Michel Ancel

[spiraldoor]

I decided to create this thread to share and discuss any information we may come across about Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman.

He was born in Monaco, on March 29th, 1972. Well-known facts such as this can be found here, but most of you will know these already.

Before he joined Ubisoft, Ancel briefly worked at software house Lankhor. The first game he ever worked on was Mechanic Warriors, which seems not to have been released. This site contains some information about Lankhor, and Mechanic Warriors, but no mention of Ancel himself (I guess he was just a teenager working part-time there or something, so maybe it's not that surprising).

In this interview I found (it's in French [thanks to Hunch for translating!]), Ancel shares some quite interesting information which seemingly wasn't well-known until now: Michel left home and had his first child, Claire, at the age of sixteen; he went on to have another child by the same woman; he later married another woman, his current wife, Alexandra, and now has two children by her; he is also the stepfather of Alexandra's other four children.

Finally, a certain "Alexandra Steible" is credited as Character Designer and Lead Animator in R1.
And a certain "Alexandra Ancel" is credited as Character Designer in R2, and Artistic Advisor in RM.
According to this IMDb page, they're the same person.
Is it possible that the change of name was due to her marrying Michel, and that she's his wife?

Discuss.

[Xenon]

Would I be right in thinking these Alexandras are his (step)children? That would explain some of the more obscure Rayman characters, like Clark the giant for example. Interesting stuff.

He looks good for thirty-seven, too.

[spiraldoor]

I think the Alexandra Steible credited in R1 married him, which would explain the Alexandra Ancel credited for similar things in the other games.

Also: the Lankhor website actually does mention Ancel, in its credits for Mechanic Warriors, but it doesn't mention him in their list of staff. As I said, he was only sixteen or seventeen at the time, and probably not counted among the full-time staff.

I advise everyone to check out the Lankhor site; there's quite a lot of intersting stuff there:



Hehe...look at the bottom-right corner of the picture...

[Cairnie]

Oh man he's about the same age as the creator of the James Pond games, and funny enough he was making games at 16 too. Really odd coincidence that.

[Kelvin12]

The Nostalgia Critic can tell us how awesome Michel Ancel is...

[spiraldoor]

He seems to have gone on holiday in Martinique with the money he made from R1.

More importantly, this is probably Michel Ancel's address. Drolpiraat found it.

5 RUE DU PUITS DU TEMPLE
34000 Montpellier

It's cool if you type it into Google Earth.

[Beebop]

Montpellier...Nice.

[Rsandee]

Michel Ancel is awesome, but his Rabbid idea's suck

[Droolie]

His rabbids ideas were great at first, but I think the rest of the team liked it so much that they decided to make the shitty game that is RRR.

[Hunchman801]

More importantly, this is probably Michel Ancel's address. Drolpiraat found it.

There's even a phone number, which is weird. Wouldn't you expect him to be unlisted? It may just be a homonym.

[spiraldoor]

I don't find it that strange; he's only a moderately well-known game developer. It's not as if he's, say, Shigeru Miyamoto, or Hideo Kojima.

Someone should ring it.

[PluMGMK]

It may just be a homonym.

Homonym=Word that sounds like another word, even though it is not spelled the same way.

[spiraldoor]

Someone should ring it.

I wasn't joking.

[PluMGMK]

So, say I ring it. What would I say? "Je suis fatigué et malade avec les lapins" springs to mind, but what else?

[spiraldoor]

We could tell him to come pay a visit to PC? That's quite high on the list of the best things that could ever possibly happen. If he made even a single post it would be omfg-tastic.

[PluMGMK]

We'd be better off posting this in the French forums, because the guys there would be better able to talk to him. Then there's Hunch, who's active both places...

I think anyone who rang it would just hang up straight away, and annoy the heck out of him by doing so.

[CheatCat]

We could tell him to come pay a visit to PC? That's quite high on the list of the best things that could ever possibly happen. If he made even a single post it would be omfg-tastic.

But how in the hall (of doors) should we know if he have write a post or not?

[PluMGMK]

He would probably tell us who he was.

[Hunchman801]

It may just be a homonym.

Homonym=Word that sounds like another word, even though it is not spelled the same way.

Homonym: A word that both sounds and is spelled the same as another word but has a different meaning.
Heteronym: A word having the same spelling as another, but a different pronunciation and meaning.
Homophone: A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling and meaning.
Homograph: A word that is spelled the same as another but has a different meaning and usually a different etymology.

Let's just pretend you didn't make a fool of yourself and forget this embarrassing remark of yours.

[PluMGMK]

It still has nothing to do with phone numbers!