Illustrator Cédric Peyravernay Turns Character Design Into Visual Storytelling, Giving Every Figure a Past You Can Read at a Glance

Cédric Peyravernay, a Lyon-based French concept artist and character designer whose richly painterly, psychologically charged designs have shaped major video games, animation, and screen projects. Trained in traditional drawing at École Émile Cohl, he works across both traditional and digital painting, using character design as a form of visual storytelling.

Peyravernay is closely associated with the painterly visual world of Arkane’s Dishonored series, for which he created much of the character concept art, including the game’s in-world Sokolov paintings. He also contributed to Prey, The Wolf Among Us, Diablo IV, and Dune: Awakening.

His Dune: Awakening research began in 2020, before Denis Villeneuve’s Dune film had been released. Funcom and Legendary asked for an art direction separate from the upcoming film, and Peyravernay focused particularly on distinguishing characters and social castes within the world of Arrakis. His sketches and concepts show how he approaches sci-fi: sand, weathering, fabrics, armor, masks, silhouette, and body language all do the work of storytelling before any dialogue begins.

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