When the team at Studio Lampion started preparing for the production of what would eventually become our animated short film A Night at the Cathedral, all we knew was that we wanted to create a showcase project for our prospective clients and at the same to develop an efficient pipeline for our future productions.
It would have to be an animated short film of high quality and incorporate a distinctive style, yet at the same time be as simple as possible: As a start-up company with only two core artists we realized it would be vital to start out small and within reason — especially considering the production would be 100% self-financed and that we would be working on it alongside our paying projects for clients.
Early concept art of the magnificient bell tower
Brainstorming for story concepts we came up with more than half a dozen plots in just as many different settings but soon realized they all had one thing in common: They were too complex! So we took a step back and critically analyzed all the concepts we had come up with and whether there was anything that could be simplified so much as to be realistic within our modest means.
After much back and forth we eventually decided to go with the medieval theme as this undertaking seemed reasonable after eliminating any dispensable characters, settings and subplots. Moreover, we felt a strong connection to the main character and had a vivid image in our minds of what the resulting film should look like. We were aiming to portray a painterly, traditional cartoon feel and wanted to avoid the somewhat sterile look displayed by many modern 3D productions.
Armed with a set of proprietary tools that would help us in achieving this goal and years of production experience in all areas of 2D and 3D film-making, we finally got underway with our short film A Night at the Cathedral.
At this point in the process we had concepts for the characters, the setting and a basic plot, which boiled down to “Our birdbrained protagonist Belze is on a quest to steal the golden statue of the Holy Mazioles from a medieval cathedral and, of course, fails miserably.“
We traveled to Cologne Cathedral to gather reference photos and inspiration
With the story’s plot taking shape we decided to get a feel for the film’s atmosphere and surroundings and did a lot of research on medieval art and history. Unfortunately, only few medieval structures remain in our town of Berlin, so we took some time to travel to historic and inspiring places such as the Cologne Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, Lyon and to visit castles on the Rhine river. There we took hundreds of reference photos, many of which we later reused as textures or details in our background mattes.
Concept Art of Clara playing the organ
The various impressions gathered during these research trips were incorporated into our concept art, which we drew, painted, modeled and rendered in 3D to visualize our ideas and to help define the look of the film.
Around the same time we started sketching out ideas for the protagonist Belze, our evil but not exactly brilliant thief. Belze represents the archetype of the comedic villain: He is sinister and wicked but yet clumsy and totally useless. In designing this character we were inspired by classic Disney villains and also took some cues from the Monkey Island series.
His antagonist is Clara, a young lady playing the organ during the night our story unfolds. She is a somewhat one-dimensional plot-device in that she doesn’t have any motives of her own and is only there to react to whatever Belze is up to.
Storyboard: Belze fleeing from the Cathedral
