Plantopia is the french illustration and animation duo shifting perspectives on everyday scenes

Maryka Laudet and Quentin Camus’ creative partnership started out almost a decade ago during their art school years in Arles in the south of France. “It took a lot of different forms until it became Plantopia and resembled what we are doing now,” Maryka tells It’s Nice That. Establishing their practice from a background in animation and establishing themselves in the industry for a good few years now, Maryka and Quentin have both recently turned towards illustration: “Our motto is to bridge the gap, doing illustration work with an animation toolset,” Maryka says.

The Bristol-based duo’s signature style is characterised by soft, graphic, minimal world building that feels immediately playful and theatrical – their scenes are what they refer to as “stages for little moments in life”. Whilst some of their characters are at peace bird watching, others are grasping at surreal inventions like tomato trees, we’ve also spotted a band of quite a few of them transporting an abnormally large baguette. No matter where they are situated, all of these friendly figures have very minimal features and colour palettes rendering them purposefully faceless, “so they feel like anybody and everybody”, shares Quentin.

“By keeping the environment quite minimalistic too, we try to make our projects reminiscent of a certain texture of a moment using only a few key elements and colours that somehow evoke them”, he says. It’s not hard to get immersed in these dream-like worlds and the sense of wonder they hold. Like a cinematographer switching camera angles, Markya and Quentin make sure you’re never seeing compositions from one side. The pairs use of 3D wide angles and fisheye lens effects make for the kind of joyful movement that takes something very 2D entirely into another realm.