The series, which Ocelot also voice acted in, co-produced, art directed and designed, returns to the format of short silhouette animation fairy tales established by 1989's Ciné si and continued in 1992's Tales ofthe Night to produce further stories originally conceived for the then-unsuccessful Ciné si, episodes of which have since enjoyed popularity in the form of the compilation movie Princes and Princesses. At least as early as September 2006, when was previewing in France, Ocelot was mentioning in interviews that he was planning to return to silhouettes and the anthology format with a project then planned to be titled Bergères et Dragons and released in 2008 but wavered on whether it would it take the format of a feature film or television series and if it would consist of a combination of existing and new or all-new footage. Instead, 2008 saw the inclusion of these earlier silhouette films in the Les Trésors cachés de Michel Ocelotshort film collection and the new project, set back by production of several others, was announced in June 2010 as taking its eventual form of both a television series of ten new silhouette films and a new Tales of the Night for movie theaters drawn from it. Dragons also notably sees him return to working with once-regular composer Christian Maire, who had last scored Ciné si for him two decades ago, and is the first production animated by his own Studio O in Paris, which previously had covered only pre-production for projects animated at larger animation studios. A total of over 300 characters and 800 sets were designed for the project, which was animated by a team of five in Autodesk Maya.
Release
At least two of the episodes had pre-television premieres, with "L'Élue de la Ville d'or" screening at the Festival international de cinéma d'animation de Meknès in May 2010 and "Le Garçon qui ne mentait jamais" in competition for the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June, for which it lost to Studio Soi's Der Kleine und das Biest but was instead given a special award for a television series. The series then began its run on the satellite and cable channelCanal+ Family with the first episode, "La Maîtresse des monstres", on October 25 at 20:25, being broadcast in the same time slot each weekday until all ten episodes had been aired, the last on November 5. Two picture books drawn from two other episodes, "Le Loup-garou" and "Ti Jean et la belle-sans-connaître", have been published and a DVD-Video of the series was released in France on November 30, 2010. It is region 2-locked and the only subtitles are French-language captions.
