French artist Nicolas Pegon makes his feature film debut with Flick!, an animated film that blends surrealism and crime. The story follows Joy, a directionless young woman in rural France, whose life takes an absurd turn when she finds a buried gun and the corpse of a cowboy. With the help of Didier, her ex-hippie roommate, she tries to hide the body. The result is a dark comedy of failed cover-ups, involving stolen lime and a half-painted car.
Traditional animation and 3D modeling in Flick! 🎬
Pegon opts for hand-drawn 2D animation, combined with 3D-generated backgrounds to add depth to the French rural landscapes. The visual style recalls European comics, with loose lines and flat colors that contrast with the rawness of the plot. The production, made using software like Blender and TVPaint, took four years to complete. The small team allowed for total artistic control, although it limited the fluidity of some action scenes.
The perfect cover-up manual (according to Flick!) 🕵️
If you ever need to hide a corpse, don't take notes from Joy and Didier. Their plan includes a leaky old freezer, lime they buy from a hardware store without any discretion, and a car they paint halfway to make it look like another vehicle. Spoiler: nothing works. In the end, the real crime isn't the shooting, but the protagonists' terrible judgment in choosing accomplices and appliances.