Icar

Franck Picard, or Icar, was born in a small French town in 1969. Though born deaf, at the age of 14 the artist began to attend the Beaux-Arts institute of Rouen as a normal student, drawing and painting among his peers. Following his experience in Rouen, he was made to spend four years in a special school for the hard of hearing in order to obtain his high school diploma. Thanks to a great effort on his part, he was able to then join the applied arts school Olivier-de-Serres, and in 1989 the artist obtained his associate's degree, with the help of an interpreter. At 24 years old, under the name Francard, the artist published his first series, Jeepster (Dargaud, 1992-1996) written by Giordano. For the artist, it was a way of showing others with hearing problems that it was possible to break through into the publishing world in a big way. Following ten years of collaboration with Froideval — including the Fatum series (Dargaud, 1996-2001) and Anamorphose (Dargaud, 2005) — the artist reached out to Leo to see if he would be interested in working together. And thus were born the series Terres lointaines (Dargaud; Distant Worlds, Cinebook in English 2009-2012) and Ultime frontière (Dargaud, 2014), as well as a new pseudonym: Icar. Like the infamous Icarus of old, he must watch out not to fly too close to the sun...