Dragons et Princesses
Ten silhouette fairy tales by Michel Ocelot.
Dragons et Princesses, meaning "Dragons and Princesses" in French, is a 2010 television series from France. Michel Ocelot wrote, storyboarded, and directed the computer-animated program for Studio O, which produced it for Canal+. The show is a fairy tale anthology, following the format of Ciné si with ten additional 13-minute episodes. Unlike traditional silhouette animation using backlit cut-outs, this series uses computer animation to create a silhouette style. Five of these episodes, plus a sixth exclusive to the feature, were edited into the 2011 stereoscopic compilation film Tales of the Night.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Fairy tale anthology series
- Writer
- Michel Ocelot
- Voices
- Yves Barsacq
- Olivier Claverie
- Michel Elias
- Isabelle Guiard
- Michel Ocelot
- Composer
- Christian Maire
- Country
- France
- Language
- French
- Seasons
- 1
- Episodes
- 10
Facts from the source article.
Production
Ocelot voiced, co-produced, art directed, and designed the series, marking a return to the short silhouette fairy tale format he established with 1989's Ciné si and continued in 1992's Tales of the Night. The project brought to life stories originally created for the unsuccessful Ciné si, whose episodes later gained popularity through the compilation film Princes and Princesses. As early as September 2006, during previews for Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest in France, Ocelot mentioned in interviews his plan to revisit silhouettes and the anthology format with a project tentatively titled Bergères et Dragons, aiming for a 2008 release. He was uncertain whether it would be a feature film or television series, and whether it would combine existing and new footage or be entirely new—the title hinted at including the "Bergère qui danse" segment from Tales of the Night. Instead, 2008 saw those earlier silhouette films collected in Les Trésors cachés de Michel Ocelot, and the new project was delayed by other productions. It was announced in June 2010 as taking its final shape: a television series of ten new silhouette films, from which a new Tales of the Night theatrical film would be drawn. Dragons also marks Ocelot's return to working with longtime composer Christian Maire, who last scored Ciné si for him two decades earlier. It is the first production animated entirely by his own Studio O in Paris, which previously handled only pre-production for projects animated at larger studios. Over 300 characters and 800 sets were designed for the series, animated by a team of five using Autodesk Maya.
Release
Before its television debut, the series premiered two episodes at festivals. "L'Élue de la Ville d'or" was shown at the Festival international de cinéma d'animation de Meknès in May 2010. That June, "Le Garçon qui ne mentait jamais" competed for the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. It lost to Studio Soi's Der Kleine und das Biest but received a special award for a television series instead. The full series aired on Canal+ Family starting October 25, with "La Maîtresse des monstres" as the first episode. It occupied the same 20:25 time slot each weekday until all ten episodes concluded on November 5. Two picture books based on other episodes, "Le Loup-garou" and "Ti Jean et la belle-sans-connaître," have been released. A DVD-Video of the series came out in France on November 30, 2010. This disc is region 2-locked and includes only French-language captions as subtitles.
More in French Children's Animated Fantasy Television Series
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