Pil, a French film in which our former students participated

A MEDIEVAL-FANTASY UNIVERSE

Pil is the third feature film of the Toulouse-based studio, TAT Prod. Directed by Julien Fournet, this animated film for children mixes acrobatics and discoveries in a medieval-fantasy universe. The pitch? Pil, an orphan girl survives by stealing food from the castle of the regent Tristain, usurper of the throne. One day, to escape the guards who are chasing her, she disguises herself by putting on a princess dress. She is then drawn into a mad quest to save Roland, the true heir to the throne.

The Occitanie region was our first source of inspiration for the film’s universe: the city of Carcassonne, Cordes-sur-Ciel, Albi…,” confides Julien Fournet. We went on a little journey with the film’s graphic designers to find the references for our universe: a Middle Ages close to that of the south of France in the 14th century, tinged with wonder. We even went so far as to paste southern accents on several of our characters. I knew the talented dubbing actor Emmanuel Curtil, having worked with him on Aces of the Jungle, and I knew that he loved doing imitations. With Barbara Tissier, the casting director, we had fun making him do an imitation of a famous singer from Occitania, I’ll let you guess which one…”

 

20 TO 30 ESMA ALUMNI AND STUDENT INTERNS

 

Pil has been a beautiful and long human adventure, spread over several years, notes Julien Fournet, the idea germinated in 2014, I started working on it in 2015. The production of the film really began in 2018. Among the 250 people I had the chance to work with, there are between 20 and 30 ESMA alumni and student interns.

Animation is always a magical step in the process of creating the film,” continues Julien Fournet, “you see the characters come to life. It was particularly fun to see the animators working on the character of Master Crapulo (as a reminder, he is a sock puppet animated by a ventriloquist). They were looking for references by looking at their hands, and wondering what finger shape could evoke fear or anger… It was quite surreal! But strangely enough, it was one of the characters that got the most sympathy from the team.

 

ALEXANDRE ARPENTINIER : ” A MAGICAL JOURNEY IN MEDIEVAL OCCITANIA

Among these former students, Alexandre Arpentinier. Pil is the second animated feature film on which I worked as a Character Artist, as part of a team that models and textures the characters entirely,” explains Alexandre, who graduated from ESMA in 2016 after completing his course in animation.

At the beginning of the production, we start by doing props to get into the swing of things, target the main issues and get a handle on the pipeline, because it’s always easier than on a character that we attack later.
I made about ten characters for the movie: a farmer, the castle guards, Rigolin’s outfit disguised as a mercenary, the two assistants of the mercenary leader, the mercenary gunner and finally all versions of Crobar, Pil’s faithful companion. I’m very happy to have been able to do the latter because he accompanies Pil throughout his adventure, and I really like the evolution of their relationship throughout the story.
For each of them, I had to find the right balance between their outfits, the materials and the details that make them up, in order to convey their identity and their lives. This is one of my favorite parts of my job!

Once I finished my mission with the character modeling team, I joined the team in charge of texturing the backgrounds and the elements that make them up, to help them make and finish some of them.

My mission on Pil lasted a full year, and I’m very happy to have discovered the result this summer when it was released in theaters. The film’s universe is largely inspired by the landscapes surrounding the TAT studio, featuring the South West of France. Being from the region myself, it was important to me to work for this 100% Toulouse production. I hope that the audience will enjoy this trip in a medieval and somewhat magical Occitania!

ISMAËL CANDELON: “A SOURCE OF PRIDE

For his part, Ismaël Candelon held the position of groomer on the film. “This means that I was essentially doing the hair cuts and the fur of the animals. For example, I did Pil’s haircut, the witch’s haircut and the hair of the little dog Ysandre (the villain’s sidekick), notes the former ESMA Toulouse student (class of 2014).

In my work, it is important to always work with references and to keep a graphic unity between the characters so that we feel they belong to the same universe. And I would also add that you have to be patient and give your time because the project can be long and can sometimes discourage you on the length especially when we approach the “dead line”.

The big challenge of my job was to create quite complex haircuts (I’m thinking in particular of the heroine Pil and the witch; two particularly tough haircuts) where I had to use my imagination as well as my technique to achieve them. To achieve this, I used internal studio tools to make my job easier, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it without that!

The teamwork went very well even if at the end it remains the most tense moment of the production where all the teams are at the end and carry the weight of the film on their shoulder (I think that no studio escapes the rule), it remains all the same a very good experience and very beautiful memories, even a certain pride once the film is released when we see the result of our efforts on the big screens of the cinema.

LINDA NEANG: “I REALIZED HOW MUCH I STILL HAD TO LEARN

The Pil project was the very first production I worked on after ESMA (Editor’s note: Linda graduated from ESMA Toulouse in 2019). I was on the environment texture team and then on the character special effects team,” she says.

For the texture, I arrived after the pre-production done by the leads. This was used to prepare the ground for the computer graphics artists, anticipate possible problems, list and plan the tasks and build a library of materials and documentation. At the beginning there were 7 of us in the team (6 ESMA alumni!), including the lead and his assistant lead. I had a week and a half of training on the pipeline and on 3DSMax, Substance Painter and Designer software. Then I started gently with the first small assets I was assigned, first without any quota, in order to get used to the tools and the graphic style.

On this production, organization was essential. I was not used to taking notes in school, so I had to write everything down to avoid getting lost. Indeed, launching a simulation can be long, so you can work on several plans at the same time.

To help me get organized, I would create a desk for each plan and leave a note for each plan to know what stage I was at. I sometimes worked on 7 desks at the same time! I realized how much I loved Houdini too, and how much I still had to learn! In fact, I’m probably going to do a Houdini course as well.

TAT Productions now has 150 employees (120 full-time jobs) and has sold Pil in 60 countries and to Canal+, Ciné+ and France TV. After Pil, the Toulouse-based company will release Les Argonautes in 2022, Les As de la jungle 2 in 2023 and Pets on a train in 2024. Great projects on which our former students will not fail to work!

Image credits: TAT Prod