From the vaults 2

Well, the Cartoon Movie pitch, went okay but Didier Brunner the french producer really wanted me to push the designs further. I really resisted at first, but then I met up with the director of Kirikou , Michel Ocelot on a trip to Paris and he said more or less the same thing, that the designs were too "Disney" and traditional, that we should really use the chance to do something indepentant to something really different. I knew he was right and I felt kinda sheepish for having resisted Didiers suggestions prior to that. Anyway that night I started sketching something really "flat" trying to push the designs as far as possible into flat style stuff - it was really energising and I really started to feel enthusastic about the "new" project then, even if the first designs were really really pushed! Didier was happy that I was trying something a bit more far out. I was aware the budget would be quite limited so it made a kind of sense to me to push the design , as traditional designs animated on a budget can look really bad. I've discovered its even harder to do something different!

Paring the designs down this much really helped me get a really strong silouhette and shape theory worked out for each character though...

Anyway heres some stuff from the brief experiental period when I went really super-flat with the designs .