to the benefits of control, performance and standards, transparency, and control over data and

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

. 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.

Background

In a 2016 interview, Revoy conveyed that he used

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

and Corel Painter for 10 years (and Manga Studio and

Sony Vegas Vegas Pro (stylized as VEGAS Pro, formerly known as Sony Vegas) is a professional video editing software package for non-linear editing system, non-linear editing (NLE), designed to run on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The first rel ...

) until a computer purchase in 2009 which included

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

. The OS upgrade then required he buy upgrades for the proprietary software he was using, which totaled to an investment of a full month's salary, just for compatibility and with no additional features. Revoy commented on the experience saying "That was a really bad week: had to spend a lot of money and my productivity was totally ruined." He sold the new computer and bought one that could still run

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

, but realized it was not a viable long-term solution. In 2004, Revoy had tried a Knoppix distribution with

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

3.0 and was impressed with it. After the failed computer purchase in 2009, Revoy started to move away from using Windows by configuring a dual boot with

Linux Mint Linux Mint is a community-developed Linux distribution. It is based on Ubuntu and designed for x86-64 based computers; another variant is based on Debian which is named Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and has both 64-bit and IA-32 support. T ...

4.0,

compiling In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

Wacom driver, modifying Xorg, and writing a Xsetwacom script to handle his Cintiq 12Wx. He kept

Photoshop CS2 Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

running on

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

to handle

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...

and files from publishers. He then switched to

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and got involved in

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

projects like MyPaint and Gimp-painter (a fork of

GIMP Gimp or GIMP may refer to: Clothing * Bondage suit, also called a gimp suit, a type of suit used in BDSM * Bondage mask, also called a gimp mask, often worn in conjunction with a gimp suit Embroidery and crafts * Gimp (thread), an ornamental tr ...

), and later

Krita Krita ( ) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. Originally created for Linux, the software also runs on Windows, macOS, Haiku (operating system), Hai ...

. In 2012, he started using Krita exclusively.

Contributions

Other than just using Krita, he reported bugs (over 200 bugs as of May 2015), helped other artists with it, and demonstrated new features. 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. In 2023 he shared an updated pack of 38 brushes and published a video explaining how they work. In 2023, Revoy updated an ongoing article which chronicles his more than 20-year-long use of graphics tablets, and outlined the design of what he considered would be a perfect tablet. In 2024, he published a post-installation guide for his setup.

Work process

In 2016, Revoy had his own render farm that he used for rendering the pages of ''Pepper & Carrot'', then ImageMagick and

Inkscape Inkscape is a vector graphics editor. It is used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagrams, and flowcharts. It uses vector graphics to allow for sharp printouts and renderings at ...

glue speech bubbles to the images on the render farm. Using a

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

, Revoy collaborates with the translators and other parts of the community and shares assets.

Other work and use

file:Alice-in-Wonderland by-David-Revoy 2010-07-21.jpg, 350px, Revoy received the CG Choice Award for his 2010 work "Alice in Wonderland". In 2022, Revoy re-licensed the work from CC-BY-NC-SA to the more permissive CC-BY 4.0 international. Revoy mostly creates original work, but also Remix culture, remixes other public domain and free works, for example ''

'' or Wikipe-tan. One of his most famous works is "Yin and Yang of World Hunger", a 2010 remix of the

symbol, which generated both admiration and negative comments. Revoy's images has been used in research described as "training a computer to turn pencil sketches into cleaned line-art." In 2022, Revoy had noted that his 2006 work "Narcissus & Echo" was popular among scholars, and for use in

theses A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

and books about

mythology Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

, but tracking royalties and granting permissions for editing it was becoming cumbersome. He then released an updated version under a more free license. On his blog, he publishes many of his works, often in high resolution and under permissive

Creative Commons licenses A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...

. Some work, which Revoy prefers not be used for commercial or political purposes without his approval, are published under more restrictive licenses. Revoy publishes tutorials,

time-lapse Time-lapse photography is a technique in which the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than the frequency used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and th ...

videos, and speed-painting videosDeevadRevoy on YouTube
, youtube.com. showing his work process. He has published descriptions of his hardware and software setup. October 23–November 11, 2023, Bulles à croquer organized a large exhibition at an E.Leclerc supermarket in

Plérin Plérin (; ; Gallo: ''Plérein'') is a coastal commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department of Brittany in northwestern France. The Marché du Porc Breton, located in Plérin, is where the price of pork is set for retailers across France. ...

. The exhibition was called "Un monde magique" ("A Magic World"). 70 of Revoy's work were displayed in large print. Quality upgrades were required and upscaling was performed using G'MIC. Revoy has started a less serial, more anthological comic also set in Hereva called ''Mini Fantasy Theater''. It is intended as a spiritual sequel or companion series to ''Pepper&Carrot'' as the original comic's run continues into the mid-2020s.

