Mcbess, the professional name of French illustrator Matthieu Bessudo,works in a monochromatic style built from long-limbed characters devoid of defined wrists and ankles, drawing on mid-century cartoonists such as Max Fleischer mixed with contemporary shapes.Based in London,his illustrations center on three recurring subjects: girls, food and music.
Bessudo first drew attention with Sigg Jones, a short 3D animated film he made in 2006 as his final project at the multimedia school SupInfoCom in Arles. After graduating he moved to London to take on freelance illustration work, developing the drawing practice that would define his career.In 2010 his work was included in “Fax-Ex Machina”, a live fax-based exchange between London's KK Outlet and Sao Paulo's POP Gallery.In a 2015 interview, he described his style as growing from an attempt to draw the way he did as a child, saying “you have to try and put yourself back into the shoes of your six-year-old self”.
Bessudo began releasing NFTs in 2022 with a series of 1-of-1 pieces that sold for more than 2 ETH each.That November he launched Cel Mates, his first large-scale NFT project, a collection of 4,207 profile-picture NFTs in his black-and-white, vintage cartoon-inspired style. Each character is themed around a fictional prison inmate and doubles as a membership pass to the project's community.In July 2023 he contributed to MNTGE Patchwork, a collaborative series of limited-edition patch NFTs released by MNTGE alongside ten other artists.
