The sounds of the giant insects were created via recording onions frying in a pan.
After a four month pre-production in Paris, the movie was completed in Hungary's Pannónia Film Studio under two years, with a team of sixty people.
According to editor Dominique Boischot, while the film wasn't as popular in Europe as Der wilde Planet (1973), it developed a larg cult following in the United States. In reality however, the film remained obscure in the US and is actually better remembered in Europe, especially its countries of origin and in the UK, where it would frequently air on television.
Both director René Laloux and Jean 'Moebius' Giraud (Moebius) traveled to Hungary to supervise the beginning of the production. According to other workers, neither were familiar with the intricacies of celluloid animation, so when Moebius saw the first animation tests, he was amazed to see his figures in motion.
The visual style and animation garnered mixed reception. Contemporary Hungarian movie reviewers harshly criticized the French creators' storytelling and Moebius' character designs, arguing that they don't meet the standards of science fiction movies. Members of the general public on the other hand often commented that the art direction was good, but the animation by Hungary's Pannónia Film Stúdió was uneven and poor, and that the studio was probably used because they were cheap. Editor and sound editor Dominique Boischot claimed the film could only have been created at Pannónia, because their animators were very experienced at facial expressions and body language. However, the comments of Marcell Jankovics, one of Pannónia's in-house directors, discredit this notion, as he claims many of the studio's in-betweener animators were in reality really bad at facial animation.