Animating Life on Mars

Director Jérémie Périn and producer Didier Creste give us a sneak peek of their highly anticipated sci-fi epic Mars Express.

The upcoming French animated feature Mars Express was one of the most popular titles spotlighted at the 2023 edition of Europe’s Cartoon Movie event. The audience fell in love with the cool, sci-fi look of the movie (reminiscent of classics such as Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the clever storyline which centers on a female detective (Aline Ruby) and her android partner who are hired to track down a notorious hacker … on Mars.

The film’s director Jérémie Périn (Lastman) and producer Didier Creste (Lastman, Raymond) were kind enough to give Animation Magazine an early tour of their movie, prior to its release.

“I got absolutely and completely involved with this project from day one,” says Périn, who also worked with Creste and writer Laurent Sarfati on the series Lastman. “The initial impetus for the project was the fact that Didier wanted to continue working with Laurent and me, and we’d been talking for a long time about working on a science fiction film. Didier loved our proposal, so we dove in. I always participate in the writing of the projects and I feel completely invested in it. That means I’d do everything I possibly can to make it a successful project, which unfortunately means working beyond what’s reasonable!”

Drawn to a Beautiful Dystopia

Creste says he was thrilled by the idea of being able to produce a science fiction in animation. “I would have never been able to do this in live-action,” he points out. “I loved being able to talk about our world and its transgressions by transposing everything to Mars. It was especially satisfying to set the film in a dystopia where humans are really too stupid to think that life on another would be better and letting all the riches of the Earth perish. What a huge disappointment for humanity. On top of it all, the movie is a great thriller with a female detective heroine. How could I resist?”

Of course, the five-year journey of making the movie was not an easy one. “It took one year to write the script, another year during which I searched for financing and Jérémie worked on the storyboard, followed by three years of production, post-production and sound and music work,” notes Creste.

The animation production was handled by

French studio Je Suis Bien Content (Persepolis, April and the Extraordinary World), which worked with the creatives on Lastman. “JSBC set up the pipeline based on regional productions to take advantage of regional funding,” says Creste. “A large part of the backgrounds and sets were done at Beaux et Bien Habillés in Lille, all of the 3D at Gao Shan Studio on the island of Réunion, part of the animation at Borderline in Angoulême, and half of the compositing at Amopix in Strasbourg. It was a 100 percent French production.”

The animation was produced using Toon Boom Storyboard for storyboarding, Animate and Grease Pencil for the 2D animation and Blender for the CG animation. Photoshop was used for the backgrounds and color research, while After Effects was employed for compositing.

Périn says one of the biggest challenges of the project was to create a clear and believable futuristic world without having to explain everything in words. “Our film contains many every-day or technical objects that we don’t want to explain to the audience. It would take too long and slow down the pace of the film. I also wanted to describe a believable, futuristic living environment and use as little technology as possible that would look like magic. Of course, I am neither an engineer nor a scientist. That’s why we used actual astronomers, scientists, programmers and automotive designers to visually establish our narrative ideas.”

The director says he had a wide reservoir of artistic influences to draw upon. “It’s always a bit difficult to answer this question in a simple way,” he says. “Like everyone else, it’s a mix of countless influences that have shaped my personal culture. More specifically, for Mars Express, I suppose we can go from Masters of Time to Blow Out via RoboCop, Kiss Me Deadly, Point Blank and Patlabor 2. This list only includes the cinematic references, but I could also cite video games, comic books and books. To tell the truth, I prefer not to think about it while working. Whether we like it or not, all the works are linked together in a dizzying continuum of influences. Making an animated film causes enough headaches as is, so I don’t want to add to it by sorting out my influences when I think I have an idea. Besides, when it happens to me, my reflex is to eliminate the idea, unless I don’t have a better one!”

Creste also offers a good mix of noir influences. “For me, it’s Chinatown set in the Blade Runner world. You can say it’s a combination of

Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick.”

Périn says he’s proudest of the fact that he is still living after finishing the labor-intensive movie. He adds, “Often animated movie audiences comment on its technical and artistic aspect. They say, ‘It was well drawn,’ or ‘The sets were very beautiful,’ or sometimes ‘The animation wasn’t very smooth!’ Of course, these points are important, but I would like them to become invisible to the point of being self-evident. I ultimately hope that future viewers of the film will be carried away by the story and the staging and that they will feel the emotions that we have tried to explore in it.”

Condemning Selfish Excess

“I’m proudest of the fact that having com- pleted a movie that delivers far beyond its promises,” says Creste. “I hope our movie makes audiences realize the threat that we pose to future generations by continuing our current lifestyles and excesses on this planet. Mars Express is more or less our near future — a hell disguised as a golden prison.”

When asked about the current state of French animation, both the director and the producer offer inspiring and thoughtful observations. Périn notes, “The diversity of projects is much greater today than it was when I started back in 2000. But I believe that we can do even better. We can always do better. We need to trust younger directors and also hire more diverse directors and go beyond the typical ‘straight, white males’ in those roles. This last observation obviously applies to French society as a whole. Animation reflects the political and social conditions of our time.”

Creste chimes in, “Lastman opened the doors to adult animation in the TV landscape, just as I Lost My Body did the same thing in the world of cinema,” he says. “We saw that there is an audience for adult animation. Animation is a huge sector in the audio-visual entertainment world and there is real French know-how in this area, which must be protected at all costs. Schools need to train even more people because there is a real demand for it right now. We are seeing animation continue from childhood to adulthood, and that gives us great pleasure.” ◆

Everybody on Deck’s Mars Express will premiere in French theaters later this year. MK2 is the film’s global distributor.