French animated filmmaker Sylvain Chomet, a four-time Oscar nominee for “The Triplets of Belleville” and “The Illusionist,” is fighting back against accusations that generative AI was used to create his animated short for Dior with a voice cast led by Robert Pattinson, Rihanna, Josh O’Connor, LaKeith Stanfield, Louis Garrel and Camille Cottin.
The whimsical six-minute film, “Christian Dior’s Night in Colors,” produced by Aton Soumache (“The Little Prince”), sparked controversy online, where some viewers pointed to apparent visual flaws, including a character with six fingers, as evidence of AI-generated animation.
The controversy arose because Dior positioned “Night in Color” as a celebration of traditional craftsmanship to kick off its 2026 holiday season, drawing parallels between Chomet’s hand-drawn animation and the meticulous work of the house’s couture workshops.
But Chomet and Soumache tell Variety that the film was created using traditional 2D animation techniques, with characters, backgrounds and key poses drawn by artists. Although they acknowledge using automated interpolation to generate some of the intermediate images that make the movement fluid, both men insist that generative AI was never used to create the artwork.
“Some claim that Sylvain was contacted two weeks ago and that the entire film was made with generative AI, without a single drawing, but the reality is that this film took seven months to make and was entirely drawn by artists,” says Soumache, adding that the film employed around 20 people, including six animators, as well as writers, designers, production designers, composers and editors.
“We used an automated interpolation system for a very small part of the process, but the film itself is traditional 2D animation,” explains the French producer.
Chomet, whose latest film “A Magnificent Life” had its world premiere at Cannes last year and was distributed theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics, says the interpolation tool was only used to help create the intermediate frames on “Christian Dior’s Night in Colors.” “It’s a way of automating the mechanical and repetitive part of animation, and not the creative work,” he explains.
The filmmaker believes the accusations are particularly ironic given his commitment to traditional animation despite pressure to move into CGI after the huge success of “Toy Story.”
“Before making “Les Triplettes de Belleville”, it was the time of “Toy Story”. I remember Disney saying that traditional 2D animation was dead and everything would be CGI, but I decided to continue making hand-drawn films,” says Chomet. “That’s why I find it so strange that I’m being attacked today. I’ve remained faithful to drawing throughout my career. At the same time, I’m going to use the tools that technology offers us.”
The film draws inspiration from several chapters in Dior’s history, including the designer’s friendship with Marlene Dietrich, his ties to Hollywood and the creation of the iconic Junon dress in 1949. It also draws inspiration from one of the first ideas behind Dior creative director Jonathan Anderson’s Cruise 2027 collection: the transition of cinema from black and white to Technicolor.
The story imagines Dietrich in Los Angeles, preparing to shoot a film when the director suddenly decides to film in color. An urgent call is made to Paris to request a colorful Dior dress for the actress, sending Christian Dior and his team of seamstresses into a race against time.
Pattinson narrates the film, while Garrel plays Christian Dior and Cottin plays Dietrich. O’Connor plays a talking chair, Rihanna plays Dior’s lucky star and Stanfield plays the Hollywood director. Nine d’Urso, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Greta Lee play the three bees.
Soumache, whose credits include the César-winning “The Little Prince,” spent much of his career working in CGI before returning to traditional animation with films like Joann Sfar’s “The Little Vampire” and more recently “A Magnificent Life,” a biopic of famed French novelist and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol.
“Sylvain and I have been championing traditional 2D animation for so long, and Dior came to us because they wanted Sylvain’s very distinctive drawing style,” says the producer whose experience also includes the French blockbuster “Miraculous Ladybug.”
Chomet explains that the production process for the Dior short film was rooted in drawing, although the artists now use digital tablets rather than paper.
“But we still draw by hand, it’s just done digitally,” he said, adding that he found working on graphics tablets frustrating and planned to “go back to pencil and paper because he loves having original drawings.”
“I design the characters, we create the storyboards, the backgrounds, the colors. The whole creative process is exactly the same as when I started making animated films. What has changed is the technology,” he said.
Chomet also addresses the apparently six-fingered hands that have fueled online speculation. “It’s a movement where the hand is extended like a fan. In this kind of drawing, you can see six or seven fingers because you’re trying to convey the movement,” he says. He claims to have seen far worse mistakes in traditional animation. “I saw a character turn his head and suddenly his nose completely changes shape in five frames. These things happen.”
The short film was conceived as part of a wider collaboration with Dior, with Anderson originating the idea and Martin Latham helping to develop the script.
“I worked closely with Martin. We developed the script together, then presented ideas for the storyboard, the story and the characters. There was a lot of exchange,” says Chomet. The collaboration has also extended beyond the screen, with Chomet’s illustrations inspiring Dior’s Christmas collections and boutique windows across the world.
“Dior needed to see the designs early because they were developing the Christmas displays and the physical objects simultaneously,” says Soumache. “Many of Dior’s window displays are directly based on Sylvain’s designs. They created physical versions of the characters and objects from the film.”
Chomet describes the 1961 Disney classic “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” as his “Proust madeleine,” the film he keeps returning to.
“Every time I make a film, I ask myself if it has this poetry, this beauty of drawing,” he says. “We can tell very different stories than what Disney was telling back then, but we can still preserve that beauty. That’s what I’ve always tried to do, using technology to maintain something traditional.”
In addition to showcasing France’s dynamic pool of animation talent, the short also reflects Anderson’s love of hand-drawn animation. At Loewe, he collaborated with the Japanese Studio Ghibli on three collections.
Gn entert
