Louisa Lesage

Louisa Lesage was a French comic book author, illustrator and 3D animator whose candid autobiographical strips about autism, anxiety, love and everyday awkwardness built a devoted following of more than 70,000 people on Instagram. Her first book, Journal d'un alien en roue libre (Diary of an Alien Running Wild), was published by Éditions Exemplaire in May 2026. She died in Angoulême on 8 November 2026, at the age of 28, while she was working on a sequel.

Louisa Lesage, also reported in the press as Louisa Cao Lesage, was born on 20 September 1998 in Paris. She trained at the École Estienne, the Paris school of graphic arts, and then studied at Gobelins Paris, one of France's best known schools of animation and image.

At Estienne she wrote and directed Moi vivant (I, Alive), a four minute 3D animated short made as her graduation film in 2019. The film follows a man who has taken his own life and who, tormented by his inner demons, holds a dialogue with himself in an attempt to come back to life. It was shown in the Forum des images "Cour(t)s d'écoles" student programme in Paris in December 2019, and in 2020 it was selected for the London International Animation Festival's "Best of the Next" programme. It is distributed by Miyu Distribution.

She went on to work as a 3D animator. In June 2022, during the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Le Dauphiné libéré interviewed her for a report on the sexism that women still faced in the animation industry. She also took part in collaborative projects, including the Angouflemme team entry in the 2025 Ultimate AnimChallenge, and she appeared in the 2020 short film series Joshua Parker: Rêves by Kenji Isidor. Under the name Bestiole she wrote and sang songs, including a 2021 track, "À toutes les filles", and a setting of James Oppenheim's poem "Bread and Roses" in French as "Du pain et des roses", released on her own YouTube channel.

Alongside animation, she drew short autobiographical comics and posted them on Instagram. In them she wrote openly about being autistic, about social difficulty, relationships, sexuality, trauma and family life, mixing self mockery with real tenderness. Her publisher described a life that was "gentle and strange but gentle all the same", and a woman who loved stroking dogs, sending voice notes that were far too long, treating her friends to restaurant meals and spending her salary on clothes she never wore. Readers repeatedly said they recognised themselves in her pages.

Those strips became her first album. Like every Exemplaire title, Journal d'un alien en roue libre was funded through a crowdfunding campaign on the publisher's site, which drew 780 backers and raised 25,573 euros against an original goal of 10,000 euros. The 208 page book, collecting strips first shared on Instagram together with previously unpublished stories, was published on 4 May 2026. Critics quoted by the publisher called it touching and caustic, sensitive and deadpan, and said its very personal experiences raised universal questions about self esteem. By the autumn of 2026 she was living in the centre of Angoulême, France's capital of comics, and was working on a second volume, Journal d'un alien en chute libre, expected in spring 2027.

On the night of 7 November 2026 she left a party alone, and a missing person notice was circulated saying she had last been seen near the Île de Bourgines in Angoulême. Early on the morning of Sunday 8 November her body was found at the foot of the Gâtine tunnel in Angoulême. Prosecutors opened an inquiry to establish the cause of death and ordered an autopsy. Early reports suggested she may have fallen from the top of the tunnel, but the authorities had not confirmed what happened. Éditions Exemplaire announced her death on 10 November 2026, saying she had been preparing her next book "with passion and enthusiasm" and that they were mourning an artist for whom they had great affection.

News of her death drew an outpouring of tributes from readers, fellow artists and the French comics world, many describing a bright, generous person whose drawings had helped them feel less alone.