France Télévisions - Sumo

How The Mill brought Japanese art and Olympic sport together in an animated film for France Télévisions, celebrating the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

In May 2021, France Télévisions unveiled a one-minute film to announce its coverage of the Tokyo Olympic Games. Titled SUMO, the film was produced by Mikros MPC for France Télévisions, in collaboration with MullenLowe France.

The creative brief was to celebrate Japanese culture and Olympic values while introducing the new sporting disciplines making their debut at the Summer Games: skateboarding, climbing, basketball and surfing. The concept brought these different worlds together through an entirely 2D animated film, inspired by traditional Japanese woodblock prints, with a sumo wrestler as its central character.

An artistic direction inspired by 18th-century Japanese prints

Working closely with character designer Stéphane Levallois and MullenLowe France, the Mikros MPC team was involved throughout the production, from art direction and direction through to final delivery.

The project marked the first time the Mikros MPC team had developed a film inspired by Japanese woodblock prints.

Director and storyboard artist Geoffroy Barbet-Massin explains that the team sought to respect the traditional codes of 18th-century Japanese prints, both in their visual language and their storytelling.

The environments and characters were designed with a high level of detail, using bold outlines, strong shapes and expressive graphic compositions.

A particular challenge was finding the right balance between the sumo wrestler and the backgrounds. The character's line work had to be adapted according to its size within the frame and remain consistent with the treatment of the surrounding environments.

Translating a traditional visual language into animation

The chosen visual approach also introduced specific technical challenges. The film was built using cavalier perspective, without vanishing points. This imposed limitations on camera movements, both horizontally and vertically, and made it more complex to move the character between foreground and background.

To address these challenges, Geoffroy Barbet-Massin developed a previsualisation of the film. According to VFX Supervisor Vincent Venchiarutti, this previs was crucial to optimising the different stages of production. With the production and all stages from staging through to final delivery managed in-house, the team was able to maintain control over the finer creative and technical decisions.

The film also incorporated text cartouches, functioning as shot titles, and a specific image treatment designed to recreate the appearance of aged paper.

Every creative and technical decision was guided by the same objective: combining a highly stylised aesthetic with effective storytelling.

Finding the right animation style

Another important aspect of the production was defining an animation style that remained faithful to the static nature of traditional Japanese prints.

Lead Animator Antoine Antin worked closely with Geoffroy Barbet-Massin to adapt the original sumo wrestler design created by Stéphane Levallois. The team developed a deliberately restrained animation style, described as a dry or limited approach, in keeping with the graphic references. The animation was produced on threes and fours, contributing to the handcrafted appearance of the film.

This approach also allowed the artists to concentrate on the richness of the visual effects and the details of the characters and environments in every frame.

A collaborative production

For Executive Producer Hugues Allart, assembling the right team was essential to meeting the creative ambitions of the project within the required budget and schedule. The production brought together artists with complementary skills, working in close collaboration with the agency and Stéphane Levallois.

As Hugues Allart explains: "Thanks to the collaboration between the agency creatives, Stéphane Levallois and Geoffroy Barbet-Massin, within a small but highly agile team with complementary profiles, we delivered the level of creative excellence expected by our clients. I am extremely proud of the final result. It is a beautiful film and a true testament to the artistic and creative expertise that we at Mikros MPC are proud to bring to our work every day."

Originally developed ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the production was already well advanced when the International Olympic Committee announced the postponement of the Games in March 2020 due to the global health crisis.

France Télévisions eventually unveiled its Olympic programming campaign in May 2021, ahead of the Games scheduled to take place from 23 July to 8 August 2021.