Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

That film was absolutely incredible. It pushes all of my buttons. I wonder what tools they used to make it. I've tried to do sumi-e ink painting in Photoshop and Painter, but was never happy with the results.

Wow. That's just beautiful. Really makes me want to figure out Animation.

Aaaah, certainly delicious. Note that you can create this kind of artwork digitally, with tools like the excellent Creature House Expression (now fagocited by Microsoft and available as Microsoft Acrylic.)

Lovely characters... touching story... and, of course, the illustrations and the animation are wonderful. You almost can feel the texture of the watercolor paper... and, the candles... wow! Bravo!

Looks to me that the backgrounds are 100% pure watercolor paintings. There's something about real watercolors that even the mighty Painter program can't even aspire to. As for the ink lines in the characters, that looks like brush pens, similar to the now-discontinued black Sakura sumi brush. I still have a couple of those pens lying around, but I try not to use too much of the ink, so as to conserve. As for the painting of the characters themselves, that looks to me some sort of Painter effect. Not sure, though.

There is another story you should see, Monsieur Carré http://www.aantin.com/films/monsieurcarre.php
It's about a little square who was sad because he was different in a world full of circles. One day, a rounded girl arrived and she felt in love with him, just because he was different... and, after that, monsieur Carré was truly happy by her.
I'ts really amazing. I love it.

wow.

that was just amazing.

thanks for posting.

What a beautiful job. Kudos all 'round.
Ward is right about the effect of watercolor--and watercolor paper; however the effect is achieved, it's viscerally lovely.

Very Cool. as for speculation, that ink brush stroke look can easily be acheived in Adobe Illustrator and imported into a program such as flash. That's not to lessen the skill or artistry that went into this film. it's a brilliant piece of animation.

I know some sumi painting, but I haven't had an idea that it is possible to do with it such a beautiful thing! thanks a lot!

thank you all for your comments !!!

to answer to some of your questions about tools, backgrounds are 100% watercolor, and animation was traditionally hand-drawn and then Frank Millet has inked every single rough drawing with brush... we just used computer for compositing...

thank you for all the people who worked on it... thanks to all !!!
antoine.

(sorry for my english if it isn't good enough)

Antoine, your english was perfect, just like your film! Thanks for stopping by to give us some details to how you did it, and a BIG thanks for creating such a wonderful film. Keep it up!

aantin:

Thanks for the response.

I spent way too much time flipping through your film one frame at a time trying to figure out how the brush effect was achieved. I've used computer tools, like the calligraphic brush in illustrator and the object brushes in Expression, but the control and naturalness of the brushwork in the film was orders of magnitude better than I had ever seen done with a digital tool.

It was driving me crazy. It's like someone had inked every frame by hand! But that's just nuts... :)

Tell Mr, Millet that he did a wonderful job with the brushwork (as did everyone who worked on this film.)

Hi everyone !

david: "It’s like someone had inked every frame by hand! But that’s just nuts… :)"

that's it !!! Frank has used traditional brush on paper... this guy is incredible, he was working around 30 or 50 drawings a day !!! it was not digital brush !!! I insist :)

I love your website blog, as well as your watercolor originals, and would be interested in getting input/feedback on setting up my own. My website is:

www.judyswatercolorssite.com

Please feel free to contact me at anytime.

Judy Watercolor