Sang-Froid, a Solo Short Film

SANG-FROID

Sang-Froid is a very short film made in 2022 as my major 3rd year project.

"Fishing with a net in a small seaside pond, Emma, a willful little girls, tries at all costs to catch a crab."

This story is particularly inspired by my childhood which I spent in Brittany, France.

I wanted to tell the story of how children learn and react to new things they encounter in their lives. They have to experience the unknown, and each and everyone of them will handle it differently. Here, the child is a little one with a real sense of fearlessness but also a lot of emotions. Despite this, she is determined to achieve her goals, even though panic can get the better of her very quickly. And, like many children, as soon as the pain is over, she will dive right back in, thinking everything is fine. She will stumble again, get hurt, and get back up again.

The film, because of its time constraint, was seen as a loop. In a way, a child will probably continue to play with fire even if they have been prevented from getting burned once. I wanted us to put ourselves in the place of a parent who prevents a child from hurting himself, in vain, because he might do it again. After all, it is by repetition that we learn!

I tried to focus on designs, colors and shapes. My goal was to use the best of the 2D and 3D mediums combined to bring this movie to life and convey a light-hearted, joyful story.

I started with the idea of the sea, and the concepts of environnements, as I wanted to work heavily on the art direction and full-pictures scenes before leaning into details. My character design comes directly from this idea, and where made at the same time. They needed to be simple but not boring, and to tell who they were at the right second we saw them.

The modelling and texturing of my characters were made accrodingly, as simple and efficient as possible, so they can fit perfectly and be read in a already pretty dense environnement without overloadind it. 

My movie relies mostly on camera-mapping and 2D paintings, enhanced with 3D lighting and compositing. My concepts and paintings were the very basis of the whole project.

(Here : Concept art - Render - Compositing)