IA : You seem to have concentrated a lot of efforts on the colors and tonalities between the narration sequences and the inner tipi sequences. How did you manage the work on these levels?

Mathieu: I have to admit that we haven’t totally defined the graphic aspect until much later. We had some ideas, multiple references and some tests, but the main tonality and the colors of the movie were based on common sense. With the medicine man and the three kids being in a tipi in the middle of the night and the only source of light being a fire we used warm tonalities of red, orange and yellow that would get mixed with a dark blue which would be the color of the exterior. The graphic aspect between the cartoon feeling and the realistic feeling requires somewhat saturated colors. The references that we had from Disney, DreamWorks and Pixar movies led us in that way. Concerning the narration sequences we directly felt we had to go for saturated and vivid colors. We were doing a cartoon after all and we wanted to please the children that would be watching it.

IA: What were the other points that you wished to stress on?

Sylvain: It is true that our initial objective was to create a movie with a graphic universe that would go all the way but working on the scenes required a lot of work. It is not obvious to have a story that everybody can understand and contrary to what people believe it is even harder when the story is for kids. We had to make sure it is simple and that they will understand it. Fortunately our scenario teacher helped us doing this part. The fact that we were four students working on the project meant that all of us had to agree on each idea.

Mathieu: We worked really hard on the part that goes from writing the scenario to the montage. That was really tough. We were ready for any technical difficulty in the 3D field but making a movie is something totally different! I was in charge of 3D animation and this is where I concentrated all my efforts. We knew that we were not producing a Pixar movie but the animation had to be done well not to waste all of the work. I did my best in the time that I had but I was still really disappointed with some scenes.

IA: How did you divide the work and how did you find common ground for your choices?

It came naturally as each one of us is more competent than the others in specific fields. Yet, we were always each aware of everything that was happening in every area.

Sylvain Nouveau was in charge of the montage, layout, animation, setup, 2D animation, rigging, managing the production (planning, work distribution, organization) and technical choices. Sylvain also worked on the textures of the characters with Photoshop, the Mental Ray shaders (subsurface, velvet shader, etc.), the fur of the bear (rendering/dynamic), simulation of the tissue, character lighting, as well as rendering and all the visual effect/compositing parts. Sylvain took also care of the web design part. Mathieu Navarro was in charge of the 3D animation, character modeling (medicine man), blendshape (medicine man), lighting of the characters and montage. Aurore Turbe worked on the modeling and décor texturing (inside and out) as well as 2D animation.Francois Pommiez handled the character modeling of the three kids as well as their bland shapes and skinning. He also worked on the 2D animation and the map creation of the 2D universe.

IA: What was the hardest sequence to produce and why?

Sylvain: Each sequence brought its own challenges but the hardest was to agree on the magical transitions between the two universes. Each one of us had his/her own vision that we would discuss and I would test it. When time started to be a constraint and it was clear to everyone that we were going to be late I would create some effects and send them to the team to agree on but whether they liked it or not we just used it as we didn’t have time to create new ones.

Mathieu: The hardest part to me was the end when the kids surprise the medicine man when they get close to him. The difficulty was in the way of showing this passage and in linking the plans. We wanted the viewer to think, just like the old man, that the children have left so we did not want to show them coming back around him. We gave ourselves headaches for this part and I don’t think it was necessary to think about so deeply. I don’t think the effect was not very successful. Anyway, time was against us.