POMMES
FRITES

About Pommes Frites

Pommes Frittes is an on-again-off-again project I have been working on since 2010. The original story was of a young boy and his mother older Sister. Set in a idealized version of medieval Belgium, the nameless protagonist and his sister struggle to get through a cold winter without fried fish, and come up with a tasty alternative.

A Summary from 2013:

The following text is an adapted version of a summary I wrote in early 2013. It has been editied slightly for comprehension purposes.

French Fries, mine and everybody's favourite side dish, are what inspired this story at a time when I would eat french fries for lunch daily (Yes, I looked accordingly. No, I don't anymore). One day, whilst reading up on the history of french fries, inspiration struck...

The first draft was a rough storyboard sketch done in March of 2010. The story then underwent several iterations and ended up a children's picture book by winter 2010. In this story, Chester the Goat and its milk plays an important role, and its eventual death gives the story a more sombre tone. A subplot involving mysterious traders in a marketplace, and the making of goat cheese.

By the beginning of 2011, matching illustrations were done and the written part of the story kept refining until it was abandoned again for various reasons in the spring. (I was never quite happy with the actual story, including the fact that the goat, Chester—a male—was able to give milk somehow).

September 2011, after getting struck by an anewed inspiration, I picked up the story once more as a possible animation project. The Chester the Goat subplot was dropped and the story harkens back closely to the original draft.

Work on an all new, detailed, production ready storyboard started October 2011. This storyboard is close to the 2010 original and uses designs and layouts first created in the 2011 picture book project. Over the course of the year, I developed the story into distinct scenes and started animating them. At this point, all scenes exist in at least the basic drafts for the key frames, in many cases also with breakdowns, and in all cases with at least sketches for the background also. Personal reasons spelled trouble again for the project by the end of 2011, after a first rough animatics was cut, and I had started writing some preliminary music for the film.

Since then, the project has been on ice in favor of other, more technical, development and design related projects. In 2013, I revisited and reassessed the project, going back to the original drafts and storyboards. A few scenes were revised again, and some basic sketches made, but no major work has been done since.

The Future of the Project

The project is, despite all drawbacks, not dead, in fact it never has been. At this point, it is still very much my desire to finish the project, although to give an idea of a timeframe is still out of the question at this point.

After the initial paper animation as been done, I would like the entire film to be drawn and shot manually, by hand. This will involve transposing all frames into clear foil, and then shooting it on a yet-to-be-constructed rig against each background. My goal is it to do all this in camera, with NO digital compositing.

Excerpts from the 2011 Production diary:

The following entries are dateless, but date back to the time between October and December 2011. (Slightly edited for comprehension purposes)

• Completed 3 layout drawings for background paintings. Sketched out one more. I may end up combining 2 into 1. I bought a big (A2) block for the paintings, this should help if I need to create a panning pane. Still working out some technical details. Will probably end up looking into renting a camera.
• Ipod works great as camera. Cymbal stand makes great pencil tester. May shoot the movie on ipod or borrow somebody's iphone. Also got colerase pencils. Now it's time to get drawing ;)
• Although I didn't have any supplies, storyboards or sketches with me, I layed out 4 more scenes today with only cheap copy paper and ball-point pens.
  I must say drawing with a ballpoint is such a freeing experience. It's the no frills, no compromise, do or die kind of drawing that brings out 90% garbage, but about 10% of greatness. And that's infinitely better than 100% mediocrity.
• I have re-cut the animatic and done some more tweaks to the music, mainly to accommodate for all the new layouts that were done. The charcters have progressed some in appearance, I may have to re-draw Kirby in one scene. Oh and they now have names:
  The Boy's name is "Glueck", from the German word for Happyness. The name though actually stems from a chapter in a story I had started writing a few years back. The girl'sname is Kirby, like Kirby, the fluffy Nintendo character.
• I am now at the point where I want to shoot and re-cut daily, but it's too early in the production to get obsessed with the details yet. I will however start timing out scenes based on their required length in the cut.
• Several days later I'm zeroing in on the final music selection. So far the pieces I have picked are kirxhe4 written on my iPod during the production of the children's picture book, and HAR3, written about 7 years ago for no particular purpose.
• A few weeks and not as much time to spend as I would have liked, but it's coming together. The only scene not layed out yet is the "hero shot" (annotation from 2016: I don't know which shot this refers to. my guess is the scene with the house, or the very first scene). Yes, it intimidates me, because it has to be perfect. I am now very confident with walk-cycles and shifting masses, so I think this should be coming together great. I have adopted some wild angles and some scenes have evolved to more that I had ever hoped (seasons sequence).
• I am now greatly influenced by the art direction of anime, I may even include some anime eye highlights on the characters. I also keep thinking more about the mechanics of shooting. Most scenes won't require a rack, but some might and one WILL require one heck of a rig ... It boggles my mind how I planned to shoot the "fall" shot. I may have to accept that one and just do it simple, but we'll see.