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With their “Made by Humans” badges at the Annecy Festival, the teams from La Cabane Productions and Thuristar (known among other things for the series Mush-Mush & the Mushables) stood out in a context where many studios are openly, yet cautiously, explaining that generative AI is probably the future.
Perrine Gauthier (producer and co-founder – La Cabane, producer/partner – Thuristar), publicly shared her feelings about the current political situation in France, where the far right might win the upcoming legislative elections.
La Cabane/Thuristar also made several announcements regarding their current and upcoming animated projects during and after Annecy.
In a nutshell: three good reasons to interview Perrine Gauthier to learn more!
3DVF: Perrine, at Annecy, the La Cabane/Thuristar teams stood out with a “Made by Humans” badge, while many other studios told us that they think adopting generative AI is probably inevitable. What message does this badge convey? What is La Cabane/Thuristar’s position, and yours, on this topic?
Perrine Gauthier – La Cabane Productions / Thuristar: A week before the Annecy Festival/Mifa, someone shared a video of composer Laurent Couson, who provided a concrete and well-supported analysis of a creator’s concerns regarding generative AI tools. I found his testimony particularly eloquent and touching. Perhaps because one of my associates (Frederik Segers) is a composer, but mainly because these concerns affect all artistic professions. The next morning, I woke up with the firm intention to support these “dear humans.” I shared my badge idea with Britt Raes (author-director of Luce And The Rock and Luce In The Lovely Land), who created the illustration the same day. We both liked the symbol of raised arms, and I felt it was important to represent visual artists, writers, voices, and music. 24 hours later, this last-minute project was printed at a workshop in Nantes, and we received the badges just in time for Annecy, the perfect place for artists to meet.
La Cabane and Thuristar’s stance on AI is simple: we do not use AI tools on our projects and do not intend to; none of the three studios we currently work with use these tools on our productions either.
With each new tool release with increasingly impressive performances, I keep asking myself the same question: is fully automating and standardizing everything what we truly want as a society, as companies, as individuals? For me and my company, the answer is no. I don’t believe we should see the massive use of AI as an inevitability; freedom of choice is also a powerful tool, and business leaders’ decisions impact people and society. On a more personal level, I enjoy working with people… so the prospect of a film made by copy-pasting prompts into Dream Machine doesn’t really excite me! Joking aside, the impact on jobs and copyright concerns, and thus on people, worry us the most.
As often, the danger lies in the massive, unreasonable, and even abusive use of a tool. I discussed this at Annecy with Nicolas Schmerkin (Autour de Minuit), who is currently developing a short film where the director experiments with generative AI to achieve a particular texture in oil-painted wooden sets. Generative AI is fed with images created by the artist, serving his research without taking anyone’s job. This example is very different from a successful animated series whose adaptation and French dubbing were generated by AI (triggering the #TouchePasMaVF movement, with a petition and social media posts) or the reasons driving thousands of artists to leave Instagram for Cara…
3DVF: What were the reactions both online and in person during the Festival?
I didn’t expect this initiative to spark so much interest, but seeing the feedback on social media, I realized I printing “only” 300 badges may not have been enough 🙂 We received many messages from students, artists, and various professionals whose concern is growing, especially when projects and job offers are becoming scarce. At Annecy, producers, distributors, institutions, journalists, and others also approached us.
What people appreciated about this idea was the positive support and emphasis on humans. Britt’s graphic talent and colorful universe contributed a lot!
It was also an opportunity to talk with some artists, screenwriters, or producers who have a very different position on the subject and see AI tools as an opportunity rather than a risk. However, the risk to employment is real, with concrete examples like the one shown in a BBC article last week.
3DVF: You also shared a post-MIFA/Festival message (reproduced below) on social media, discussing the French political context and its impact on the animation industry. Can you tell us more?
It’s the first time I’ve spoken out professionally in this way; exceptional situations require exceptional reactions. This edition of the Festival and Mifa was an opportunity for La Cabane and Thuristar to share good news, but it’s hard to celebrate signing a partnership with France Télévisions on the day the far right party Rassemblement National announced its intention to privatize France Télévisions, the French national public TV and film. It’s complicated to toast receiving a MEDIA/Creative Europe grant when we learn that another far right party, Reconquête, plans to cut these vital aids for creation and European cooperation, and for promoting eco-responsibility and diversity on screen and in teams; and it’s impossible to ignore the fact that these political parties also question the “Intermittence du spectacle” system, the rules that govern unemployment benefits for the entertainement industry in France, including animators, VFX workers. Overhauling this system could have dramatic consequences.
My message was a way to share this “humble behind-the-scenes” and a small demonstration of the catastrophic consequences that the far-right coming to power would have on animation, broadcasting, culture, and on our society as a whole.
When running a company, you do it with intentions, principles, and values. Most of the time, these are not expressed as political opinions, but they define our positioning, project choices, team management, etc. When people’s rights and freedoms are attacked, when the humanist and pluralist values that drive us are deeply challenged, they are in both professional and personal spheres.