Inspiration and aspirations

Revoy has expressed admiration for artists like

Yoshitaka Amano is a Japanese visual artist, character designer, illustrator, a scenic designer for theatre and film, and a costume designer. He began his career in 1967 at Tatsunoko Production working on anime such as '' Speed Racer'' and later became the c ...

who are able to work in several fields. After

Akira Toriyama was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He came to be regarded as one of the most influential and important authors in the history of manga, authoring highly influential and popular series, particularly Dragon Ball (manga), ''Dra ...

passed in 2024, Revoy wrote that Toriyama was probably the artist that influenced him the most when he started drawing.Fanart tribute to Toriyama. Arale, Dr. Slump
, davidrevoy.com, 8 March 2024. In 2015, Revoy expressed a long-term vision to create an

animation studio An animation studio is a company producing animation, animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales ...

which only produces works under free licenses. 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.

Financing

To finance his work, Revoy accepts donations via

Patreon Patreon (, ) is a monetization platform operated by Patreon, Inc., that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service and sell digital products. It helps artists and other creators earn a recurring income by provid ...

Liberapay Liberapay is a non-profit platform for recurrent donations. It is maintained by a non-profit organization of the same name, registered in Querrien, France in 2015. Liberapay is primarily aimed at funding free and open-source software, Art, art ...

, Tipeee,

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

, and

wire transfer Wire transfer, bank transfer, or credit transfer, is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or entity to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account, or through a transfer of cash at a cash ...

Image gallery

File:Character Shaman-portrait.png, 1 File:David Revoy paintover of Geek Faëries v9.0 IRL 2018 - 010.jpg, 2 File:Aqua_dream_David_Revoy.ogv, 3 File:2009-8-Quetzalcoat.png, 4 File:Illustration of a futuristic aircraft on a landing pad by David Revoy.png, 5 File:2023-01-09 The-after-rain-smell by-David-Revoy.jpg, 6 File:2015-02-09 philosophy 03-paywall by-David-Revoy.jpg, 7 File:2017-07-13 liberapay-lantern by-David-Revoy.jpg, 8 File:Electron Donor by David Revoy.jpg, 9 File:2006-narcissus-and-echo-ccby-david-revoy-2006-2022-remix.jpg, 10 File:2013-07-19 grow-your-own-ideas by-David-Revoy.jpg, 11 File:2023-06-21 MAY-I-JOIN-YOU by-David-Revoy.jpg, 12 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

s 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 ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Di ...

'', Miyasaki, and

Pixar Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney ...

10. "Narcissus & Echo", a 2022 remix of Revoy's own work from 2006 11. "Grow your own ideas" (2013), a plea to form opinions independently 12. "MAY I JOIN YOU" (2023), a comment on a contemporary online culture event

References

peppercarrot.com
(button "All 63 languages"), peppercarrot.com. Alice in Wonderland
, davidrevoy.com, 21 july 2010. Yin and Yang of world hunger
, davidrevoy.com, 3 September 2010. Sintel
, davidrevoy.com, 30 september 2010. Episode 2: David Revoy
, ''Passionate Voices'', 2 June 2015. Interview with David Revoy
(archived), krita.org, 29 May 2015. Erik Moeller (via Ryan Merkley).
The case of the witch and her cat: crowdfunding free culture
, creativecommons.org, 17 July 2015. Passionate Voices Episode 2 - David Revoy
(at 27m48s), Passionate Voices on YouTube, 2 June 2015. Paul Brown.
Free Software Artists and their Tools — Part I: David Revoy & Krita
(archived), ''Open Content & Software Magazine'', 28 May 2016.

mp3
, ''Libre Lounge'', 17 April 2020. Wikipe-tan
, davidrevoy.com, 14 October 2022. David Revoy
, storyberries.com. The author
, peppercarrot.com.
, peppercarrot.com. "", mayhemandmuse.com. Pepper et Carrot - Tome 1
(archived), glenat.com. Patronage:
, davidrevoy.com, retrieved 5 February 2023. About
, davidrevoy.com, retrieved 5 February 2023. Why I'm using 100% Open-source ?
, davidrevoy.com, 1 May 2013. Scientific Paper: Sketch to Line-art by Waseda University
, davidrevoy.com, 2 July 2018. Edgar Simo-Serra, Satoshi Iizuka, Hiroshi Ishikawa at

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

Mastering Sketching:Adversarial Augmentation for Structured Prediction
, arxiv.org, 27 March 2017. Narcissus & Echo" (2006 original)
and
Narcissus & Echo" (2022 remix)
, davidrevoy.com. Narcissus & Echo
, davidrevoy.com, 24 october 2006.
, peppercarrot.com, retrieved 6 February 2023. My tablet history log: a listing of all the tablet I tested since 2002 (update: 2023)
, davidrevoy.com, updated 1 February 2023.

External links

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 {{DEFAULTSORT:Revoy, David 1981 births Living people 21st-century French artists French comics writers French comics artists French webcomic creators French fantasy artists French fantasy writers French science fiction artists French science fiction writers Articles containing video clips 21st-century French painters French illustrators