A Lamb’s Stew

Synopsis
Determined to prove that sheep are just as brave as other animals, a young lamb sets out to lure a wolf into a trap, only to discover that he isn’t the monster she thought he was… “A Lamb’s Stew” is a 30 minute special written and directed by Joeri Christiaen for a children and family audience. Through the story of Billie, a young and rebellious lamb who decides to confront a big bad wolf, the film questions how preconceived ideas shape our world-view and invites us to embrace individuality. Don’t judge a sheep by its wool, nor a wolf by its fur!
Director and Scriptwriter: Joeri Christiaen
Main Producer: Perrine Gauthier (La Cabane Productions, France)
Co-Producer: Joeri Christiaen (Thuristar, Belgium)
Format: 30’
Target audience: Family
Techniques: 3D digital / 2D digital
A Lamb’s Stew is a new, highly-anticipated 3D animation project from La Cabane Productions and Thuristar, who are the producers of the globally-broadcasted series Mush Mush and the Mushables. This new animation will depict a heartfelt and universal children’s story told with cute characters, with a nice touch of humour.
The project was pitched at Cartoon Forum 2024 in front of a packed audience. We interviewed Joeri Christiaen, the creator of the series, and the main producer Perrine Gauthier, about the story behind the promising new animation series.
*: You can read our interview article on Mush Mush and the Mushables we did at Cartoon Forum 2016 here.
Interview with Joeri Christiaen and Perrine Gauthier
Hideki Nagaishi (HN): What kind of message or experience do you most want to deliver to the audience through A Lamb’s Stew?
Joeri Christiaen: The main theme of the project is looking beyond appearances. We live in such a divided world, and people seem to forget that we can be different, or have different views, and still get along. I feel such stories matter, especially towards young audiences, and I wanted to share my own take. As a subtheme, the story also touches on the impact of overexploitation of nature. The inhabitants of this world go on about their lives without realizing the consequences their way of life has on nature, and ironically on themselves.
HN: What parts of A Lamb’s Stew do you think are especially appealing to the prospective audience?
Perrine Gauthier: We’re developing A Lamb’s Stew as a 30-min animated TV special, though we’re also exploring the idea of a series development following the special. Many more compelling and fun stories can be told in this world, and a lot is left to be said about the characters and themes…
It’s our first original special for a family audience. As a parent, I often feel like there are too few films that adults and children can fully enjoy together. A co-viewing experience is a delicate balance of comedy, heart and stakes – and we think that A Lamb’s Stew has the ingredients for that recipe!
HN: Joeri, where did the initial idea of the story and the characters come from?
Joeri Christiaen: The idea for the project came from a drawing I made, of a tiny fluffy lamb facing a huge dark wolf. I often start with a sketch, and that one image seemed to capture the essence of the story: light versus dark, good versus bad, small versus big – but with a hint that looks might deceive. This felt like a good starting point to explore the theme of not judging others based on appearances. Sheep and Wolves are especially fitting for this, as they’ve always represented opposing sides.
HN: I’m interested in the journey of the project so far. What did make you decide to produce this animation project and how did this project start?
Perrine Gauthier: A Lamb’s Stew is a project that was developed in-house, by author-director Joeri Christiaen, who’s also founder of THURISTAR and co-founder of LA CABANE. We especially enjoy developing original IPs, and projects that are very different to one another in terms of visual style, technique, format, and audience. We want to support series and films that address meaningful themes. A Lamb’s Stew very much fits both of these ambitions!
HN: Perrine, which parts of this animation project, such as the theme of the story, the structure of the story, some of the visuals, or some characters, do you especially love and why?
Perrine Gauthier: The first step in Joeri’s creation process is usually to come up with an image – either a poster or a concept art – that then becomes the cornerstone for the following development stages. For A Lamb’s Stew, he drew the image below and that’s when A Lamb’s Stew came to life.
I love this image because it tells a lot about the story and the theme behind it, and also because it clearly shows the intention of using CG in a unique and stylized way.
HN: Joeri, what are you paying most attention to when writing the script?
Joeri Christiaen: Besides keeping it feasible for production, most of the focus is on the characters and their growth throughout the story, ensuring that we — the audience — care about them. To tackle this, I teamed up with Claire Paoletti, co-writer of the beautiful special Shooom’s Odyssey, who was a story consultant on the first stage of development. More recently, a script editor who worked on two specials we really love came on board – which we’ll announce shortly.
HN: What kind of visuals do you aim to achieve with this animation and why? I also would like to hear from you about how are you planning to realize those visuals technically?
Joeri Christiaen: For this project I wanted to draw inspiration from traditional animation, and nudge CG animation to a very stylized look, based on that first concept image I drew. I’ve always done CG animation in my professional career, but initially studied traditional animation (at KASK in Ghent, Belgium) so it’s kind of going back to the roots a little. The teaser we made for Cartoon Forum was a first test case for this style; it was produced in Blender and we’re very happy with the result. To achieve this style, the designs and storyboard need to be adapted as well, aiming for flatter compositions, all while preserving lush backgrounds and detailed fuzzy textures – with lots of hairs! Blender is a powerful and versatile tool for this.
HN: Perrine, are there any unique or challenging elements of this project for you as a producer?
Perrine Gauthier: A lot of them!
The cost per minute of a special is higher than the one minute of a series of course, because a lot of assets need to be created and a lot of work needs to be done, for a single film. And at the same time, there are less financing sources for specials than there are for series.
So, it’s kind of a double challenge! But aside from his artistic role, Joeri has a lot of technical experience, which allows him to come up with creative solutions and reduce costs, while aiming for high quality.
Also, we’re exploring the idea of developing a series based on the special, which would also make sense from a budget and financing perspective of course.
HN: Joeri, are you doing any new creative challenges with this project that you haven’t experienced before? If so, could you please let us know about the challenges?
Joeri Christiaen: I think we have challenges all over the board, from story to animation and rendering. Nothing about this project is like anything we did before, which is in part why we wanted to do it. It keeps us on our toes! But we’re confident we’ll find the right pipeline, team and partners to achieve this quality – just like we did for Mush Mush and the Mushables, which was also a specific and high-end look when the first teaser came out in 2016.