"Crazy date with the director of "Métropole" - Sylvain Chomet, one of France's top animation directors, talks about creating films"

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From a single stroke of a pen by an orphaned child to the "Annecy" of animation directors The "Annecy" of animation directors

You had a specialized education in comic strips and animated films, so when did your education in these images first begin?

One piece of paper, one pen, drawing initiation

I was born into a family with many children, and was the youngest, and at one time quite withdrawn. My mom was very handy, she made dolls and drew. So when I was two and a half years old, I took a piece of paper and a paintbrush and started learning to draw, just the little things we had on the TV and in the house. After that I went to school, but I never stopped drawing. Whenever people ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I always answer: a cartoonist. I would answer: cartoonist. At that time, comic strips were very popular in French culture. I copied a few at first, but never made any original drawings until I entered the comic strip school in Angoulême.

Note: Angoulême is located in the southern part of Poitou-Charentes in the western region of France, and is the capital of the Charente department, which is in the west of France but is fully integrated into the south of France.

To make a living, I did animation, by mistake

I graduated three years later, and you can imagine what it was like when I went to a publisher and said, "I've got a diploma in comic strips". After all, I still needed to earn a living. So against my will, I went to England and started illustrating and storyboarding (although I didn't know what storyboarding was at the time, so it's a good thing I didn't do it). After a round of tests I got into an advertising and animation production company. It was all about making a living, and my heart still wanted to do comic strips. Animation wasn't very enticing to me, it was too intimidating. But, by chance, I got to meet the masters of animation. My first job was doing interval realizations for Michael Dudok de Wit.

Note: Michael Dudok de Wit was born in the Netherlands in 1953. After studying printmaking in Switzerland, he graduated from West Surrey College of Art in 1978, specializing in animation. He has worked for Richard William, Richard Purdum and other famous animation companies in the UK, and also participated in the production of many commercials. With the support of Folimage, he completed his first short film "Monk and Fish" in 1994, which won the César Award for Best Short Film and the Cartoon d'Or in France in 1995. "Father and Daughter" (Father and Daughter) won the Annecy, Oscar and other animation awards.

From Mechanical, to Enchanted, to Meet the Higher Power

I started out drawing mechanically, and I didn't really understand a lot of things. The next time I saw how the drawings moved, it was really a big touch for me and made me choose to stay there in the end. Every time I saw an animated film, I became obsessed with it, and I realized the endless fun in the animation industry, and that animation is so contagious for people who draw.

Also, I thought animation is a very cheap kind of TV series, like Disney, they do good quality animation, but I wasn't interested. Then I went to various animation festivals and I met a lot of people who shared their interesting experiences with me, like Paul Driessen, Jan ?vankmajer.

My work as a screenwriter and director was also very satisfying because I met two of the most famous sketch artists Nicolas de Crécy (Léon La Came) and Hubert Chevalier. Came) and Hubert Chevillard (Le Pont dans la vase).

Note: Paul Driessen Paul Driessen Master of Animation

In 1967 was invited to London, England, to join the production team of the animated film Yellow Submarine, directed by George Dunning. His Canadian film credits include Small Moves, Another Similar Story, Four Seasons at the End of the World, and The Boy Who Saw the Icebergs, and his Dutch film credits include One of the Waters, Three Beauties in Trouble, and Two Dimensions or Not Two Dimensions. He has been nominated for an Academy Award for The Passion of the Three Beauties, an Annie Award for Animation from the Hollywood Chapter of ASIFA, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ottawa Animation Film Festival, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Zagreb International Animation Festival, "Special Golden Dragon Award for Outstanding Artists and Teachers.

Jan Vankmajer is the most famous Czech animation director

Works: 88-minute animated feature film Alice, claymation works Dialogue and Darkness Light, etc.

Jan Vankmajer is the most famous Czech animation director. Darkness"

Commercial, non-commercial, it's a question

At the Annecy Animation Festival, I found that most of the creative work was a bit boring, and the purely commercial work was of poor quality, and I felt that there should be a bridge between the two. I saw Nick Park's Creature Comfort, which was also a great inspiration to me. So when I met Didier Brunner, I suggested my work La vieille dame et les pigeons (The Old Woman and the Pigeons.)

When black and white meets color, like-mindedness has to collide

Is La vieille dame et les pigeons still a collaborative effort with Nicolas de Crécy? with Nicolas de Crécy?

In fact, he and I used to live together in Montpellier, Didier got a grant from the CNC to make « pilote », and Nicolas was looking for a director for the comic strip. I wrote him a script that I had written for the movie. I had already done the image development part, but it wasn't to Nicolas's liking, so I did my best to adapt the script to suit him. In the beginning, I influenced Nicolas' black-and-white color processing, and again, he added a nice touch of color processing later on.

