Back to the roots

teamlolirock:

Hi LoliRock fans, Jean-Louis speaking.

Last Saturday (July 11th), the first episode of the show (Ep. 101 – “To find a Princess”) was broadcasted again in France

It’s a good opportunity to go back in time and see how the show was born.

Soooo… “LoliRock”… where does it come from ? First of all, let’s go back into childhood. My childhood, back in the 80s.

I was just a child, watching whatever animation was broadcasted on French channels. I was amazed and filled with wonder thanks to shows such as Myazaki’s Sherlock Holmes (Meitantei Hōmuzu), Cobra Space Adventure (Space Kobura), The Mysterious Cities of Gold (Taiyō no ko Esuteban), or Dragon Ball… but there was one, above all, that made me want to work on animation : Magical Princess Minky Momo, alias “Gigi” in France.

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I loved the very core of it : a child transforming into an adult, helping people and making good deeds, the nice chara design, and finally the tone of the show : it could be funny and light, but also dramatic and tearful at other times. My soul was marked forever.

A “few” years later, I became a director on Monter Buster Club and Rekkit Rabbit. Then I had the opportunity to create my own Magical Girl show, with our French touch : this would become LoliRock !

Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure have been our main references : we wanted a united group of girlfriends who always help each other no matter what. Jem and the Holograms was another reference, for the musical part and career obviously. 

However the thing I wanted to put into the show, above all, was the strong and positive values that I loved in Minky Momo. With the best animation quality that we could have.

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To take up this challenge, gathering a “Dream Team” of professional, talented and dedicated people was mandatory. It’s a thing I can repeat forever : creating a show is like working in a hive, or an anthill maybe ? Everybody works together in the same direction, from design to storyboard, from animation to dubbing, from organisation to music. As a director, you need all these people around you, following you, and putting their soul into it. And when all the pieces of the puzzle come together like that- which is what happened on LoliRock, you know you’re part of something special

We’ll be back to introduce all the departement in further posts, but you can already find the websites, blogs, tumblr and such of a part of Team LoliRock on the LINKS page. (This will be periodically updated)

Anyway, I’d like to thanks once again my team, both the french people at Marathon but also all the malaysian people at Inspidea. This project wouldn’t have become what it is without all of you guys !

That’s it for today. On Friday’s next post, we’ll talk a little about this first episode… :)

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Lecteurs francophones ? Voici la version française du texte ci-dessous.

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