Gaëlle had done a few sketches and illustrations representing funny alien creatures living in a secret world beneath a big city. She then imagined building a story around a foreign person arriving in London and being let into that secret world. Gaëlle wanted to give life to her own vision of London, a lively and beautiful yet surreal city. A slightly scary yet comical place populated by creatures with strange walks.

She wanted people to be able to identify with the main character Tomoko, a foreigner, lost and confused in such a manic city as London. This is something most of us have experienced in a foreign place. The aliens’ secret world represents Tomoko’s inner self, the place where she takes refuge to find the strength to be able go back and look at London with different eyes.

One of the reasons Gaëlle chose to make City Paradise at Passion Pictures was the experience we have of combining live action with animation. We felt we could offer Gaëlle technical expertise and provide an animation crew with the experience of creating the kind of film effects she wanted to achieve.

We already knew and admired Gaëlle’s work from her BAFTA winning film Fish Never Sleep which was made at the Royal College of Art in 2002 where Gaëlle did her MA. We saw an animatic of City Paradise which Gaëlle had developed as part of the Animator in Residence (AIR) scheme funded by Channel 4.

We were captivated by the charm of Gaëlle’s designs and excited that she wanted to introduce live action and CG elements into her film. Antoine Moulineau was responsible for much of the lighting and texturing which is so important to create the magical atmosphere of the film, David Lea created painted background mattes (using Photoshop) and Louis Clichy using 2D drawn animation helped to create the unusual legs and walking patterns of the characters.

All the characters were shot against blue screen and had blue skirts. We then tracked all the live action and time remapped it in After effects. We then printed out stats for each scene and used those to create 2D legs. Gaëlle wanted to give a comical note to the film reminiscent of the silent movie era.
(Text: Passion Pictures)