Note:

Nicolas de Crécy (Nicolas de Crécy) is one of the most famous artists in the world. Nicolas de Crécy Crécy), a French master of comic book craftsmanship, was born in Lyon on September 29, 1966

Works: Genesis Summit (2007) Steam Boy (2004) Vieille dame et les pigeons, La (1998)

Didier Brunner, a French animation producer

Works: Brendan The Secret of the Kama Sutra (2009) | Équilibre de la terreur, L' (2006) | Kirikou and the Beast (2005) | T'Choupi (2004) Crazy Dates of Belleville Triplettes de Belleville, Les (2003) | Wanna Be a Bear ( 2002) |Princes et princesses (2000) |The Old Woman and the Pigeon (1998) |The Adventures of Kirikou et la sorcière (1998)

Then I went to work in Canada for ten years, and for ten years I was never heard of again in France.

It was during this decade that I finished my Old Woman and the Pigeon, and it took me five years to finish les triplettes (The Three Bicycles). During this time Nicolas also released a collection of his work, which was a great success, and I think he's a great decorater.I also started planning my next movie, "Crazy Dating Belleville" (les Triplettes de Belleville) We also don't see much of the movie La Vieille Dame any more, because the animation world is also very competitive. fierce.

Hand drawing never stops

When you're working on an animation script, do you really do very little drawing?

I pretty much disassociated myself from comic strips during the time I spent in the UK, to the point where people think I've stopped hand-drawing my work, but that's not really the case. The movie "Old" required me to do thirty to fifty sketches a day, and I also drew comic strips for advertisements and for myself. I'm still not sure if I really want to switch to animation completely. In fact, what I like most about comic strips is that we don't need a lot of drawing equipment, just paper, brushes and charcoal. Also, if I were to go back to comic strips, I wouldn't keep the style I had in the movie Triplettes, I'd move to a very understated style, like Spiegelman in Maus.

Weaving the threads of Belleville

Let's talk about the decoration, which is the most amazing thing in this movie. This ship was a big deal in the thirties ......

This is the Cassandre tanker, which is really beautifully painted, and although it can't really sail, the magical hand of animation allows it to finally set sail.

Who are your biggest creative influences?

The biggest would have to be Daniel Goossens, whose brushstrokes are amazing, few strokes, but so much meaning (they look simple, but are actually very complex). When I asked the animators to draw the crowded scene at the Tour de France, I showed them the portfolio of Daniel Goossens, who is undoubtedly the best sketcher of all time. I am also influenced by Egon Schiele et Toulouse-Lautrec.

When the movie TRIPLETTES begins, it's somewhat of a tribute to Ddubout by the Max Fleischer production studio.

It did, I think that if there had been an animation industry in France in those days, Dubout would have done animation, and we missed it. So I mixed the way of animation with the style of artists of that era like Dubout, Trenet, Joséphine Baker, Django Reinhardt and others.

What genre do you prefer when it comes to movies?

I can't say that the Les Triplettes movie wasn't influenced by animation, but it was more influenced by realistic framing movies, like Chaplin's mimes. But in the end I decided to do a mix and I broke into this animation world, which was monopolized by Disney, with a lot of fresh ideas and I reasoned that animation would be a promising career.

The Twisted Life of Three Old Women

Can you tell us a little bit about the origin of the title?

In the beginning, the trio of bicycles didn't exist in the movie, and due to the great success of the movie La Vieille Dame, Didier Brunner suggested that I make two shorts using the character of the old woman. I actually didn't like the idea of repurposing the character very much myself, so I suggested to him to do two feature films of the sisters of the first old woman, the trio stories. The names of the two new stories were Old Woman and Bicycle La Vieille Dame et les Vélos and Old Woman and Giant Frog La Vieille Dame et les ouaouarons.

In this way, the whole of a title slowly emerged, which involved three people, and finally the triplettes were settled upon. Then began the storyboarding of the bike, and I realized that I had started a script for a feature film. On Didier Brunner's side, he always emphasized that Canadian collaborator's comments about repurposing the old woman character, so we decided to put the old woman and the bike together. He suggested that I change the character, and I made another old woman and designed her past - of Portuguese origin - and in the end, you could say that I invented the triplettes .

The animation team needs a mountain for a tiger

The process of realizing an animated film can be much more complex than the animation itself, and can involve a lot of people. In the studio, the identification of the backbone means to be the sole person in the division of labor, but how to grasp the degree (in the division of labor and cooperation)?

At least Bill Plympton did the division of labor all by himself, which is practically unavoidable, so how do you reconcile the two? First of all, there must be a foundation of animators; I've been part of the movie-making process and led many teams.

