Who are you, and what do you do?
I'm Matthieu and I'm a freelance 2D concept artist and illustrator from France! I mostly specialize in creature/character design, but also like designing landscapes, weapons and generally try to be good at drawing most things so that I can have the most creative freedom possible!
I practice both digital and pixel art as my mediums of choice, but I also have some experience with traditional and 3D art, albeit limited. I'm currently still studying art, but I do freelance work on the side and plan on devoting myself to it fulltime in the coming years. However my ultimate goal as an artist is to be able to make a living from creating art content on the Internet, something which I've been working on for the past 5 years.
Most people know me as Rappenem, and besides freelance work/commissions and studying art, I devote most of my time to maintaining my different social media accounts (mainly Twitter and Instagram), and trying to build and engage with the communities I've started forming there!
What hardware do you use?
I mostly spend my time drawing, and don't do much gaming these days so I'm not too particular about things like my PC, screens and speakers. Anything of decent quality will do. But it's a different story when it comes to my mouse and tablet which are my essential tools of the trade.
For my mouse I use an MX Master 3S since it has a bunch of different, infinitely customizable shortcut buttons which comes in very handy for navigating my drawing software and all of the different social medias I post on. This is especially the case with a multiple screen setup which I have (I find the gesture controls on the mouse particularly useful)!
As for my drawing tablet, I started off using a Huion Kamvas Pro 16, and in the past year I've switched to a Huion Kamvas Pro 24 (4K). I've always preferred using display tablets as they feel far more natural and intuitive to use (especially since I've done traditional art for a lot of my life), and ever since making the switch to the Kamvas Pro 24, having a large screen surface has also become a must for me!
My keyboard is a Corsair K63 Wireless (I like keyboards without a numpad since I never use it and I need all the room I can get on my desk with everything else I've got going on).
Also since I spend a lot of time sitting down everyday, I make sure to use a lot of ergonomic stuff with my setup like a keyboard pad for my wrists and a mouse pad with wrist support. I also always use gaming chairs (DXracer formula series for me) since the adjustable armrests, back and height make things a lot easier on my back and overall posture.
And what software?
For drawing I use Aseprite (pixel art) and Clip Studio Paint (digital art). I'm a big user of Google Drive for saving my drawing project files and other art related stuff, and I use Google Keep as a to-do list and just to keep myself organized.
Pinterest is what I use to gather reference images for my drawings, and I make moodboards with those images using PureRef. I use Google Docs and Sheets for documentation and logging things like commission details, and I do most of my communication with clients through Discord and Gmail.
Some other quality of life apps I use are aText, DesktopOK (since my desktop icons love moving around because of all my different screens lol) and Lightshot which makes sharing drawings and saving reference images super convenient!
What would be your dream setup?
I'm very happy with my current setup, and besides having a bit more room and some slightly more optimized hardware and software, I don't need much more than what I currently have. I guess having my drawing software be a bit less laggy would be nice, so I guess a better computer could be good.
Otherwise, I'd just like to live in an area with more nature. Being in the Paris area you don't exactly get a lot of scenic nature around here, but if I could live in the French alps or anywhere more mountainous really, that would be amazing. Walking around in nature generally does wonders for my inspiration and heals my soul, so being able to work somewhere close to it would be a dream (especially since I only do remote work, so it's more than feasible one day)!
Oh and I guess being able to have my own spacious house would be amazing, but that's going to be tough on a freelance artist's salary, haha.