With my time with Film Street coming to an end, I’ve been revisiting some of the content I’ve produced over the last two years. Here are some tips on animation from the French animator, Michel Ocelot….
‘Azur and Asmar: The Princes’ Quest’, now available on DVD, is a beautiful fairytale, which explores sibling rivalry and the need to find your own way in the world. Read Film Four’s review of ‘Azur and Asmar: The Princes’ Quest here.
The film is full of vivid colours and intricate drawing and Michel makes surfaces glow and sparkle by using different shades of each colour and varying styles of illutstration for different parts of the frames – the costumes are flat and plain, hands and faces are detailed and jewels are drawn so that they look real!
Michel draws a storyboard for every single frame of his animations so he can decide how he will position the characters. For example if he is showing somebody sword fighting he will draw him in profile so that the audience we be able to see right away what the character is doing. When sword fighters are shown from the front their arms and swords disappear.
‘Azur and Asmar: The Princes’ Quest’ was created with drawn animation but some of Michel’s other work such as ‘Princes and Princesses’ use paper cut-out characters, which are as beautiful and as detailed as his drawn work.
Wonderful world cinema!
Film is a wonderful cultural resource, world cinema in particular can introduce children to vibrant, diverse and exciting characters, locations and stories. As this post shows it can also introduce aspiring filmmakers to new viewpoints, approaches and techniques; children and young people should be given the opportunity to see more films set amd made around the world.
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