The year 2006 was a banner one for feature animation in France. Arthur and the Invisibles joined the ranks of Azur and Asmar and the groundbreaking Renaissance. All images courtesy of The Weinstein Co./Europa Corp.

The year 2006 was definitely a great one for feature animation in France. Michel Ocelot, director of Kirikou and the Sorceress, released a new colorful, enchanting tale called Azur and Asmar, while Christian Volckman broke new ground with his stylish black & white Renaissance. The latest entry in the genre is directed by France's most popular filmmaker, Luc Besson, an artist better known for his live-action movies (The Professional, The Fifth Element) than for his interest in animation. Arthur and the Invisibles (which opens Jan. 12, 2007 in the U.S.) tells how 10-year old Arthur gets magically transported to the tiny world of the Invisibles, half-inch tall creatures who live in his grandmother's garden. Influential graphic album artists Patrice and Celine Garcia brought the project to Besson. The former had been a key element of the design team on The Fifth Element, and later became the lead conceptual artist for Arthur and the Invisibles.

Since the movie also featured live-action sequences, the world of the Invisibles had to look like it was part of our world. Besson didn't want to go from a real setting with real actors to a stylized environment à la A Bug's Life. The Invisibles were real beings living in a real garden, not fantasy creatures in a fantasy world. The filmmakers' plan was to create the characters via CG animation, and combine them with photoreal environments. The question of how to create these environments became the key issue, with the team testing multiple approaches over a period of two years.

Director Luc Besson's quest to create the characters via CG animation and combine them with photoreal environments brought him to Pierre Buffin (right) and his Buf Compagnie. Buffin worked on the project for almost six years.

A Blank Check to Start It All
To address these issues, Besson turned to Buf Compagnie, France's leading visual effects facility. For founder and 3D director Pierre Buffin, this marked the start of a journey that would last almost six years, including three years of full production. "We had to animate CG characters in more than 1600 shots," Buffin says. "So, the producers were really concerned about our capacity in this regard, as no one in France had ever attempted a project of this magnitude.

"They were asking us, 'Can you create animation for a feature film? How many animators will we need? How many Americans?' Besides animation, their main concern was, obviously, the cost and the duration of the project. Unfortunately, I could not give them any estimation. Without any reference, it was just impossible to evaluate how much it would cost and how long it would take. We didn't even know how we were going to make this movie at all, and I didn't want to be contractually tied up to a deadline and a budget that I wasn't certain I could meet."

Buffin continues, "We looked into the option of co-producing the movie, but I knew shot approval would become an issue, as this was Luc's movie. In the end, Luc took a bold decision. He gave us his green light to develop the technology and to create the 3D sequences... without any deadline or budget! It was basically a blank check... It was quite a gamble for him, and I knew it, but this mark of trust infused the team with an enormous energy and, in the end, the total cost turned out to be lower than expected."

The filmmakers decided to shoot a test featuring Arthur in motion. They first focused on the best possible way to create the environments. Using a full 3D approach was not an option for most of the shots, as this would necessitate a gigantic effort to make the CG settings look photoreal. Besson and Buffin agreed that the best look would be obtained by shooting real environments. The initial plan was to build the Invisible world at 1:1 scale, meaning that if a house was built in a nutshell, the crew would actually decorate a real nut.