Animation film set in Africa, conceived in France, made in Vietnam

HO CHI MINH CITY—Amply endowed semi-naked women and a tiny hero with a prominent belly, arched shoulders and huge round eyes may not be the sort of figures everyone associates with Vietnam.
But a group of artists in this southern Vietnamese business hub has helped create just such characters for a full-length animation film that is opening in 50 countries on December 7. “Kirikou and the Savage Beasts” is set in Africa, was conceived in the French western city of Angouleme, noted for its annual International Comics Festival, and has been brought to life by Vietnamese animators.
The animation film was finished in July after a year’s exhaustive work, with dozens of Vietnamese artists drawing and crayoning each little move on a separate sheet. “At first we found the physical features of these characters to be strange, but later we began to detect magnificent grace in them,” says Nguyen Thanh Liem, chief artist at the French-funded Armada TMT studio in Ho Chi Minh City.
“Giving life to Kirikou turned out to be a real adventure for the 50 odd employees who worked on the project,” says Armada’s general manager, Christine Gamonal.
Her studio had previously worked only on animated television shorts and a movie short, one of the few companies working in the communist country’s fledgling animation industry.
The latest work, directed by Michel Ocelot and Benedicte Galup, is a sequel to “Kirikou and the Sorceress”, which was animated in Latvia and Hungary and came out five years ago.—Agencies