January 2015 – Girin Studio

So our animation projet has got a Marmot as main character. His burrow is therefore quite important. So we did some research. Of course our character being of the specific “Alpine Marmots”, we focus on this subspecies.

So the Alpine marmots live mainly between 1500 and 3000 meters high, above forests. It seems they prefer clear largely exposed area so that they can spot any predator from far away. They live in group, in large burrows, up to 3 meter deep and 10 meter long, with a main room, toilets, a main entrance facing south (they like their sun!), and even emergency exits.
Well we won’t bore you more with details, you can find these all and more on the web. Funny also as it seems more than a kid must have had homeworks on the marmot’s burrow out there! Pretty funny. 🙂

Here are some research images.

We are working currently with the animation artist Aryeom Han on a 2D animation project, entirely made with Free Software. This is still the start, we are mostly defining the main and secondary characters, the graphics style and the synopsis…

This movie is based off an original idea from Jehan, who had started — years ago — to doodle a small marmot who liked to sleep and nap everywhere. He started to make it into a webcomic with the help of Aryeom. It has been quicly decided to make it a movie instead.

Summary

A marmot living quietly in his burrow, whose favorite activity is sleeping, discovers there would be unheard extraordinary things outside his mountains. The small rodent decides to leave in a trip around the world.

The main character

The Marmot, our key character, is a small rodent from the western European mountains. As a consequence it would be an Alpine marmot (scientific name: Marmota marmota).

We tried several graphical styles and are now indecisive on 2 styles. Here they are.