FAQ - What Is The Ligne Calire Style Developed By Herge For Tintin?

The ligne claire illustrations of the original comic booksPeter Jackson of Lord of the Rings Fame has joined
were very central to the whole ethos of the Tintinthe project and the work he does at his Weta
world created by Remi. The whole ligne claire lookWorkshop is at the core of how the eventual Tintin
was such a classic that it's inspiration went beyondmovie trilogy will look and feel. The look of the film will
comics with both Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtensteinbe similar to the work done to create Gollum in the
both stating it's influence on the pop art scene.Lord of the Ring trilogy. The Weta effects people
Ligne claire (French for "clear line") was created byused motion capture techniques on actor Andy Serkis
Remi and found a home in the Tintin adventure comics.then using key frame animation and subsurface
The style is very recognisable and can be describedscattering rendering techniques enabled the first
as drawing that uses clear lines which have the samecompletely convincing portrayal of an animated
thickness and importance, rather than being used tohumanoid in a feature film.
emphasize certain objects or be used for shading. ThisWeta was able to do this using very fast super
style of drawing incorporates strong colours and a willcomputers and the brains of some of the best digital
often show a combination of cartoonish charactersspecial effects people in the industry. They spent a
against a realistic background. The use of shadow isyear putting together a 20 minute demo for the Tintin
rare and all elements of a panel are delineated withmovie. This demo was reported to of wowed the
clear black lines.backers. Jackson said "We're making the character
Remi ligne Claire style evolved over time to the looklook photo realistic; the fibers of their clothing, the pores
we recognise today. Remi started out in a looser andof their skin and each individual hair. It is possible that
rougher style that was evident in the American comicthe work, certainly the first one will start next year".
strips of the 1920's and 1930's. It was after World WarThe look of the film can only be guessed at but the
II that Remi ligne calire style developed that not onlyinformation given would suggest using real actors then
accounted for the drawings but also the Tintin plotdigitising them as with Gollum in The Lord of the Rings
lines. The plots as a result were very straightforwardtrilogy and then using them on actual live world
and easy to understand.backgrounds.
Steven Spielberg has gone on record saying that theThis would make for a very exciting Tintin trilogy with
reason that he has not made a Tintin movie up untilJackson and Spielberg being able to truly capture the
this point was due to the fact that he couldn't faithfullyessence of Tintin and relate that onto a big screen. It
recreate the look of the comics. It is now only todaytruly is something to anticipate with relish.
that this is possible.