Minuscule—the private life of insects is a French-made

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 series of short video animations giving "a bird's eye view of insects' day to day existence, distorted through a burlesque, yet poetic lens". The characters are computer-modelled in 3D and set against natural scenery. Each animation has a self-contained and usually humorous storyline. The audio is a combination of genuine insect and ambient recordings with artificial sound effects. The various protagonist insects often perform anthropomorphic activities, displaying ironically portrayed intelligence, enjoyment and, sometimes, pathos

Pathos

Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....

. The background settings are generally of rural France, and include farm houses, fences, cars, road surfaces, drains, gutters and garbage bins. Humans appear only peripherally (e.g., as mute drivers of intrusive vehicles) and large farm animals are the main reluctant witnesses to the variety of insect, spider and mollusc activities.

Storylines

The series has an overall feel very much like that of the 1996 movie "Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe" with the same European country farm setting (for most episodes), similar camera angles and shots, and an almost identical musical score consisting largely of open-ended, repeated piano phrases. The creators also cite the Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 cartoons of the 1950s as a model for the series, and they are aimed at both young and old alike. Episodes tend to follow one or more insect characters through a specific situation and have involved storylines such as multi-insect races reminiscent of the pod race sequence in Star Wars

Star Wars

Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...

:The Phantom Menace, a spider becoming trapped on a helium balloon, and a grasshopper maliciously launching other unsuspecting insects from a catapult made from a blade of grass.

Production and distribution

Created by Thomas Szabo and Helene Giraud, Minuscule is produced by Phillipe Delarue. Although made in France, its generalized country settings and avoidance of spoken dialogue enable universal accessibility and appeal. The series has been sold to more than 70 countries on television and 30 countries on video.

Characters

Minuscule portrays an array of eighteen or more recurring characters, limited to one or two in each episode, each displaying distinctive personality and behaviour. Among the more commonly recurring insect characters are:

Ladybugs

Grasshopper

Grasshopper

The grasshopper is an insect of the suborder Caelifera in the order Orthoptera. To distinguish it from bush crickets or katydids, it is sometimes referred to as the short-horned grasshopper...

s

Flies

Fly

True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...

Ant

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

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Spider

Spider

Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...

s (two varieties)

Snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

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Other occasional insect characters include:

• Mosquito
  Mosquito
  Mosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies: the Culicidae . The word Mosquito is from the Spanish and Portuguese for little fly...
  
  es
• Butterflies
  Butterfly
  A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...
  
  
• Caterpillar
  Caterpillar
  Caterpillars are the larval form of members of the order Lepidoptera . They are mostly herbivorous in food habit, although some species are insectivorous. Caterpillars are voracious feeders and many of them are considered to be pests in agriculture...
  
  s
• Dung beetle
  Dung beetle
  Dung beetles are beetles that feed partly or exclusively on feces. All of these species belong to the superfamily Scarabaeoidea; most of them to the subfamilies Scarabaeinae and Aphodiinae of the family Scarabaeidae. This beetle can also be referred to as the scarab beetle. As most species of...
  
  s
• Dragonflies
  Dragonfly
  A dragonfly is a winged insect belonging to the order Odonata, the suborder Epiprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera . It is characterized by large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong transparent wings, and an elongated body...
  
  
• Cicada
  Cicada
  A cicada is an insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha , in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the world, and many of them remain unclassified...
  
  s
• Bee
  Bee
  Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...
  
  s
• Wasp
  Wasp
  The term wasp is typically defined as any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitizes it, making wasps critically important in natural control of their...
  
  s

Volume 1

1. La coccinelle
2. Catapulte
3. Bouse de là
4. Deux chenilles
5. Fourmis
6. Prisonnière
7. Rêve d'escargot
8. Love story
9. Grasse matinée
10. Top guêpe
11. La nouille
12. Le pont de la rivière Bzz
13. ZZZeplin
14. Une bonne éducation
15. Rêve de chenille
16. Chewing gum
17. Un monde de brutes
18. Coup de vent
19. Silence
20. La fourmilière infernale

Volume 2

1. Libellules
2. Cigale do brazil
3. Hoquet
4. Tomate cerise
5. Sans coquille
6. Bananes
7. Les vers sont dans la pomme
8. Le convoi
9. Bouse au carré
10. Fourmis à la noix
11. Hyperactive
12. Le moustique
13. Salade
14. Il pleut il mouille c'est la fête à l'escargouille
15. A fond la caisse
16. Pique nique
17. Une nuit dehors
18. Tire au flanc
19. Ventilo
20. La chenille qui voulait voir la mer

volume 3

1. La bonne graine
2. La chenille et le ruisseau
3. Un radiateur pour deux
4. Patrouille de bzzz
5. Le chant des cigales
6. Petit trouillard
7. Escargot qui roule n'amasse pas mousse
8. L'attaque de la sucette rose
9. L'heure de la sieste
10. Moche
11. Petit repas entre mouches
12. Narcisso
13. Coccinelles
14. Le Totem
15. L'évasion
16. Tenace
17. Pas de chance
18. King size camembert
19. Chenille des villes papillon des champs

volume 4

1. À tes souhaits
2. Mon beau Sapin
3. Top départ
4. Mouche bizarre
5. Torpedo
6. Toiles d’intérieur
7. L’union fait la force
8. Un après-midi de moustique
9. Grosse mouche bleue
10. Pot de colle
11. La conserve
12. Nuit blanche
13. Mouche folle
14. Poule mouillée
15. La horde sauvage
16. Halloween parano
17. Hop
18. Fourmi rose
19. C’est noël