Clément Malbec on taking viewers' breath away with Expire

Expire is a captivating short film crafted by a team of talented students from the ECV Bordeaux animation course. Consisting of Clément Malbec who focused on storyboard and animation with Mathis Milla-Diaz and Andréa Brimboeuf, alongside Audrey Azemar (visdev on props, characters and backgrounds) and Baptiste Brotier (finishing touches with compositing). Their thesis film is an impressive feat of creative storytelling and a unique style of animation.

Set in a magical realist world where stress causes people to inflate, the story follows high school friends Mayu and Camille. The film's animation style combines expressive 2D art, with the team embracing the challenge of depicting the characters' inflation in a strikingly visual sense. The team tackled storyboarding challenges by finding innovative ways to condense the narrative and depict time effectively. Character design was approached with care, with acute movements that were crafted to reflect each character’s personality and emotions.

Overall, Expire is a triumph of the team's collaborative effort and creative vision, exploring themes of stress, friendship, and personal growth through a highly original lens. The team was kind enough to answer some of our questions in an interview. They share how this collaboration came together, and how they used tools in Toon Boom Harmony to complete Expire.

Official screening for Expire, directed by Audrey Azemar, Andréa Brimboeuf, Baptiste Brotier, Clément Malbec and Mathis Milla-Diaz.

Hi Clément, please introduce yourself and the crew behind the fantastic short film, Expire…

Clément: Let me introduce ourselves. I am Clément Malbec, I worked on the Storyboard and the 2D Animation with Mathis Milla-Diaz, as well as Andréa Brimboeuf for the 2D animation / FX part. Audrey Azemar did the designs for props and characters and all the backgrounds of the film. At the end, Baptiste Brotier did the final touch with compositing.

How would you describe the plot of Expire?

Clément: In a world where your body inflates when you stress, Mayu and Camille are two friends in their last High School’s year. Mayu will commit herself into work, putting pressure on her, questioning her ability to pass her exam.

How would you describe the style of animation you created in Expire?

Clément: In Expire we wanted to do an expressive animation and also to have fun doing it, that is why we chose a traditional 2D animation, in a semi-realistic style. The fact that the characters inflate was a real challenge for the animators but it created a feeling of freedom by the organic nature of it.

Can you share a challenge from the storyboarding process, and how it was overcome?

Clément: The storyboarding process was challenging because we wanted to put a lot of information in a short movie. Moreover there is a time skip in the film so we had to find a way to show everything. We put a lot of effort with Mathis on the storyboards and made a lot of versions but we finally got a solution with a clip scene which summed up all the events that we wanted to say.

Camille’s body movements and mannerisms are very lifelike. How did you act these movements or find references to make them so emotive?

Clément: Camille is the representation of the talented person that we all know in our class, the one who always effortlessly got an A+ at all exams. 

But on top of that we wanted to describe a deeper personality, Camille is not aware that she is a source of frustration for her friend, all her intentions are good, she is a nice person. 

We tried to express this in our animation, where we tried to act by ourselves to do references. We are not good actors but we did our best!

How was the character design done from a technical perspective?

Clément: The hardest part was the model sheet, we had to keep them simple but still efficient. A simple mistake on the turn-around could make the animators' work more difficult. So Audrey's works were a mix between creativity and technical limitations. Also the uniforms were created to highlight the students' inflation, for example there is a line for each strategic joint.

At the start, Theo inflates and bursts in a rain of failed tests. What was his fate? Is the message here that stress can kill?

Clément: Theo was an excuse to show the worst consequences of the school's pressure. This echoes the burnout and depression that we can go through in real life. There is a confusion on Theo's death, we don't show a dead corpse or other but we hear the explosion and then the fragments of uniforms. This is an impactful way to express the danger.

Margot’s friend seems to be having a much more relaxed time of her studies than Margot. What can Margot learn from Camille?

Clément: There are things to learn in both ways. Mayu is an introvert, she absorbs everything until it cracks. She dives into her work to forget her feelings. She could learn to ask for help, to not be shy, to admit that we have problems is a big part of the solution. On the other hand, Camille is an expressive person, maybe too much, she is selfish in her way because she always expresses her emotions freely, without thinking about the repercussions, and by always being so happy in front of her friends, she doesn't create a good environment for her friends to ask for help.

When Camille rescues an inflated Margot with the earbud, there is a moment where we seem to leave the usual setting into something of an imagination or afterlife. What was the inspiration behind this scene visually?

Clément: This scene was inspired by a lot of anime where we find characters that speak to themselves. The composition with just characters in light colors is really strong to describe a moment of introspection. Only Mayu with herself. We also find this kind of composition in the short film "Afternoon Class".

What tools or techniques in Toon Boom Harmony helped you create the unique visual style of Expire?

Clément: The nodes in Toon Boom Harmony were really useful in our pipeline. Because we could draw with a textured line without losing the vector quality of the layer. It helped us a lot for the tiedown part and mainly for the cleaning part.

We also want to say a big thanks to this system for the early compositing and export!

What was your experience like of studying on the ECV animation course?

Clément: ECV Animation gave us the amazing opportunity to work on a project with a lot of freedom during the two last years. Before that, for 3 years, we experienced all parts of the production of animation. It was really challenging but it was helpful, we became versatile at the end. So this was a great experience which led us to our actual positions in the industry.

---

• Interested in learning more about ECV’s animation programs in Paris, Bordeaux, Aix-en-Provence, Nantes and Lille? Be sure to visit the school’s official website. 
• Planning your thesis film? Students can get up to 84% off discounts on Harmony and Storyboard Pro with student licenses.