Dec 7, 2018

The 15-year journey of "Ella, Oscar and the Who" from children's book to TV series

One of Michael Dudok de Wit's first personal films was "Tom Sweep" (1992), a pilot for a series about a garbage collector desperately trying to do his job. But it never came to fruition. The production costs were too high.

Twenty-five years later, the director of "Red Turtle" has his name in the credits of a TV show. Ella, Oscar et Fou was not directed by him, but was inspired by his drawings for a series of picture books written by Theo de Marcoussin (pen name of Christophe Erbes, a well-known independent consultant in children's media and animation).

Produced by Normaal Animation of France, this adorable show tells the story of the friendship between Oscar, a mischievous boy, Ella, a cunning girl neighbor, and Hoo, a little cloud blessed with reason. Although Fu does not speak, he expresses his opinions and moods by changing his shape and making cute flute sounds. The show does not aim to dazzle, but strikes an unusual poetic chord through 52 11-minute episodes that depict the daily lives of small children, including play, dreams, laughter, and fights.

Children love the show and ratings are very high in Canada (Knowledge in British Columbia), France (Piwi+ on the early childhood channel Canal+), Finland's public broadcaster YLE, and SVT in Sweden.

The series, which is currently developing its second season, has won awards around the world, including Best Storytelling in Animation at the Shanghai TV Festival and the Jury Prize at the Bucheon International Animation Festival in Korea. It has also been nominated three times for the European Animation Awards, which will be held tomorrow in Lille, France (Best Direction, Best Storyboard, and Best Character Animation).

The creation of Ella, Oscar and Fu, like most European television productions, was a very long process. It all started about 20 years ago. Hélbès, then head of children's programming at Premiere, the German branch of Canal+, was writing a children's book under the name Théo de Marcousin. He saw Dudok de Witt's The Monk And The Fish, liked it, and wanted to ask him to illustrate it. I met him at a party in London and told him about it. He wasn't too keen on the idea, but before leaving, he said, with a bit of sarcasm, "I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do it.

Elbeth sent the text to Dudok de Wit's wife, who read it to her children. They loved it.

"I was attracted to the idea of exploring the existence of the desert, its atmosphere," Dudok de Wit tells Cartoon Brew. When they met again, Dudok de Witt showed the artist a black-and-white drawing of Oscar flying over sand dunes. The two ended up collaborating on Oscar And Hoo (2002) and Oscar And Hoo Forever (2004), published by HarperCollins Children's Books in the UK, which sold 200,000 copies. (Oddly enough, there was no U.S. edition.) Says Hörbes,

"Many publishers argued that it was too poetic to be successful [in the U.S.]." [Shortly thereafter, French producer Didier Brunner, who had worked on such Oscar-nominated films as "Ernest and Celestine," "The Triplets of Belleville," and "The Secret of Kells," bought the rights to the book and asked Dudok de Witt to direct a feature film adaptation of the book

However, the book was not released until 1975.

However, Dudok de Wit, who had won an Oscar for "Father and Daughter" (2000), wanted to make his own feature film project. Brunner suggested turning it into a series. But it was clear that I didn't want to direct a series," said Dudok de Wit, and he accepted to be a consultant on the project.

In 2006, eOne replaced Brunner and began developing the project. A short animated teaser was produced in Angoulême, France, and screened at the 2011 Cartoon Forum. But this was a failure. It wasn't the right design," says Dudok de Wit. Hörbes and Dudok de Wit continued to develop the project and found an idea for a third character, Ella.

After regaining the rights, Elves discussed the project with Alexis Lavilla, founder of Normaal, with whom he was working on the "Peanuts" adaptation, and they completed 500 one-minute shorts.

"Lavilla thought Oscar and Fu were similar to Charles Schulz's characters," says Elves. When they showed me the Peanuts series, I knew they would be as true to my designs as they were to Schulz."

Finally, the project was on the right track. The budget was €6 million ($6.8 million), with pre-purchases by Canal+, Pôle Image Magelis (Angoulême's economic development center), Creative Europe MEDIA (European Union Fund for Creative Content), SVT and YLE Channel The project was financed by. [The main challenge was to adapt Dudok de Wit's style for a younger audience. Series director Emmanuel Linderer asked David Coquard-Dassault to be the artistic director for the project. (Linderer had previously worked as animation director on Kochar-Dassault's 2015 award-winning short "Peripheria.")

Says Linderer, "I created a new design and setting to adapt it to a younger audience. The book's illustrations were composed of shades of ochre, so we wanted to extend the color palette."

Dudok de Witt was pleased with the new look they presented. I admire Coquard Dassault's 'Peripheria' and was happy to have him on board. They succeeded in staying true to the outlines I had drawn in the book."

"I decided to increase the field size with wide shots to get closer to the original," Linderer adds. Since the series is about children learning about their world, I wanted to give the characters space and see the environment through their eyes." Famous French illustrator Jean-Jacques Sampe was once asked why he draws such small characters. It is not that they are small; the world is big."

"Ella, Oscar and Fu" is a mix of 3D animation for the characters and 2D animation for the setting. Says Linderer, "Since this was the first time Normaal Studios had used 3D, we had to change our pipeline and adopt the free software Blender." I was already using Blender for 'Peripheria,' and since Blender is not commonly used, I had to take care of any problems that arose. But it gave me more freedom to choose camera movements, such as a bird's eye view of the characters in the garden from a high vantage point."

To write the script, Normaal hired seven writers. For the screenwriters, Hervez told an anecdote about meeting Hayao Miyazaki when he and Dudok de Witt came to Japan to promote the publication of Oscar & Who in Japan: "Hayao Miyazaki said that all his films were made for one person he knew: his wife, daughter, mother. Michael replied that his films are almost equally made for the same feelings of longing of "fathers and daughters". Each episode of Ella, Oscar, and Who is also based on emotion. I believe that childhood is a lost paradise for emotions."

As in "Peanuts," the adults are not far away, but they are invisible because we are at the center of childhood. The end of each episode is animated like a haiku, developing the theme of that episode." We wanted to create a path for imagination and dreams," says Elves.