HEAVY METTLE ARTIST MOEBIUS IS TAKING A HANDS-ON APPROACH.

Byline: David Bloom Staff Writer

His distinctive clean lines and noirish stories have graced dozens of graphic novels and comic books for more than four decades, heavily influencing comic-book art and helping create the magazine Heavy Metal, among much else.

But Jean Moebius Giraud has never had more than a small role in taking his art to the movie screen, until now. Finally, after 45 years, the Frenchman known to underground comic fans as Moebius, and to fans of the ``Blueberry'' Western graphic novels as Giraud, is making a movie where he plans to be involved from the first bit of work to the last.

``I'm there at the beginning of the story this time,'' said Moebius during an interview at the sleek offices in a converted Santa Monica dairy barn that this summer housed the pre-production staff of ``Through the Moebius Strip.'' ``I tried to do something very spontaneous and very, very classic.''

Moebius has hand-drawn most of the film's storyboards, a process he has done before, for the graphically ground-breaking 1982 film ``Tron.'' He also helped create the look of a 1978 French animated movie whose name translates to ``The Master of Time.''

He was heavily involved in another movie project, ``Starwatcher,'' in the early '90s, but it had to be abandoned after its chief financial backer died during pre-production. He also did some design work for countryman Luc Besson in the latter's stylish sci-fi adventure ``The Fifth Element.''

In those previous projects, Moebius said he had little control once his drawings were turned over to producers. Here, he helped create the story, had heavy input on the script and is monitoring the art and other computerized graphic production, even as he is hand-drawing many character studies and storyboard frames.

``The plot is relatively simple: a father gets lost and his family tries to retrieve him,'' Foster said. Given the film's Hong Kong financial backing, it's little surprise that the film is also expected to contain a fair amount of the martial arts fighting that is the core of many HK films.

Moebius spun out the story line during a week of meetings in Hong Kong, refining it with director/co-producer Frank Foster into a nine-page treatment that was turned over to James Cox, a veteran screenwriter of such mainstream animated films as ``Oliver & Company,'' ``The Rescuers Down Under'' and ``FernGully: The Last Rainforest.''

``We went with him specifically to start out with an American Hollywood structure; then we kind of let Moebius take it from there in his own way,'' Foster said. Standard story structures are, Foster noted dryly, ``not something that's Moebius' concern.''

Instead, Moebius tried to break conventions in constructing the film, wanting to give even the villains motivations, Foster said.

``He wants you to understand why they do what they're doing,'' Foster said. So they plot to destroy humans in part because of concerns about what the humans may do to them.

``It's a story about aliens, their spaceships, portals, dimensions, the shock of cultures, alien cultures,'' Moebius said. ``At the same time, Jim Cox saw it as a fairy tale. I did the story spontaneously, but Jim saw it as (a version of) the story of 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' Now it's exactly that.''

In Jack and the Beanstalk, Moebius said, ``A boy goes up in the clouds and brings treasure back to his mother. In this movie, he does exactly the same thing, but the treasure he brings back is his father.''

Given Moebius' edgy artistic past, expect the movie to be made of somewhat sterner stuff than the usual Disney animated spectacle, Foster said.

``Moebius has mellowed out some from his underground days,'' said Foster. ``There's some violence, but it'll be PG(-rated) probably. With the movie, he's also making it for his 11-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter.''

The story has already undergone a number of changes thanks to Moebius' continuing involvement, like the rewriting that occurred when Moebius created a striking scene of two female characters, Vela and blue-skinned villainess Allanna, fighting over a magic staff on a flying boat.

``He does hundreds and hundreds of drawings,'' said Foster, ``then we have a department of artists who build a sort of architectural plan and elevations from those drawings.''

The resulting 3-D creations will be used by computer artists in China to populate the movie's world during work that's expected to take two years. The film is scheduled to debut in Paris in 2003, and will have French-, English- and Chinese-language versions.

``Our goal is to make it look like a 3-D animated comic book,'' said Foster.

Sylvain Despretz was a prominent storyboard artist on ``Gladiator'' and was working in a similar role under Tim Burton on the remake of ``The Planet of the Apes'' when Moebius, his mentor, called and asked him to come work on the new film as ``chief style coordinator.''

Despretz said his job is ``to get people to say this is still Moebius,'' even though the film's computer-generated 3-D textures aren't much like the clean line drawings characteristic of Moebius' classic Belgian/European style.

And it may end up as a very large 3-D version of a Moebius comic book, given the company's discussions with IMAX about creating a stereoscopic large-format version for the big, big screen. Converting the computerized art and doubling the image for a 3-D effect is relatively easy, said Foster, who helped create parts of ``Cyberworld'' and other IMAX projects during nine years as a top executive with Sony's ImageWorks visual-effects shop.

Global Digital Productions Ltd., a Hong Kong company, is financing the project itself, though Foster said he hopes to be able to sell it to Sony or another big studio ultimately.

Aside from making it easier for the investors to oversee their project, Foster said producing the film in China will save tens of millions of dollars. The project's estimated budget now is just $6 million, compared to the $100 million to $120 million price tags common among many of this summer's animated blockbusters.

Even while the project is in Asia, Moebius said he plans to continue to be involved, making sure the film is in accord with his own sense of style and story. And that will be a first, he said.

``He's an artist's artist, in the sense that Bill Bruford is a drummer's drummer,'' Despretz said. ``Common people may not know him, but real musicians know what extra things they're doing.''

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) This Moebius drawing of a battle between Vela and villainess Allanna inspired changes in the script of ``Through the Moebius Strip.''

(2 -- color) This is a 3-D, computer-generated rendering of a Moebius drawing of a flying boat headed through a portal.

(3) Jean Moebius Giraud describes the plot of his film ``Through the Moebius Strip'' as ``a story about aliens, their spaceships, portals, dimensions, the shock of cultures, alien cultures.''