FJ: We had several stages in the production. I started developing the film myself with Nicolas Marlet, the character designer. We worked on the script and developed the design of the characters and then I did all of the storyboards with temp sound. At the time, it was six years ago, and I really didn't know how to finance and make it. So I just put it on the shelf and waited for a better moment to do it, and when I came back to France, I started it up again with some students from the Georges Méliès CG school in Paris in the summer of 2007, and they helped me start the movie. So, it was very interesting working with students. It was a wonderful exchange and for three months we worked with students just studying the modeling of the characters. I didn't know where it was going, but I met again with Eric (Bibo) Bergeron, who I knew at DreamWorks, and he had a company called Bibo Films and agreed to produce it. We were in production for the next year with a full team of about 65 people.

BD: What software did you use?

FJ: Actually, we used a bit of Maya in the beginning at Méliès School for modeling and then went with XSI for the rest of the film. For compositing we used Nuke and a bit of Maya as well for all the cloth simulation.

BD: What were the most difficult challenges?

FJ: For me, the most important thing that I really wanted to achieve was a translation of the 2D design. I really love Nicolas' design and wanted to respect that and try to translate that into CG. We spent time on that with modeling and texturing because I really wanted to get that painterly feel that we have in his drawings. He used a lot of watercolors and inks and pencils all mixed together -- it was very nice and beautiful. So everything was painted in Photoshop with brushes and to recreate the feel.

BD: Talk about use of the mirror, which I found fascinating and a little disorienting at first.

FJ: Right, I realized that there was something strange about having a mirror in front of us. It's the fact that you don't see yourself or a camera or anything. And that kind of shot you couldn't really do in live action except maybe with special effects. It's something that you really can use with the animation medium. But really the mirror was about being able to reverse shots: having two characters' reactions in the same shot, really. And using a mirror made that possible. I didn't want to use anything else. And the mirror effect was a challenge for the animators. They had to control both versions: the character in the real world and his double in the mirror. In our case, we had twice the work to do.

BD: And the inspiration for these flamboyant characters?