Muriel Tiberghien has learned that the biggest problems in a project are the ones you pretend aren't there. "Like, you sweep problems under the carpet, they will just be bigger later," she says. So she doesn't wait.
With new clients, she builds a framework into her estimates—two rounds of corrections, early materials to confirm alignment, clear approval stages at storyboards, style frames, and animation. If the brief shifts midway through, she doesn't say no automatically. She makes proposals. She explains that more time means rebudgeting, and if they can't add budget, maybe they can add time so she can juggle other work around it. But sometimes the answer has to be no, because protecting her standards matters more than crossing a finish line for the sake of it.
The storyboard and style frame stage is where she lives or dies. "If everything is in place, if it's all logical and everything is where you're going, all the rest will be fluid." Get to the animation stage with unresolved issues and you're exponentially screwed. She also knows that clients don't always speak her language. She went to art school—she has the vocabulary for composition, color theory, how an image works. But when a client says "there's something weird," she has to dig. Why does it feel weird? What are they actually seeing?
Sometimes it's cultural context she's missed, like the French producer who insisted pink was only for girls, apparently unaware that France's rugby team wears pink and nobody questions their masculinity. Translation isn't just about words. It's about understanding what they want in the context of their audience and their goal, then figuring out if her expertise can get them there—or if she needs to make a better proposal.
