Animation Nation: Yves Geleyn

Yves Geleyn says he doesn’t like to call himself a director. He prefers to be simply known as a storyteller. And he doesn’t focus on any particular technique, “you should use whatever is good to serve the story,” he says.

It is true that by using different methods, the Frenchman has avoided a signature look or style. But the impression one also gets from watching his work is the delicacy of the imagery. The story arc and characters keep our attention, while the often complex weaving of techniques employed in its creation remains unobtrusive. In Snow Angels, for Chobani Yoghurt, a New York child listens to a Christmas story from Eastern Turkey about how angels arrive on earth; in Museum, Geleyn’s promo for Paris art space La Gaité Lyrique, fantastical creatures create a gloriously imaginative artwork. And, of course, in The Bear & The Hare for John Lewis, which Geleyn co-directed with Elliot Dear, a bear gets his first Christmas.

Being paid to make sooty blobs

It is with repeated viewings that you can appreciate the craft – and try to distinguish the constituent parts – the CG work, the live-action puppetry, the stop-motion, or 2D animation.

“Putting Elliott and I together [for John Lewis] was a good choice because we both have this mixed-media background,” says Geleyn. “The John Lewis ad is a perfect example of how you can use two different techniques and blend them.”

Geleyn tends to divide his time between New York, where he is repped by Hornet Inc., through which he gets most of his commercial work; Paris, where he works on his personal projects; and also London, where he has spent more time this past year. This itinerant life began around eight years ago, after his first short film Soot Giant – featuring a monster wandering around Paris eating soot – became an animation festival hit. He was not a director when he made it, he was actually working as a graphic designer in Paris, for the Pompidou Centre. He had no animation background, but had nevertheless learned how to use the relevant software. “I think the industry was different then,” he reflects. “Not so many schools existed, so a lot of people were teaching themselves After Effects.”

His soot creature itself was a mix of 2D and live-action – a throbbing ashy blob with a human mouth – animated across plates of real-life Paris. “Michael Feder [MD at Hornet Inc.] saw it and said they’d like to represent me. I thought, ‘are people actually paid to do this?’”

The commercial projects have been arriving steadily ever since, and Geleyn reveals that several of his short films have also begun life as pitches for ads – like his last one, called Collosse, featuring a wooden robot. “I originally pitched it as a Coke commercial but it didn’t go through,” he reveals. “I was frustrated because I’ve always wanted to do something with puppets. So I rewrote the story and the robot was shot live-action. It was solid wood, the heaviest puppet ever – and needed two operators!”

Nothing like the real stuff

He’s clearly emotionally tied to what he calls ‘“real stuff” – the physical objects and craft involved in making them. For his recent Toyota spot, The 1,000,000km Courier, which involves stop-frame, live-action and motion-control, he did the paper cutting of the paper wheel on which the action takes place.

In fact, Geleyn is now curating an exhibition, due to open in Paris this spring, bringing together the props and artwork of 15 leading animation directors. It has been years in the planning, hatched with fellow Hornet director Peter Sluszka. “We’d been making a commercial and were putting all these props away in boxes, saying that people have no idea about this stuff – it never gets seen. I thought that because CG is everywhere, it was a good time to show people that this stuff is still being done.” However he does acknowledge the role of technology, without laser-cutting techniques for example, placing 2D cutouts in real environments in The Bear & The Hare wouldn’t have been possible. He admits evolving technology is what’s so exciting about animation. “Before no one thought to do it. Now it’s done and something else amazing is going to come in the next six months, something nobody expects. I think that’s why this industry is so interesting right now.”