The short film Amen, a graduation project from the School of New Images, demonstrates how an apparently simple premise—pigs fleeing from a charcuterie—transforms into an animation piece with international festival success. Directed by Orphée Coutier, Bettina Demarty, Kimie Maingonnat, Laurène Perego, Louise Poulain, and Avril Zundel, the film combines a narrative loaded with absurd humor with a completely professional production pipeline, using tools like Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Houdini, and Nuke.
Industry Tools to Bring Characters to Life 🛠️
The technical process of Amen reflects current industry standards. The creation of the pig characters began with organic modeling in ZBrush, seeking expressive forms suitable for animation. Substance Painter was used for texturing and material painting, giving realism and personality to each model. Animation and rigging were developed in Autodesk Maya, while Houdini was used to simulate complex effects and environmental elements. Finally, compositing and post-production were finalized in Nuke. This comprehensive workflow allowed the students to face the same technical and artistic challenges as a professional studio, from character expressiveness to final visual cohesion.
From the Classroom to International Festivals 🌍
The success of Amen at festivals like VIEW Conference, ITFS in Stuttgart, or ASIFA-China validates an educational approach based on real pipelines. The short film proves that mastering complex tools is not an end, but a means to serve a story with identity. The choice of absurd humor to address a dark-toned fable required every technical decision, from animation exaggeration to character design, to serve the narration and the project's unique personality.
How did the student short film Amen manage to build a professional animation pipeline that brought a simple premise to life with exceptional technical and narrative execution? 🎬
(P.S.: Animating characters is easy: you just have to move 10,000 controls to make them blink.)