Benoît Sokal

Benoît Sokal was born in Brussels in 1954.[1] He studied at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc in Brussels, together with many contemporary Belgian comic artists like François Schuiten. He began drawing for À Suivre magazine in 1978. He created the Inspector Canardo series, featuring a depressed anthropomorphic duck detective with a penchant for cigarettes, alcohol and femmes fatales, before working on other titles.

Later he joined the software developer Microïds and designed the adventure games Amerzone, Syberia and Syberia II (published by Microïds, the adventure game label of Anuman Interactive). He then founded his own game company, White Birds Productions, where he created the adventure game Paradise published through Ubisoft.

He died on 28 May 2021 after a battle with long-term illness.[2][3][4][5]

The cover of La Mort douce, an Inspector Canardo adventure originally published in 1982.

• Inspector Canardo, 23 albums, 1981- ; Casterman
• Sanguine, with Alain Populaire; 1988, Casterman
• Silence, on tue!, with François Rivière; 1990, Nathan
• Le Vieil Homme qui n'Écrivait Plus, 1996; Casterman
• Syberia, 1 album, 2002; Casterman (sketches and drawings for the game Syberia)
• Paradise, 2 albums, 2005-, artist Brice Bingono; Casterman

• Amerzone (1999)
• Syberia (2002)
• Syberia II (2004)
• Paradise (2006)
  • Last King of Africa (2008) (Nintendo DS version of Paradise)
• Sinking Island (2007)
• Aquarica (2008) (canceled)
• Syberia III (2017)
• Syberia: The World Before (2022, posthumous)

• 1999: Prix Pixel-INA (category "Games") at the Imagina 99 festival, Monaco[6]
• 2002: GameSpy PC Adventure Game of the Year[7]
• 2003: nominated for the Award for Best Dialogue at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, France

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Benoît Sokal.

• Sokal publications in (A SUIVRE) BDoubliées (in French)
• Sokal albums Bedetheque (in French)
• Benoît Sokal biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia