'A Monster In Paris' Opening pt.1

I was lucky that director Bibo Bergeron assigned me several juicy action and musical sequences to storyboard including the opening of the film. It went through several incarnations but was always structured around a giant monster chasing the films' protagonist Emile and the object of his affections Maud.
I'll come back to the early versions but for now here are the almost final storyboards before editorial & layout made their revisions.

In this clip (en Francais) from the final film you'll see it begins with newsreel footage of the 1910 Paris flood segueing into Emile's footage of his stroll with Maud. It sets up the world of the film and the interests and desires of one of the main characters very economically.

Un Monstre A Paris from Brandee Soard on Vimeo.

A Monster In Paris- finally released in the US!

Next week sees the Stateside release of a film I had the pleasure of storyboarding on FIVE years ago! These things take too long . . .  European backers EuropaCorp failed to find US distribution theatrically but fortunately Shout Factory have picked it up for dvd & blu-ray release.
Like the European and UK editions the Region 1 disk has precious few extras and an 'art of' book doesn't exist so I thought I'd finally share some of the work that went into this mini-masterpiece.
Over the next few weeks I'll post storyboards and links to some of the great artwork that made this film unique. Oh, and if you're living in the States and want to show your kids something special please support independent European animation and buy it!

I'll be posting concept art here and here with LOTS more storyboards to come . . .

SFO ZOO

I haven't drawn at a zoo since I lived in France-too long. Watching 'The Croods' left me fired up to sketch some exotic wildlife and the next day I made the long streetcar ride out to the San Francisco zoo.

I found my simian relatives at the gorilla enclosure !