If you want to be square, you can be round and let go

Before that, I used to draw storyboards before I started animating the characters. Those animators who used to make Mme Souza already know how it works. I also keep some animations for myself, just for my own hobby, and those examples can sometimes be more powerful than words. Also, we work deep among them, I have a lot of faith in the animators who make the animated characters, but I also sit among them a lot to show them how it's done. It does take time to get those animators who come from the animation studio, to adapt to such a very pure animation work. I say, let go and do it, what I need are those more uneven curves, maybe round, maybe square, so as to show his vigor.

Note: Bill Plympton animation director

Works: The Fan and the Flower (2005) Hair High Hair High (2004) I Married a Strange Person! (1997) Mutant Aliens Mutant Aliens (2001)

Trimming = Lighting + Color + Wonderful Chemistry of the Scene

For trimming the decor, I chose Evgueni Tomov. he knows the work well, and his mastery of dark ambient color is a Hopper method. The grasp is a Hopper approach, which is exactly the one we're going for. We went to Old Montreal and tried to find the kind of dim light that would hit the walls of an imagined beautiful city, creating many of the iconic buildings of Montreal and Quebec City. In the end, Evgueni Tomov put a lot of effort into the images, searching for all kinds of colors. We brought in Thierry Million and Monica Langlois, who created an excellent retouching scene without changing the already successful characters.

Letting go is still cautious and prudent and still trusting

Sometimes there are certain processes in the production process that aren't realized in one place, so what was Belge Benoît Féroumont's role?

We have a lot of 2D animation that needs to be done, and I'd love to do all of it in Canada, but sometimes it's something that needs to be outsourced. I'm very picky because I'm afraid of losing control. didier Brunner sent Belge Benoît Féroumont to Montreal and I've seen the stuff he's done, especially BZZ, and it's very confidence-inspiring. He's my family, we speak the same language, that's why I was able to hand him over to do animation in Belgium that no one else could do in Montreal, such as the crowds in the Méridien, the bicycle clusters, and it's the same for animation, we'll keep some very important scenes such as the storms, and do them ourselves, while outsourcing some of them such as the bicycle and the car productions to France.

The inevitable need to go from 2D to 3D superb production

So what was the motivation that made you move to 3D animation?

I wanted the movie to be even more masterful than La Vieille Dame in terms of production. We didn't just want to show the Tour de France bikes, cars, or just a simple vitalization of the characters, which wouldn't be too infectious. So we decided to work on emotions and 2D movements, but also to turn to 3D animators to create cars, bikes, pedal boats, ships, sea ...... We immediately realized that this project would involve a lot of different locations. This requires the use of 3D software, a process that is lengthy and tedious, especially,if we want to: add a halo to the wheels of a bicycle; make the wheels spin; the sea, again, swells with waves and waves; a 2D animator would quickly come to hate such a tedious task.

Memories of childhood, distance, dreams

Why did you choose to make a movie that takes place in the 1960s? Was it to reminisce about your childhood?

Actually, I was born in 1963, and I was looking for my own childhood memories. My dad used to watch the Tour de France on a black-and-white TV set, and I simply couldn't comprehend at the time the crowds of people like ants on the highway captured in those aerial shots inside the TV set. In particular, I used to love sketching, and seeing a small Renault 4CV car through pictures was more enjoyable than having a party; having Charles de Gaulle turned into an animated character was more enjoyable than meeting RAFFARIN and President Chirac. The sense of distance in time and space helps us a lot, and will make it easier for us to enter the dream world.

"Big" caricatured effect

Is this movie's representation of two cultures, and what comes through in the images, a satire on France and today's North America?

It is. I was thinking about when I first came to the U.S. and lived in North America for ten years coming into contact with a lot of obese people. Obesity free, which is a common phenomenon in the US, not necessarily better but definitely bigger. I love the idea of Fat Mrs. Souza, especially when she takes her dog and comes to this one huge city that can crush her and chases after that big boat, that scene is really comic and the French and the boozers love it very much.

It's better to be happy alone than to be happy together

Music plays a big role in this almost entirely pantomime movie, how did you and Benoît Charest work together?

I was not going to work with someone who didn't seek joy for themselves, I was more interested in finding a sound effects artist who was willing to share their joy with others. One day a sound engineer friend said to me, "You should try working with Benoît Charest." I met Benoît Charest in a jazz club in Montreal, playing electric guitar music, and it was a crazy scene, and I met him. He's crazy and capable of making incredible things in this world. He helped me a lot with the movie.

He makes music that fits your images, he plays between the images and the music.

That's true, his masterpiece is the Doulos theme song - tiny concertos that match the action. But it's not limited to that. He's also hilarious, as we can see: a huge machine, some people struggling to pedal, a 2CV model Citro?n car that flips over on a sharp turn. Each character has its own theme, but I don't want a music that is too strange, I like them to be accompanied by brass instruments that play and have a very hard and clear musical appearance.