Mill+ Explores The 'Morning After the Night Before' This Christmas

Mill+ directing duo Melanie Climent and Aurelien Ronceray create a humorous festive animation exploring the scene of a dinner table on the ‘morning after the night before’.

The quirky and off-beat sequence was a personal project created in the pairs’ spare time and is a fun and naughty nod to Christmas-time, depicting the merrier side of festivities we’ve most likely all encountered but don’t usually talk about. 

The animation begins at the head of a dining table, with the sounds of morning breaking and an air of stillness. However, as the shot follows from one end to another, the table’s contents begin to hint towards the happenings of the night before; a boozey and indulgent affair. 

The moving shot becomes quickly contrasted with bursts of party sounds and animation, and finally ends when it reaches a party-goer, asleep and in a questionable state at the other end of the dining table. 

Mill+ Concept Artists Aurelien Ronceray and Melanie Climent tell us more about their project; "The idea was to wander around an illustration, giving it depth, so the spectator feels inside the scene, slowly introducing clues for the back-story to reveal itself. 

The table as an "after-last-night-party" was a perfect theme to play with, going from a nice dinner to a party that has gone wrong. Introducing the flashbacks was a good way for us to play with the contrast of two opposite ambiances; from static to moving, calm to hectic, each flashback bringing us a little closer to the chaos that ensues. 

It was clear from the beginning that we wanted to create a 2D animated film. We were conscious that with our framing on the table and the long camera move that we would have some heavy parallax. We began by building our dinner table in 3D and figure out a first layout. Then the entire shot was painted and designed in Photoshop and finally reprojected and comped in Nuke."