Special Post…The Tale of Despereaux

Special Post…The Tale of Despereaux

The Tale of Despereaux is about a mouse who unlike the other mice is very brave. When other mice were faced with danger they cowered and hid, while Despereaux faced it head on. Despereaux went on a nobel quest for the Princess of the castle and saved the day. I feel that without the change in color from light to dark the story would fall short and the severity of the town’s situation would not be realized. The use of Renaissance colors (golds, reds, blue, and magenta) help the storyline show the town’s prosperity but when the Queen dies the whole town becomes dark, the artists showed this by referencing the Dark ages and the lack of color.

A quote from the Art Director, Olivier Adam, said in an interview from a website called Animated Views,  “I started to study closely the Flemish painting…but this time in a more analytic way: how was the design in this time, the architecture, the painting composition, the color palette as well as the lights. Developing different concepts, I always tried to base these one on the work of artists of (mostly) the Renaissance.” This quote explains how Olivier Adams purposely used the Renaissance color pallets to reflect a certain atmosphere. During the beginning of the movie there were lots of reds, golds, magenta, and blues, this reflects a Renaissance setting when the town was in its prosperous stage. Also Olivier used many paintings from the Renaissance to drawl reference, like the painting below by the artist Bruegel, which Olivier referenced when designing the set of The Tale of Despereaux.

After the Queen dies the setting reverts to dark colors, gray, black and browns. This is important to the viewer because it shows the severity of the situation. This did exactly what Oliver wanted to do. He Made the town reflect a happy time by using the colors of the Renaissance, then by referring back to the dark ages by using blacks and browns he was able to show how the town went into a period of darkness.

Overall I feel that Olivier was very creative when using the different colors to help the viewers understand the situation the city was going through. The colors of the Renaissance being golds, reds, and magentas showed the good times in the city. The Dark Ages are known for their dark colors which shows the town’s disparity. Especially since this movie was targeted toward children it is very important that the movie showed the dramatic color change to help the viewers understand the feelings felt by the characters.

 The Tale of Despereaux is a film made out of 4 books. The main plot about Despereaux is confused with the multiple subplots that the directors put in. There were also a lot of minor mistakes like when Despereaux was lowered into the tunnel he was attached by a red string, but when he got to the bottom the string was gone. To me the one thing that stood out to me through the minor mishaps and confusing subplots was the remarkable color changes that go with the colors of that time period.

I commented on Chuck’s Blog and Jessica Martin’s post

References: Websites- Wikipedia Bruegel, Animated Views – Olivier Adam, and the Bruegel  painting “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent”