Manufacturing secrets - “Des Astres"
By les Films de la Sauvagère - 2023
Can you tell us about the history of “Des Astres” (“Stars”)?
Maxence (director): Des Astres tells the story of 8-year-old Elio, who uses his telescope and the help of his planets' friends to search for his father, who has joined the stars.
Elio et his telescope  | The moon through the telescope  |
How did you come up with the story of this little boy and his search for the stars?
Maxence (director): I wanted to tell the story of a little boy in his bedroom talking to planets. Here, we explore a universe in which the infinitely large and the small world of a little boy are contrasted. We wanted to explore the theme of mourning as well as the lies we tell children, which are drawn from my own personal history. The story of this boy was then an obvious choice.
How do you set up a project like “Des Astres”? How long does it take before you can move on to animation?
Hugo (producer): “Des Astres” has a rather special history. Maxence and I are alumni of the Cinéfabrique National Film School, and we were lucky enough to attend the school, which gave us a lot of support when we left. The school put out a call for projects from Disney+, offering to pre-purchase several short films by graduating students. So far, 3 short films have come out of this new collection, including “Des Astres.” We had a very small budget in view of the enormous workload, and we couldn't have made this film without the partnership we obtained with TVPaint, who kindly lent us the licenses to make the animation.
Maxence (director): For Des Astres, everything happened unusually quickly. Between the purchase of the script, the end of the writing process, and the start of the animation process, it only took two and a half months. Marina and I put together the team and did the storyboard before launching the animation
What was your aesthetic development process? What were the different phases for charadesign, sets, etc.?
Maxence (Director): The development process began as soon as the project was conceived. When we received the call for projects from Disney+, I immediately started looking for someone to do the art direction, because I'm not a cartoonist and I wanted to enrich the film's points of view. So I started meeting a lot of artists, and I found a style, a creative dynamic and a human alchemy with Marina Rasolofomanana.
Elio Charadesign  | Moon charadesign tests  |
We soon started working on the characters, especially Elio and Lune (Moon), who are at the heart of the story. Marina and I organized a sort of ping pong game, where I would send her documents in which I would mix references, descriptions and color palettes to start from a common base. In response, she'd send me between 5 and 10 charadesign sketch proposals, and from there we'd get together to say what we liked and didn't like about each one, refining the ideas until we came up with the characters together. For the sets, we had to design and furnish Elio and his mother's house. T
I think the sets came to us in a fairly simple way, thanks to our desire to cut them out. For example, the position of the bed came from the desire to do a wide shot where Mum and Elio cross the room and pass through the moonlight of the large skylight before arriving at the bed in the dark. The idea of the bedroom upstairs under the roof and the velux window had been there from the start of the script. As a result, the set came together very quickly, more or less on its own, after the first drafts of the cut and storyboard.
Decor - Elio's room
We then involved Lucas Daveau as head set designer, who did a tremendous job of enriching our vision. It was a very fruitful and fluid collaboration with Lucas, who did all the sets on his own, and peppered Elio's room with little easter eggs from the animation team. A big part of working with Lucas was also working on the lighting. My background is in live-action fiction, where I work mainly as a cinematographer and lighting technician, so lighting issues were very important to me. In particular, I really wanted to bring out the lunar light, as it emanates from the character of Lune, and to contrast it sharply with the very warm interior lights, which cast very harsh shadows alongside the softness of Lune.
What was the animation process like? At what stages did you use TVPaint?
Maxence (Director): The animation process for “Des Astres” was fairly standard. Once the script was finished and the storyboard completed, we recorded all the actors' voices before animating to create a real playground for the comedy without having already set any visual limits. We then edited the animatics with the final voices on the storyboard images.
It was at this point that we switched to TVPaint. We used TVPaint from the rough, clean, and color stages onwards. We were very attached to the idea of working on TVPaint because the software provides a very traditional and rather organic approach to animation, to which we were very attached. Whether it's Marina, Lucas or myself, we all have a great affection for traditional 2D animation. Thanks to TVPaint, we've been able to bring a little bit of these processes back into modern production and into a light economy, thanks to the efficiency of its tools.
Elio  | The stars  | Elio and his mom  |
Was there a particular TVPaint feature that you found useful on this project?
Des Astres was a very light project in terms of headcount, but quite heavy in terms of workload, and at times there was some cross-fertilization of jobs to get everyone involved in certain time-consuming tasks, and that's where TVPaint saved us a lot of time at the colorization stage. Thanks to its hyper-intuitive tools, people like me who had never done colorization before were able to help save time in other aspects of animation, thanks in particular to intelligent colorization.
Artwork of the living room and Elio's mother  | Astronauts on the Moon |
What's your favorite planet in the film?
Hugo (producer): I really like the carefree Mars, it's the one that makes me laugh the most!
Maxence (Director): My favorite planet is Lune, even though it's not a planet, but Lune is where the idea came from. It's this little star who's sulking and unpleasant and can't stand being disturbed by this little human for whom he's hiding a deep affection and concern, and it's this dynamic that really appeals to me about Lune. And his charadesign makes me laugh a lot
Where can audiences watch “Des Astres”?
Hugo (producer): The film is available on the Disney+ platform along with the other 2 films in the collection. “Des Astres” is ideal for a snowy afternoon with hot chocolate under the blanket!
Any further projects? On TVPaint perhaps?
Maxence (Director): Hugo and I are currently in a writing residency with Canal+ and Cinéfabrique for a live-action series. So without TVPaint. But I'm also continuing to write two new short films and an animated series, for which I'm still imagining 2D digital animation, and which could very well end up on TVPaint.