3DVF: Another current topic is ecological transition. La Cabane made public the carbon footprint of Mush-Mush season 2 (with a radical pipeline change as explained on 3DVF). Why did you choose to make this information public? What lessons can be learned for future projects? Do you have any advice for studios wanting to undertake such an assessment?
We finalized the carbon footprint assessment just before Annecy (using the Carbulator tool developed by AnimFrance), following the production of Mush-Mush season 2. The result of 91 tons of CO2 equivalent, detailed in the graph below, is very encouraging. It’s a real satisfaction for the team, especially after the bold pipeline change between seasons! Mush-Mush season 2 is the first long-form series produced with Unreal Engine in Europe, so it’s interesting to show the weight of these departments as other productions are underway with Unreal.
And it’s also interesting to see how much travel, food, streaming, etc. weighs in the global emissions.
In animation, few carbon footprint assessments have been published so far, and each project is different. For us, the good result of Mush-Mush season 2 is mainly due to three factors:
- Small teams, internally at La Cabane and Thuristar, and with our contractors Shards, Autour du Volcan [linked to Autour de Minuit] and Borderline (which are not large studios)
- Only one air travel during the entire production
- A significant number of vegetarians or vegans in the teams
For our future projects, instead of a single pipeline that wouldn’t suit the diversity of our projects, we promote team awareness of emission factors (travel, food, etc.) and we actively participate in this approach. I haven’t taken a professional flight in over 6 years! And Joeri Christiaen (founder of Thuristar and co-founder of La Cabane) launched “Vegan Wednesday”: an opportunity for those who wish to share a vegan meal every Wednesday and discover other consumption habits. We take a proactive, but non-intrusive and respectful approach.
Collecting information (anonymously) and setting up monitoring tools is lengthy, but once in place, the process is greatly facilitated for future productions (thanks to Sylvia Gigli and Laura Person, who work with me!). We can also thank our contractors who played along; in production and post-production, all were responsive, allowing us to make an accurate calculation. This process should be further facilitated and democratized with the release of Carbulator V3 by the end of 2024 [see this video, in French, for more details on V3, starting at 38 minutes 43 seconds].
3DVF: Let’s discuss La Cabane/Thuristar projects. You announced a partnership with France Télévisions for Luce in the Lovely Land. Can you tell us more?
Yes, France Télévisions confirmed its commitment to developing our new series, Luce in the Lovely Land by Britt Raes, whose pitch at Cartoon Forum 2023 was memorable. Britt and I are delighted with this partnership, which perfectly complements the valuable support from VRT-Ketnet in Belgium. We have also received strong interest in international distribution and European pre-sales.
Luce in the Lovely Land (39 episodes of 7 minutes) is a series of colorful and quirky tales featuring Luce, a daring child who opens her bedroom window each morning with a curious eye on the world around her. Each day begins a new adventure she shares with her best friend, a giant Rock. Together, they explore the unexpected, meet astonishing creatures, and discover new perspectives. In this visually and narratively inventive universe, Luce invites us to see the world differently!
The series is adapted from the short film Luce and the Rock, co-produced by Thuristar, La Cabane, and Studio Pupil in 2022. The film, distributed by Miyu Distribution, has been selected for over 200 festivals, broadcast on FTV/Okoo, VRT-Ketnet, RTBF, RTS, Telefonica, etc., and released in theaters by Les Films du Préau.
3DVF: Finally, in these times filled with uncertainty, you are preparing for the future with a project to be unveiled at Cartoon Forum, A Lamb’s Stew. What is it about?
A Lamb’s Stew (Mijoté De Brebis in French) is our first original Special (we have produced several Mush-Mush Specials in recent years). It’s a 30-minute project, created using 3D animation (with 2D sequences), written and directed by Joeri Christiaen, aimed at a family audience.
The film tells the story of Billie, a determined little sheep who wants to prove that sheep can also be brave animals in a world where each Animal Clan is defined primarily by its appearance. Billie decides to confront the Wolf lurking in the forest and terrorizing all Clans. But the Wolf turns out to be very different from the fearsome beast she imagined…
It’s a film about appearance, prejudice and having the courage to stand out from the crowd, or rather, from the herd!
Joeri collaborated with Claire Paoletti (Shooom’s Odyssey) as a writing consultant, and we are currently making the teaser for Cartoon Forum internally (animatic/design/layout/animation) and with Shards (assets/rendering/FX/compositing) who was already a contractor on Mush-Mush season 2.
The 3D of A Lamb’s Stew and its highly stylized artistic direction are very different from the semi-realistic settings of Mush-Mush; at this stage, we are planning to use Blender to produce the project, as is the case with the teaser. The summer looks very busy!
3VDF: Thank you, Perrine, for these responses! We will closely follow the progress of these different projects.
Until then, and for those reading, you can rediscover Perrine Gauthier’s previous interview on 3DVF, which provides more details on La Cabane’s upcoming projects.
