Ceux pour qui la Lune ne brille pas
Graduation short film
“Abandoned on the moon, a dog is endlessly waiting for his owners to come back, until an unexpected encounter changes his plans.”
Ceux pour qui la Lune ne brille pas (in English : The ones who never see the moonlight) is a 2024 graduation short film made in MoPA School (Arles, France).
Directed by Solène Marché, Lou Thoby, Tom Saurel, Evelyne Philippart, Marie Fantini and Amélie Soto.
Trailer
Visual Development and Artistic Direction
I was focused on images and artistical direction in pre-production – including concept art and key frames, color boarding, prop and character designing – as well as production – surfacing, prop sculpting, lighting and compositing -.
Deeply inspired by The Little Prince written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, our goal was to provide a poetical and philosophical tale, that was not only made for children, but adults as well.
Hence the visual key idea of the film : Paint, not in its stylistic but in its matter itself, playing with everything it could be (acrylic, oily, liquid, and so on). Simple, apparent childish and symbological objects, mixed with the elegance and complexity of paint, in its matter and in Art itself, brought together to convey a deeper meaning.
Opening shot concept
Part of the Colorboard, made alongside Solène Marché
We worked on planets early on. We needed to have simple, impactful and meaningful designs and symbols associated to each of them – Earth, Moon and Saturn. Focusing on only 3 main props for the whole film was really important story-wise, and a real challenge to make efficient and thoughtful designs and avoid anything boring on such simple elements. To make it so, we focused on “matter” itself (references below), to look for richness and details, while keeping it simple enough to understand what it was at the first glance.
Early Earth and Saturn explorations.
While my team-mates were working on Writing and Storyboarding, I was charadesigning with Amélie Soto both our characters, that needed to find their space in the tricky artistic direction and the story we were heading for. My job was to fit them color, shape and texture-wise into our universe.
^ Color and texture researches for Karl, our dog. We finally decided to go with a simple creamy white to contrast with the Space
< Elo, our girafe, with Karl. We needed her to be really close to the original animal, despite her long neck. Her spots were slightly stylised to fit our paint AD.
Leash prop design
In the same time-period as we were designing the props, character and overall art direction, we needed to make sure that all the elements worked together. The use of styles-frames, grouping up all the designs together, with the composition and color design made with the color script, was a necessity that evolved througout the entire pre-production phase.
The galaxy itself was made to link effectively all those elements, while keeping a sense of depth that was primordial in our story. The process to find the right amount of textures and details was the key to keep a coherent and clear image during the entire film.
Production : Background, Lookdev, Surfacing
In this part, I will particularly talk about the background, lookdev and surfacing, which were my principal tasks. I also worked on lighting and compositing.
The surfacing was a big part of our short-film. To make sure all of the assets would have had the same level of textures, we needed a non-destructive workflow, while still being able to hand-paint any part we want, that would grant us the ability to come back to the surfacing when needed.
The Surfacing comes from a texture I hand-painted in photoshop. It was then applied and detailed accordingly on our assets (here: the Earth and Karl, our dog.), to form our BaseColor, while strictly following our concepts. All the additionnal required maps (normal, roughness, etc.) were automatically made from the BaseColor itself. That way, it was easy for us to have a coherent shading in our universe, while keeping a very distinctive look to each of them thanks to the time gained on other maps.
The backgrounds were made using high-quality brush paint photos, painted and produced by Solène Marché, Tom Saurel and Evelyne Philippart. In photoshop, we combined those assets with the animation layout to make a galaxy tailored for each shot individually, while keeping a very productive workflow. Camera mapping helped us light the overall environment, and keeping a true sense of depth in our galaxy.
Early Background Camera Mapping test
And to sum it all up : 3 animated shots from the short-film, with most, if not all, of the elements I talked about above. Enjoy ! 😀