Background design: ZeMarmot’s home

In an animation film, obviously the design does not refer only to characters. There can be props design when applicable, and of course background design. As an example, the most interesting case is how we designed ZeMarmot’s home! At least the outside part of its burrow, since we never see the inside (unlike in the initial comics attempt).

You remember the first research trip? Back then, we found this nice hill, next to Saint-Véran village with just a single tree in the middle.

The tree on the hill: ZeMarmot movie reference
The tree on the hill: ZeMarmot movie reference

And obviously on the bottom of this tree, there was a marmot burrow hole.

Burrow hole in tree roots: ZeMarmot reference
Burrow hole in tree roots: ZeMarmot reference

We thought that was just too cool. Most burrow holes are just in the middle of the landmass, but this felt like a “special hole”. Our main character is not a special marmot, it’s not a hollywood leader, chief of the marmot clan or anything, but still… it’s our hero, right? It’s not just any marmot, its ZeMarmot! So we wanted to give him a special burrow. Therefore ZeMarmot now lives under a cool tree. Only difference is that we didn’t set it on a hill but in a plain, since plains are also very common setups for marmots in the alps.

Here is how the burrow entrance looks in our storyboard:

Storyboard: burrow entrance
Storyboard: burrow entrance

Then with clean lines:

Drawing: burrow entrance
Drawing: burrow entrance

Finally adding some colors:

Colored ZeMarmot's burrow entrance (WIP)
Colored ZeMarmot’s burrow entrance (WIP)

Note that this last image is still work-in-progress. Aryeom said she is not fully happy with it yet. I thought it was still nice to show you the progression from our research photos to storyboard sketchs, drawing and coloring, with all the thinking we made on why and what.

Hope you enjoyed this little insight in our work! 🙂

 

Reminder: if you want to support our animation film,
ZeMarmot, made with Free Software, for which we also
contribute back a lot of code, and released under
Creative Commons by-sa 4.0 international, you can
support it in USD on Patreon or in EUR on Tipeee.