I have always hesitated between illustration and animated films, and dedicated long periods of my professional life to one or the other, which are two sides of the same passion: to tell stories through drawings
Michel Fuzellier
When I was researching the topic for my presentation, I really wanted to talk about some of the animators who worked on one of my famous childhood film ‘ La Gabbianella e il Gatto‘ (1997), but I was having a hard time finding who worked on a specific sequence I had in mind. I’ve only recently been able to find out more about the artist behind this quite experimental scene (considering the style of the animated feature as a whole).
The sequence is able to stand out as a whole because it loosely follows the lyrics of the song that is paired with it. It sort of works as a recap of the main event of the film that far. The song, “Il Canto di Kengah” (The Song of Kengah) is a kind of goodbye letter the seagull leaves to her chick, hoping that “true friends” will take care of it until it learns how to fly.
It starts with a very simple and sometimes child-like animation of seagulls flying free. Despite the style, we are able to perceive the sense of freedom, content and carefreeness of the seagull mother. The style then moves on to be more graphic and sharp edged as it aims to describe when the seagull gets trapped by oil: being a film addressed to children, the visuals of the film are always child friendly, possibly trying to avoid creating any accidental trauma to the young audience. Fuzellier’s visuals are able to go a little bit deeper representing the horror of an oil spillage in a very abstract but successful way. He uses a limited palette of white, black and purple for this particular scene, and the imagery goes a little bit wild, with a lot of undefined shapes apart from the struggling seagull, and we can also distinguish a hand reaching out for help and a tentacle that embraces the sort of black hole engulfing the sea bird, until it all turns into an egg. From that the tone goes back to be quite mellow and cute, and we see the main cat protagonist interacting with the little seagull chick and accepting it by cuddling it. This works as a hint of what will later happen in the film.
The great thing about the the sequence is the way is approached compared to the rest of the art direction. Fuzellier himself was mainly responsible for the film’s art direction and layouts. He has an incredible illustration style with a very loose watercolour technique reflected in some of the pre-production work for this film, and at the time, he was not a particularly known animator. His interpretation of the song sequence allows us to step back and reflect on the lyrics a little bit more. If a certain character was animated singing the song, the effect would have been completely different.
There’s another similar sequence in the film where the cats attempt to ask the help of a human (a child) through her dream, and this is the only instance where the cat taboo can be broken (talk face to face with a human). So in this case, the sequence works as an in-between world where the child can plainly talk to cats and promises to help them.
I have come to really love and appreciate these intermissions, and I love when different styles are mixed together even in an animated feature. I appreciate it even more when the sequences are hand drawn or painted traditionally to break the convention with the digital 2D look. It really makes me want to try it myself, even though a sudden change of style may not work as well in a short film.