I recently watched the film The Triplets of Belleville, as I am keen to familiarise myself with the work of Sylvain Chomet. The film was beautifully made, with excellent character designs, and use of colour that reflected French comic art pallets.
The film made excellent use of camera angles, and achieved close-ups that exaggerated the quite extreme facial characteristics of characters (See a sketch below).
The use of little additional characteristics and actions to embellish mostly silent characters was a useful tool to get the audience more invested in the story; for instance Madame De Souza’s whistle, or the dog’s apparent obsession with barking at trains. Similarly, the use of animalisation of characters, such as the explicitly mouse-like engineer, added a layer of comedy to the film. I was impressed by small features, such as regularly and accurately moving pupils in character’s faces; particularly Madame de Souza’s, as they were exaggerated by her large glasses.
I spent some time looking up the production of this film. Mostly, the film was hand-drawn, however many of the drawings were imported into Toon-Boom for additional animation. All vehicles, were 3D animated, whilst background paintings were all imported into photoshop, and given watercolour paper-like texture. It is interesting that even a hand-drawn film uses a range of softwares in order to give the film the desired aesthetic.
Impressed by the designs of characters, and use of different camera angles, I sketched out a few shots from the film. I hope to engage with more of Chomet’s work in order to hopefully take a little influence from his style, and learn a bit more about the impact of staging and camera placement.