Animation Days

The second edition of the Animation Days (De Animatiedagen) was organized by Guido Boots and Arnoud van den Heuvel (from foundation Doe Het Niet Zelf) at the eind of October 2013. These days were held in Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond in Amsterdam. The Animation Days lasted for 4 days. The theme was 'Generations'.
I was lucky to be selected and to participate after sending an e-mail with my portfolio and resume. 30 Artists from the Netherlands and Belgium came together to learn from each other and collaborate to make awesome animation short films for the Museumnacht in Amsterdam.
After a short introduction and a 'speeddate' we were able to show each other's work and discuss each others interests in the field of animation. Animators Zaou Vaughan, Inti Mego, me, and writer/teacher Helen Roeten decided to work together.
We soon agreed which animation technique that we were going to use. We all love stop motion animation. We wanted to try and make a combination with traditional 2D painted animation.
After two days of discussing what king of story we wanted to tell we immediately started the production of the puppets, the set and finally the animation.
My part in the collaboration was the technical and productional aspect of the animation. I've mainly focused on making a reasonable armature with wires for the puppets, the hands and tie downs, setting up the camera, and animating 1/3 of the animation of the story. In the evening of the final production day we ate together at the restaurant of the library in Amsterdam to finish the editing of the film.
The collaboration went very well. Sometimes we argued about which decisions we thought were the best to make but after all we worked hard and laughed a lot. We were very satisfied by the end result and so was the jury during the Museumnacht.

Our animation short titled 'Verwaterd' won the Golden Waffle during the presentation of all the animations at the Museumnacht in the Brakke Grond. By winning the Golden Waffle we were allowed to go to the closing ceremony of the KLIK! Animation Festival at the EYE museum in Amsterdam were our animation was shown on the big screen.

Besides making a short film there were inspiration presentations held by animators with different backgrounds and disciplines:
- Huub Kistemaker, stop motion animator
- Wouter Bongaerts, 3D animator
- Job and Joris from studio Job, Joris en Marieke, 3D animations
- Douwe and Pepijn from studio Mr. Lee, motion- en infographics

It was very nice that I could take part of the Animation Days! It was a great opportunity get inspired by others, to expand your connections from people in the industry, and to collaborate with artists and designers with different disciplines from the Netherlands and Belgium.

http://klik.animatiedagen.nl/?english=please

End result 'Verwaterd' ('Diluted Memories')

Photo impression