Over a period of ten years, always depending on our own and our generous contributors’ availability, we shared two sketchbooks with talented artists from France, Germany, Italy, Colombia, Switzerland, Spain, Korea, Canada and the US. 

We invited them to take part in various projects, in several fields : youth literature, the press, videogames, comic strips, animated films and graphic communication. 

We followed our own affinities, often striking an instant rapport and sometimes adopting the prescriptions of these new contributors. 

The two sketchbooks were passed on directly from artist to artist or via trusted assistants (cf. Acknowledgements).  

Another major point was our insistence on the virtue of sharing. The aesthetic result of this long voyage is pregnant with a great diversity of styles and techniques, with infinite variations in the art of shared composition, with unbridled, fantastic, enchanted, dreamlike, provocative, poetical, playful or facetious imagination. 

You may identify the style of some well-known artists, who were humble enough to share, not only their pages, but also their renown with lesser-known colleagues. 

Some pairs have blended their art so well that no one could tell who did what. Others have simulated duels, staging brotherly rivalry or genuine complicity. New friendships sprang up, old ones were confirmed, love affairs occurred, ephemeral or not. 

You know some names, or, at least, their world and characters. Others may not ring a bell, yet in the anonymity of famous animation studios or major brands, they contribute daily to major works and leave their mark on the collective cultural subconscious.

In purchasing this volume, you support the Épic foundation, for the benefit of which these committed artists have generously renounced their royalties. We do hope you have as much pleasure discovering the talents of these associated imaginations as we had gathered them to celebrate the virtues of shared experience.

Gérald Guerlais and Sébastien Mesnard