With Equinox, Anissa Cugniet, Adama Diallo-Gibert, Marius Joffray, Jérémy Julien, Xia Mellano, Gaëlle Pandraux, Noa Rosa, Marama Tatarata and Melissa Unal, students from ESMA’s class of 2024 and the driving force behind this radiant project, have woven a veritable audiovisual tale.
How did this film come about, and what were the greatest challenges in bringing these legendary creatures to life? Take a look behind the scenes to find out.
Where did you get the idea forEquinox?
Originally, we wanted to create a tale, a historical legend, preferably set in an Asian-inspired fantasy world.
We’re particularly drawn to these worlds, rich in mythological creatures inspired by the cultures that shaped them.
The initial idea was inspired by the legend of the creation of the Chinese New Year, but this then evolved into an adventure centred on the quest for a magical element from this mythology.
Over the course of our exchanges and discussions, the comedy aspect was added to these reflections, eventually leading to the story we have chosen: the meeting between two of these characters, the spring dragon and the winter tortoise.
What guided you in your narrative and aesthetic choices?
First and foremost, we want to create a project that appeals to all of us. That’s not necessarily easy with a team of nine people, each with different tastes and desires. But it’s mainly in the light of production constraints that we’ve reworked our story, in order to create a narrative that both excites us and is achievable, our ambitions being particularly high for this graduation film, which is still a student project.
How did you come up with this pairing of opposing but complementary characters?
Our starting point was the Chinese legend of the four creator animals: the tiger, the dragon, the tortoise and the phoenix. Each animal represents an element, a number, an organ, a colour and many other things, and we decided to choose the seasons they represented. The transition from winter to spring being one of the most important changes, we chose the dragon and the tortoise and used legends, drawings, sculptures and other traditional representations to bring these characters to life.
At the same time, we drew a lot of inspiration from Crocmou from the Dragons franchise to create Hua, our spring dragon. Both in appearance and behaviour. We were also inspired by another dragon, the main protagonist of the short film Achoo made by a team of ESMA students in 2017.
For Xue, our winter turtle, we drew inspiration from characters such as Master Oogway, the venerable turtle from Kung Fu Panda, and the iconic Pokémon Bulbizarre.
In both cases, managing to keep this ‘legendary creature’ effect without it becoming too much, or too technically complicated to create, was one of the crucial aspects of creating these two characters.
Beyond this duo, how did you define the world of the film?
To bring our Chinese mythological creatures to life, we have placed them in a world that reflects their image: a fantastic forest in China, with bamboos, bonsais and other flowers and plants of varying degrees of complexity. The changing of the seasons, the key to understanding our story, is represented by a magic clock system, a stone sculpture that governs the order and duration of the seasons.
These sets, in particular the forest as an element, i.e. a bundle of trees, leaves, grass, flowers and rocks, all accompanied by special effects of melting snow and growing plants, undoubtedly represented one of the film’s great technical challenges.
Like our characters, we were very much inspired by the Kung Fu Panda saga to bring this universe to the screen, but also by the films of the Illumination studio for the graphic style of the sets and the snow and plant effects.
Finally, another ESMA film, Le Roi Tulipe, with its brushstrokes in painted textures, is also one of our inspirations.
How did you meet these many challenges?
As mentioned earlier, the large number of elements to render (sets, inlayed special effects, additional FX, moving characters) represented an additional difficulty, not to mention the assembly of these elements, which was already no easy task.
None of this would have been possible without good communication between the visual effects and compositing departments, and the division of roles that we put in place according to each person’s specialities. This division was extended to our workspace, so that we could communicate directly with people in the same department without having to travel.
Another notable challenge was that our dragon broke the black contours of the frame, symbolising his transgression when he left the cave and broke the balance of the forest. 2D painted elements also break out of the frame and are mixed with 3D visual effects such as snow and dust, which presented a unique challenge. The dragon itself, particularly its tail and whiskers, had to move fluidly and vividly. To achieve this, the rigging team implemented specific features that greatly assisted the animators and, in the same spirit, created a special rig for all the spirits so that they were interchangeable.
Despite all these pitfalls, and because we were all deeply involved in the project, we managed to keep the team motivated right to the end. And to deliver a final product that we wanted to be beautiful, engaging and something we could be proud of. The fact that we were able to complete such a project from start to finish together in such a short space of time, and to such a professional standard, is still a source of great pride for us today.
What advice would you give to students making films today?
Finally, create a project that is ambitious enough to motivate you right to the end, but one that can still be achieved under the right conditions, without spending the whole year exhausting yourself trying to complete it.
Striking the right balance between production ambition and a pragmatic view of the resources available and the technical obstacles is a subtle exercise that has prepared theEquinox team for the realities of the sector.
Today, as the film continues its tour of festivals, the little dragon created by these students is ready to conquer the hearts of many animation fans, young and old.