The Big Adventure of a Little Line is an interactive tale in which you decide the course of the story by drawing. Find out how a little line helps his friend, a little boy, to become a world-famous artist. Their first meeting sets the story in motion.

The Big Adventure of a Little Line invites users to discover the pleasures of lines and shapes as they draw. Drawing lets us share our emotions, our lives, our memories, our fears, our dreams and much more besides. We may be awkward or deft, scribblers or artists, draw in red, blue or purple, but the main thing is simply to draw!

Drawing is therefore at the very heart of our tale. You must draw locomotives, flutes, cities and elephants (among many other things) to help the character to progress.

The aim of the project is to provide intelligent, original and creative content by combining the latest interactive technology with traditional animation techniques.

Below are a few more details about how we propose to implement our project.

We have divided our tale into twenty chapters including the first encounter, the first games, presents, dream jobs, first love, fights and the first exhibition of our hero’s drawings. We will be asking users to draw many surprising drawings!

The tale isn’t always completely linear. Some chapters are random or linked to what has gone before. This means that you can read and re-read them again and again.

We have selected a few sample extracts from the storyboard to illustrate our approach.

EXTRACT 1 FROM THE CHAPTER ‘THE PRESENT’
Our character is still a child in this extract. It’s his birthday, so his family and friends give him some presents. Your task is to draw a parcel that our hero can open to find the surprise waiting inside. Since we are at the beginning of our tale, the shape you have to draw is very simple. The outline of the present is gradually revealed to guide your drawing.

EXTRACT 2 FROM THE CHAPTER ‘THE TOMATO CHARMER’
In this part of the story our hero, who is still a child, imagines what he might do when he grows up. In this segment he wants to be a ‘tomato charmer’, and in order to do the job he needs a magic flute. This is the first object you will draw. The tomato plants grow in response to his flute-playing, but there aren’t any tomatoes! You have to draw them to make sure that our hero has a healthy crop!

EXTRACT 3 FROM THE CHAPTER ‘THE FIGHT’
We are in the school playground. The little boy is being hassled by some nasty classmates. In a flash the line turns into an eraser to rub out their nastiness! You must rub out various parts of their bodies and scare the other kids. Erasing is drawing backwards: rubbing out reveals something different. We also use this type of interaction at other times during our tale.

EXTRACT 4 FROM THE CHAPTER ‘THE PICNIC’
Our protagonist has grown up: he is now an adult. His family is in the middle of a picnic when the heavens open. Quick, they need shelter! You draw a roof and allow our heroes to continue their family picnic.

A ‘HANDMADE’ APPLICATION DESIGNED SPECIALLY FOR CHILDREN
The Big Adventure of a Little Line will be entirely produced, frame by frame, by a team of 2D animators using pencils and crayons. Doing animation this way is slower and more fastidious, but the result looks much better.

We have also paid particular attention to our application’s interface. We have designed everything using pictograms and pictures, so that even the very youngest (and the oldest) can understand. You don’t have to be able to read to draw and follow the story!

AN INTERNATIONAL TALE
The core team is French, but we want our story to spread beyond our own borders. We shall therefore incorporate versions in five other languages – English, German, Spanish, Flemish and Portuguese. You will thus be able to listen to the story in the language of your choice!

DISTRIBUTING THE APP
The app will be available from the Apple Store and on Google Play.

A TRANSMEDIA PRESENCE
For a programme to work nowadays it has to be designed in multiple forms and for multiple platforms. We cannot just put our app in the Stores and wait for people to come across it. It doesn’t work – not one bit.
We have therefore come up with a transmedia approach with two main objectives: to promote our tale online, and to meet the public in ‘physical’ space through an interactive installation.

This is our approach:

A book of the same name has already been published by Thames & Hudson and is available from all good bookshops and online. Inside each copy is a QR code that makes it possible to download the app.
An interactive web trailer: part of the tale (the first three chapters) has been specially produced for the web, enabling viewers to try out the tale before downloading it.
A short film, told in linear fashion and a little longer than the interactive tale. We would like to broadcast it on television and at festivals.
An interactive installation. We shall create a new chapter that can only be played ‘physically’. Facing a large wall, you move parts of your body (arms and legs) to draw.