If you thought 2D animation was dying out, think again. The distinct style of Sylvain Chomet’s animated feature The Triplets of Belleville stands in stark contrast to contemporary trends in animation, where a traditional hand-drawn look is being jettisoned in favor of the more polished style of CGI.

Produced primarily in Montreal, the US$8-million film – Chomet’s first feature – was awarded best animated feature by the New York Film Critics Circle over Pixar’s US$94-million Finding Nemo, and could be its main competition at the Oscars.

Hung on the wall of Chomet’s small Montreal studio was a quote from early 20th century animator Winsor MacKay, who once told a group of young animators in New York that they had taken his art form and turned it into a trade. Chomet says this perception of contemporary animation was exactly what was on his mind while creating Triplets.

‘Michael Eisner, head of Disney, declared recently that 2D animation was dead and they were moving on to 3D animation. But if he doesn’t understand how to make good films in 2D animation, he’s not going to understand how to do it in 3D,’ says Chomet, on the line from France.

Triplets is a Canada/Belgium/France coproduction telling the story of Madame Souza, an old lady who crosses the Atlantic Ocean in a paddleboat searching for her grandson, who was kidnapped while competing in the Tour de France and taken to the metropolis of Belleville by the French Mafia. Virtually dialogue-free, the story is driven by music by Benoit Charest, who met Chomet at a jazz club in Montreal.

In addition to the New York laurels, Triplets was voted best foreign-language film by the Boston Film Critics and nominated for best foreign film at the Independent Spirit Awards. But success did not come quickly to Chomet.

Chomet, now in his 40s, spent 10 years trying to make his first 20-minute animation, The Old Lady and the Pigeons, a Canada/France copro completed in 1996. He struggled to convince investors that there is a market beyond cute and moralistic children’s animation. And his style, influenced by French and European comic books, flew in the face of current technology-fuelled trends.

Chomet says today’s industry has lost its way. He points to Disney’s earliest key animators, the ‘nine old men,’ as consummate examples of the best in animation, but since then, control over animation has passed from artists to executives, to the detriment of the art form.

Chomet, however, does acknowledge the influence of 1960s Disney animated features such as 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book in details of his work such as animators’ visible pencil drawings, which add a rough quality, bringing vibration and life to the lines.

Born in the suburbs of Paris, Chomet had to leave France to find success. He moved to England in 1988 as a commercial animator, but it was in Canada where he was eventually able to bring his characters and stories to life.

After completing the first four minutes of The Old Lady in France, Chomet could not find financing, and says he decided to look for a place where ‘they understood animation.’ Chomet was attracted to the francophone community in Quebec and moved to Montreal in 1993, where he lived for the next nine years and was finally able to finish the $800,000 Old Lady. Financing fell into place after producer Didier Brunner (Les Armateurs) managed to get Colin Rose of the BBC interested, which in turn led to additional investment and the establishment of a Canada/France copro agreement. The short’s success, however, was not immediate.

After being turned down by the first two festivals he submitted Old Lady to, including the 1996 Ottawa International Animation Festival, Chomet left Montreal for a short stint at a Disney animation studio in Toronto.

Soon after, Old Lady began to screen at animation festivals and Chomet started to gain recognition. The film proceeded to win top awards at France’s Annecy Animation Festival and Japan’s Hiroshima Animation Festival and was nominated for an Oscar.

His faith restored, Chomet started working on Triplets in 1998 and says one-third of the budget came from Canadian sources, including Telefilm Canada and SODEC.

‘If I hadn’t move to Canada, I would probably never have done either The Old Lady or The Triplets,’ says Chomet, who, in order to be closer to his family, moved back to Europe where he is working on his next film, Le Barbacoa, set in Paris in 1871.

Belleville is an imaginary city based on architecture from Montreal and Quebec City. ‘It is like Montreal would be if it had become a big New York-style metropolis, but with French Mafia rather than Italian or Irish,’ says Chomet.

In keeping with Chomet’s experiences living on the banks of the St. Lawrence, when Madame Souza and her dog arrive in North America, they pass whales swimming in the giant river that leads to Belleville.

Chomet relates bicycles, featured prominently in the film, to his struggles with studio animation. He describes 2D animation as a lengthy process, much like trying to ride up a mountain – you peddle as fast as you can, but move very slowly. In the end, however, Chomet says he is much happier with the result of Triplets than with Old Lady.

‘I think the background and the characters really hold together [on Triplets], whereas on the first film, there was sort of a fight between the background and the characters. Triplets doesn’t look like different artists have worked on it,’ he says.

In fact, 20 animators worked on Triplets, with 90% of the 2D work completed in Canada. 3D components, which Chomet tried to have look as 2D as possible, were produced primarily in Belgium and France.

Whether the animators came from Canada, France or Belgium, Chomet says they were all in their 20s, eager to showcase their talent and very bored with what they were previously doing in animation.

‘Young animators don’t have many opportunities to show their talents because so many media companies aren’t doing 2D animation anymore. There are a lot of 2D animators who really like to draw and are being told to switch to 3D animation, but it’s not the same thing. If you’re a musician and you play jazz, you don’t want to move to the tango.’

The Triplets of Belleville opened in Ottawa and Montreal on Dec. 19, with a wider release planned for January. Sony Pictures Classics released the film in the U.S. in November.

Triplets is produced by Montreal’s Champion Productions (producer Paul Cadieux), France’s Productions Les Armateurs and Belgium’s Vivi Film, with Canadian distribution through Odeon Films.