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Alexia · 06-05-2012, 03:15 AM

The title could be translated by “Dragon Hunters – Behind the scenes of the movie”. This is an artbook about an animated movie entitled « Chasseurs de Dragons » which was released in France in 2008. It wasn’t released in the US except in April 2009 at the Newport Beach International Film Festival. The movie takes place in a medieval world. But you just have to watch one picture to understand that it’s a funny kind of medieval world.

The book is divided in 5 parts. The first one explains the sequence of events from the idea until the writing of the script. There is a little interview of the producer Philippe Delarue explaining his work and choice of this movie. This part is good, since it’s concise and filled with beautiful pictures.

The second part is about the design of the movie. It begins with the study of the main characters: every steps of the creation are explained and there is a lot of pictures, sculptures, drawings and sketches that illustrate the process for the 4 main characters creation. There is an interview of the character designer Valérie Hadida. I like this part cause there is gatefolds and so the pictures are larger. Then, they talk about the expression of the character, but it’s just a paragraph. At last, it’s about the dragons and their texture. They list the dragons and explain what texture they choose for each of them, this part is good too because there are drawings and sculptures.

The third part is about the landscape and items. We can see the genesis of one landscape and magnificent pictures of other landscapes in the movie. I like this part with gatefolds filled with large pictures. I also really like the accessory part because we can contemplate the details in the decors that are easy to miss during the movie. For example, there is a tapestry in gatefold which is in the movie and it’s great to be able to see the whole tapestry.

The fourth part concerns the storyboard. There is an extract of the storyboard and an interview of Mathieu Venant the storyboarder. This part is too short in my opinion.

The fifth part is about the making of the movie after the preproduction which means the animation, light effects, special effects and compositing. There are interviews of the people working on every step of the process and pictures to illustrate their work.

Amateur in animation could read this book, I think that people who are not amateur will less enjoy the book for its contents but the amount and the quality of the pictures are still pleasant.

I like this book, the only bad aspect about it is that, in my opinion, it is too short. It’s only 85 pages. And so there isn’t enough space to precisely describe the huge work behind the movie. Too Bad.

This book can be found on amazon.fr and amazon.co.uk, I search a little and I think it exists only in french.

Product Details
• Comic: 87 pages
• Publisher: Fernand Nathan (19 mars 2008)
• Collection : CHASSEURS DRAGO
• Language : Français
• ISBN-10: 2092518526
• ISBN-13: 978-2092518526

Availability: Amazon UK | Amazon FR