A Night at the Cathedral by Studio Lampion - Page 2
A Night at the Cathedral is a short movie telling the story of the bird-brained burglar Belze on his quest to steal the golden statue of the Holy Mazioles from a medieval cathedral. As might be expected from a comedic short film, things don't go the way he planned.

Many storyboards and concepts were produced and eventually assembled into an animatic showing the storyline through simple graphics played in sequence. Koenig says, "When we started the project, we had ideas for several more characters to play a role in the film but we soon came to the conclusion that we should keep it simple and focus on just one guy… clearly, Belze is the real star here, anyway!"

After revising the story to exclude extraneous fluff and characters, the team focused entirely on the mishaps of the wicked burglar Belze, giving them a much stronger storyline with a more memorable main character.

Character Design



Since the team already had an idea of look and feel they were going for from the various mock ups, concept drawings and storyboards plastered all over the office walls, they went on to the next important step; character design. They opted for a classical villain as the protagonist, reminiscent of old Disney characters and the guy your mom always warned you about. Minning says, "Belze represents the classical archetype of the comedic villain. He's sinister, wicked and yet so clumsy and totally useless. Sometimes it felt like Belze was right there with us in the studio. We've really taken a liking to the guy!"

Belze's antagonist is Clara, a young woman practicing to play the cathedral organ during the night the story unfolds. "Clara is a two-dimensional character in every sense of the word. There's not much character development here, but that's all right, because she doesn't need any to tell the story. She's really just there to react to whatever Belze is up to," Koenig explains.

A strong effort was made to keep the character designs as simple as possible for two reasons. "On the one hand, we had a very specific look in mind for this film and these cartoony, stylized characters with bold features and strong silhouettes fit in much better than any photorealistic ZBrushed freaks of nature ever could have,” says Minning. On the other hand, the simplicity in the design had a pragmatic reason: Simple characters are easier to work with!""