L'an dernier je pointais le petit trailer de Fox And The Whale, court-métrage de Robin Joseph, désormais en ligne, et qui se révèle être un long et beau morceau contemplatif.

Pendant pas moins de 12 minutes, on y suit les aventures d'un petit renard dans des ambiances très picturales, qui prennent leur temps, et qui rappellent clairement des films de Michael Dudok de Wit (Father and Daughter) et Yuri Norstein (Hedgehog in the Fog), que l'auteur cite en influences.

Robin a d'abord travaillé pour les plus grands (Pixar, Illumination, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, Sony ...) avant de se lancer dans ce court-métrage auto-financé qu'il n'aura réalisé qu'avec l'aide de Kim Leow et Louis Vottero aux modèles 3D et à l'animation des personnages.

Sit back, relax and enjoy.



"The inspiration behind Fox and the Whale was the pursuit of curiosity. Not so much a primal curiosity behind food, shelter or even play. The grey areas and often abstract pursuits…the drive of wanting to know what lies beyond the abyss. There is something largely conceptual about that drive. It’s a strange compulsion, innately human. There is no promise of reward or assurances of success, yet you take that away, and there is something of inherent value you loose as a species. A lot of it came from being a big fan of exploration and science, especially space exploration. The ambitions at the fringes of it often seem one step beyond reach. The fact that we still try, instills a sense of awe and wonder. At the other end is an idea of failure, or at least what is perceived as failure. The fortitude to move forward and keep searching in spite of it. It’s a fragile state of mind at times, but to me it holds such optimism."

"I started playing with the concept with different versions of the story and visuals as far back as 2009. The film was originally conceived as a 2D animated short. Being around my partner Kim, who is a CG animator, gave a window into CG. I really opened up to the short perhaps being a hybrid of 2D & CG. I redesigned the main character for CG and Kim modeled it in Maya. By late 2014 there was enough money saved up to try and attempt making the short. This time around, I decided to take dedicated time off from the industry to make the short film. Production on the short film began in earnest in January, 2015. The first 3½ months was storyboarding and cutting the reel, then another month was spent locking the color script and design so that all the characters could be built in CG. Kim still had a day job in animation production, so I had to be very careful on how best to utilize her time on it. I knew how fast she was as an animator. I also knew I could really push the amount of footage if the performance was based in physicality rather than dialogue. The film, characters were all designed and storyboarded to be non verbal."