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OGDEN: What made the Triplets themselves appealing as heroines in this story?

TOMOV: The Triplets are sort of the opposite of the typical heroes from mainstream animated movies. They definitely don't fit the stereotype of "appealing" animated characters. They are neither cute neither beautiful.

Yet, in my opinion, they are way more humane and charming than most of the well known and commercially exploited cartoon characters from other animated box office hits. There is some unique and special beauty in their clumsy movements, and the slightly sad and nostalgic humor they are treated with (mischievous old ladies - not a clicheé idea...). The subtle animation and acting makes them more believable and I believe they have more personality and presence than most of the animated characters I have seen previously.

Simply - they are different and break the stereotype, as well as the misconception, that an appealing cartoon character has to be cute and superficially beautiful to the point of losing personality.

OGDEN: It's obvious that Belleville is an amalgam of many cities... Montreal, Quebec, New York... is the city symbolic of something?

TOMOV: There is almost never a simplistic "poster type" idea or message in Sylvain's films. His ideas are usually multilayered and subtle, often open for personal interpretation by the viewer. I tried to stay away from transparent simplicity while designing Belleville as well.

Yet, if we have to describe Belleville as a symbol of something - it would be Contemporary consumerism. Not only North American - Belleville is an amalgam of few big western sties with their abundance of food and objects. It (Belleville) is sometimes mistaken for a symbol of New York only - I suppose because of the obese Statue of Liberty which briefly appears in the establishing shot of the city, and the skyscrapers. But despite the fact that New York is quite representative of extreme Western culture consumerism, the intention was to have a more composite and generic symbol with no specific geographic location. The Baroque elements used in Belleville architecture are more reminiscent of European castles and also intend to reinforce the impression of excessive abundance in the city.

OGDEN: Stylization is rampant in Belleville (the large wooden-block French Mafia spring to mind in particular). What informed the stylization of different characters?

TOMOV: All of the main characters were designed by Sylvain himself, so I'll say little about this. Knowing his way of working (creating) I would say that Sylvain was looking for a very typical and recognizable silhouette and facial features of each character reflecting their personalities and roles in the film. Sounds like a textbook approach taken by any character designer, doesn't it?

But some succeed in surprising the audience with ingenious ideas and unique looking personalities on the screen, as well with a rare ability to observe. I guess this is the part that you don't learn in school. Some call it talent. Sylvain's unusual sense of humor and his ability to generate unorthodox creative ideas gave us these sometimes bizarre, yet fascinating characters.

OGDEN: What was the development cycle for a character? (How long did it take from initial idea to final design, and what was involved?)

TOMOV: We did not have clearly separated stages or established production methods for the design of the characters. There was a lot of improvisation involved and some of the characters kept "evolving" for quite some time into the production.

The usual approach would be Sylvain making the roughs and the initial concept of a character, and then some of the lead animators (we had great people on the team) would try to tweak it and animate it, quite often without actual model sheets or rotations. It sounds quite unusual to start animating a character without a model sheet but it also was more challenging for the animator and left him (her) more room for creative input. It certainly was quite stressful for the animators at times but the ones that like a challenge were the ones that stayed. They were guided closely by Sylvain through the whole process.

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OGDEN: The crew on this project looks pretty large. How were things managed?

TOMOV: In fact the crew was never really big. The perception that the crew was bigger than it actually was is given by the endless credits at the end of the film. It is still a mystery to me how we ended up with this huge list of names. To some extent, the fact that quite a few names appear more than once in the credits (a lot of people worked on different things during different stages of the production and they were credited separately) gives the wrong impression about the size of the team. But this again confirms that we had quite versatile talents working on the film.

The vast amount of the workload - especially the creative part - was carried by the international (French - Canadian - Belgian) studio of The Triplets in Montreal, Canada. I would say there were about 40 - 45 artists at most during the busiest periods. Usually we were about between 25 and 30 people there.

Later in the production some of the animation (the B&W opening sequence and the obese incidental characters from Belleville) was sent to Belgium and was wonderfully crafted by the studio in Brussels by a not-so-large team as well. Some of the 3D modeling, animation, and some post production was also done in Belgium and much later another 3D studio in Angouleme, France gave us a hand. We also outsourced some tweening work to a studio in Riga for budgetary reasons.

Another explanation why the total number of the names in the credits reached such proportions is the turnover in the studio in Montreal. It took great dedication -- and artists focused on the final goal -- in order to make it through the stressfull production schedule and Sylvain's high standards. Not every animator feels comfortable working from lay-outs with almost no posing, but Sylvain wanted to leave the animators room for improvisation. Some weren't up to the challenge.

Therefore, a lot of the names we see in the credits belong to people who did not stay and work for long. Some just for a few days, before they (or Sylvain) realized they had made the wrong choice... anyway, everybody was credited, regardless of whether they worked for one day or three years.

So, really, the number of names in the credits reflects only how many people did some work for the film at some point or another but not really the size of the teams involved.

OGDEN: Were new processes instituted to work with a crew that was so internationally spread out?

TOMOV: It never helps the quality and the productivity if the production is spread between too many studios all over the globe. It is difficult also to maintain a consistent artistic vision. Although international co-productions are quite common nowadays, it is obligatory to keep the main creative and controlling "brain" in one place (studio) and keep as much as possible the production of the main "assets" in house.

In our case the studio in Montreal was acting as a main studio (sort of a "head office") where everything was initiated. Some work was shipped eventually to other studios but Montreal was where everything came back for final approval and corrections. Sylvain, production director Francois Bernard, and I were working from there. All the lead (main character) animators were working from the Montreal studio too, as well as the entire visual design (characters and decors), lay-out and background painting.

Towards the end of the production Sylvain left Montreal and moved to France to work closer with the compositing studio in France, and we had to send him the final work for approval there but this was rather an exception to the practice.

It was definitely not easy shipping back and fourth large volumes of art work (physically or digitally) to the supporting studios in Europe, keeping track of everything and trying to maintain the quality... I can not say that we succeeded always 100% in doing that. We had our low moments (like once receiving a cardboard box with original animation inbetweens from the Riga studio, practically destroyed by the shipping company because of loose packaging).

As I mentioned, the volume of work done in other studios did not really exceed the normal practice for the contemporary animation productions, so we don't take credit for inventing new practices or methods to handle and menage the work flow. This has been around for some time now...