Except that the goat is actually just the local madman, wearing a ridiculous bathrobe that his dreams of grandeur transform into a trench coat worthy of the most renowned private detectives.
Thrusting himself into a delirious quest to solve this pseudo-murder, Gallimard turns the neighbourhood upside down.
A jubilant odyssey, set to the rhythm of a delightful alternation between fantasised fiction and zany reality.
Based on an idea by Thomas Soulé and directed by Alexi Azibert, Valentin Asensi, Fanny Devret, Ariana Da Cunha Oliveira, Lena Milla Duffaut, Hadrien Clément, Clara Cledes, Karina Estanol and Thomas Soulé himself, Inspecteur Gallimard is an ESMA Montpellier graduation short film by nine students from the class of 2024.
With music byAntoine Galvani and sound by José Vicente, the film boasts a five-star cast including Véronique Augereau (Marge Simpson),Emmanuel Curtil (who doubles Jim Carrey), Serge Faliu (who doubles Adam Sandler) andAlexis Tomassian (who doubles Justin Timberlake and also voices Martin Mystère).
A merry band who have a field day, in a frenetic film applauded by the public and selected at the TAF Thessaloniki Animation Festival, which is likely to drive you crazy.
How did the team manage to produce this tour de force in just over a year? Find out here.
From idea to story, a path strewn with pitfalls
While the idea of a comedy based on the discrepancy between the fantasy vision of a character imagining himself in a film noir and the most banal of realities is enough to make you smile, transcribing this concept into a 3D animated short lasting over six minutes is no easy task.
Based on this idea by Thomas Soulé, the team went through a series of rewrites to refine the development of this complex narrative, while at the same time drawing characters based on archetypes that were nonetheless all striking. Extensive research enabled the concept artists and sculptors to create a zany line-up set against the easily recognisable backdrop of the streets of New York.
By relying on genre clichés such as the voice-over, a heavy, dark atmosphere of a sordid night, and jazz music, the team reinforced the contrast between this fantasy and the very raw, harsh, day-after-the-watch reality of everyday, unglamorous New York.
For a crispy result.
Developing iconic animals
“For me”, recalls Alexi Azibert, “it was very interesting to be able to play on the duality of the characters, both in terms of tone and animation”.
Gallimard, a goat who is both a detective and a local madman, was the focus of the team’s attention from the outset. “His sculpt was very important, as he was the main character. We had to understand from the outset that he was both badass, in his long detective coat, and ridiculous in his sloppy bathrobe.”
In addition to this duality, his groom (the management of his hair) also imposed a number of constraints on the team, as this aspect of the character influenced both the lighting and the rendering, creation and simulation timescales for this complex protagonist.
For Pipa the bat, Léon the chameleon and the pigs, it was the rigging that was the most challenging for the team, because of their specific morphologies.
“For Léon, his extremities gave us a hard time, but so did his mouth when we integrated the lipsync.
At this level, the textures were stretching and we had to find solutions to this problem that we hadn’t necessarily anticipated.”
Finally, Spike the crocodile gave the team the cold sweats when it came to the textures (necessary for the close-ups on the skin). As with all the characters, the outfits and textures had to be duplicated to match the film’s two tones. It was enough to make you lose your rabbit.
A team that has set itself very high standards
“The complexity of our film”, recalls Hadrien Clément, “was really to create two different worlds while staying within the limits of our technical constraints, with complex animals”. With two worlds, five anthropomorphic animals and a fast-paced, dialogue-driven short,Inspecteur Gallimard was an ambitious project.
“We had to create four environments for the different sequences in the film, three of which were dubbed to match the duality of our worlds,” recalls the team.
It’s a challenge, but one that these students have tackled pragmatically and methodically, drawing on the solid technical skills they learnt during their training at ESMA.
Teamwork as the key to success
“The biggest challenge for us was learning to work in a large team over a longer period of time,” recalls Karina Estanol. “We had a lot of meetings, and thanks to good communication and a collective mindset, we managed to bring the project to a successful conclusion while overcoming all the various problems we encountered during production.” In the end, the students have nothing to be ashamed of.
Inspecteur Gallimard is a compendium of humour, with extensive work on the lighting and staging, which succeeds in its dual universe. “We were also lucky enough to have a great composer”, says Lena Milla Duffaut, “an artist who completely understood the spirit of our film”.
It’s a true spirit, full of references, that mischievously uses the workings of animation to deliver a biting and devilishly effective comedy.
Inspecteur Gallimard, ESMA’s 2024 graduation film, is now available in full: