We’re really happy to share this interview about the making of ‘A La Française’, an animated short movie made by Julien Hazebroucq, Emmanuelle Leleu, Morrigane Boyer, William Lorton and Ren Hsien Hsu at Supinfocom during the 3th year. A La Française has won tons of awards as Best Show Award at SIGGRAPH Festival (2013) and Best Character Animation at ANIMAGO Festival (2013).
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/86295452[/vimeo]
IT’S ART : Can you explain your roles during the movie creation?
A La Française Team : We all directed the short, and we all had specificities during the production. Julien was in charge of Team Management – Set Design/Modeling/Texturing – Lighting – Rendering – Compositing – Sound . Emmanuelle was in charge of the Character Design (mostly the faces, facial expressions and the wigs) – Animation – Texturing (characters) – Sound. Morrigane was in charge of the Layout – Modeling (character/set) – Skin/Texturing (character) – Cloth. William was in charge of the Character Design (mostly the body)- Storyboard – Animation – FX – Sound. Ren Hsien was in charge of the Script Development – Character Design (Louis XIV, the gardener, the soldier, the old marshal)/Modeling – Animation – Cloth
IA – Where does the idea come from? Do the short has evolved with time due to some story refining or technical problems?
AFT – The very first idea of the film was a rooster fight during the reign of Louis 14 developed by Julien. Our main idea was to create a kind of satiric pamphlet of this time by using comic situations. We wanted the audience to discover the court of Versailles and not be only around Louis XIV, the King. We also wanted to correlate part of our story with the Storming of the Bastille. The main technical problem was the number of characters (around 40). But we all agreed that we wanted many characters to fit with the ambiance in Versailles during this typical period. Ren Hsien worked hard on the rig to make the animation “simpler”. So the story has not evolved due to technical problems!
IA – What’s about the characters modeling? Can you speak about the concept and you artistic choices?
AFT – We were three to work on the characters design. We wanted to have a various panel of solution of design. With the time, we found a good balance between us. We wanted the chickens and the hens to be very funny. We wanted to play with the archetypes of each character in the court of Versailles. We found fun in each attitude; all the characters had manners in their way to live and speak, it’s why we really wanted to keep human expressions and mix them with stupid chicken faces. Costumes were also funny: ruffs, lacework, embroidered fabrics.
We also wanted characters with a lot of colors, which was not so simple because the set of the Castle of Versailles as a lot of details, gold everywhere… We didn’t know if it were going to work or not, it’s why, at the beginning, we wanted a “faded” atmosphere like in the film Marie Antoinette, by Sofia Coppola.
IA – How much time did you spent on this project? What was the most difficult part?
AFT- We worked one year and a half on it. The writing of the story took us a lot of time (almost 10 months). The most difficult part was probably the period between the animation and the rendering. It was during the last 4 months, and we started to be quite tired 🙂 Julien, the team manager, wanted to render the movie two times, to have the time to make some retakes and correct some details. We had constantly to be ahead in our work and make concessions.
IA – Can you detail how you’ve communicated during the whole process?
AFT- The communication between us was quite good. Of course we had some fights sometimes, but not so much! Our computers were next to each other to make the communication easier. Nobody ever worked at home and we were going to the school during the weekends.
IA – Can we’ve technical details about the workflow / pipeline?
AFT – Everybody had a specific planning of each tasks, and we had deadlines for everything, even when we needed to have more time, we had to go ahead. We were always in advance on everything, to have time for the end to make some retakes.
IA – What was the most challenging scene? Why?
AFT – The most challenging scene were the ones in the “gallery des glaces” with all the mirrors and the dancing chickens – duplicate animation on a lot of characters, cloth for each character. The scenes were big and it happened that 3ds Max crashed. And the reflections in the mirrors asked for more time for rendering.
IA – What’s about the lighting and rendering? Can you explain how you’ve worked together to achieve the final results on this part?
AFT – Julien, who did the lighting and the rendering, is using V-Ray since, approximately 5 years. He started to use V-Ray during our formation at Supinfocom. V-Ray was the most convenient software to use for Julien; Supinfocom Arles school is also working on it since many years.
It was a lot a work for just one people, but it was easier for the team to have the same level of rendering in each scene.
IA – What are the tools you’ve used? Have you developed in-house scripts?
AFT – We mostly worked on 3ds Max. We used Unfold for texturing, V-Ray for lighting and rendering, and Adobe Photoshop/After Effects. Ren Hsien created different scripts to help for animation, and did the rigging.
IA – What do you think make your short unique?
AFT – We have a lot of characters, which is, for a student graduation movie, quite unique for the moment. Also, we wanted to be efficient with the cameras, it’s why we only have one camera moving (at the beginning of the film) and we can watch each scene as a “painting”. We tried to found a good balance between a cartoonish humor and sarcasm.
IA – Why would you like to qualify your project as an artistic project?
AFT – This was not an artistic project, but a graduation film, which is very different. We had meeting with our professors, some rules to respect.
IA – What’s in your opinion the most important thing to focus on in such project?
AFT – The animation was one of the most important things on this project. Every character depends on his acting. We did a lot of “animation passes” to try to have the same level of animation in each scenes. More generally, a good cohesion between the students is very important.
IA – What was your first reactions and those of the public when you’ve showed your short for the first time?
AFT – It’s difficult to make a movie with humor inside, make people laugh can be very hard. We were glad to see it worked 🙂 We never thought we could win the “Best In Show” Award at the SIGGRAPH festival, it was a BIG surprise.
IA – Do you have any new personal projects now?
AFT – William is now working on personal project with another friend from Supinfocom, nothing will be released at the moment. Emmanuelle and Julien are working on a very short film, at ChezEddy in Paris. Ren Hsien is working on a procedural rig in Maya and a 1-minute CG short. Nothing special for Morrigane at the moment.
