Animation Sans Frontières: - Studio Soi

 Anyone that glanced at a TV over Christmas in 2009 is bound to have seen something of the animated adaptation of the Gruffalo.  Although the voice talent consisted of an array of "Great British" actors it was in fact created in Ludwigsburg, Germany by the brilliant guys at Studio Soi.  We were lucky enough to be invited to look around and were given an insight into their current projects and production technologies.

A selection of Studio Soi's impressive work.

Image by Joseph Wallace

Studio Soi was founded by seven students of the Film Academie Baden-Wurttemberg who wanted to continue to work together after graduation.  They figured they would be able to set up their own studio in 2003 and are still going strong.  The studio work in a wide range of mediums including CG, stop motion and traditional drawn animation. They also operate in Berlin with a design team situated in the capital for commercial business relations.  Every morning at ten o clock the entire team from Ludwigsburg and Berlin meet via web chat to discuss their projects and progress.

Torbein Meier of Studio Soi gave us a quick tour, showing us their two spacious computer studios, kitchen and meeting/'presentation room, a very humble set-up boasting a real charm.  We sat down for a showing of a few of their works including the Gruffalo, Ernst In the Autumn and The Little Boy And The Beast all incredible pieces showing a genuine love for the art of animation and storytelling.

Concept sketch for Little Boy and the Beast

The studio are represented in Britain by Studio AKA, perhaps best known for their "Lloyds TSB" adverts, and have collaborated on many projects. Both studios have a distinctive art direction and a great eye for simplicity in design making their work really stand out.  This is something I definitely aspire to adopt.

Torbein praised resident author Marcus Sauermann, the man responsible for many of their film's scripts.  From what we had seen he has great talent and it goes to show how strong stories can drive great success.

The Little Boy and the Beast from mic hic on Vimeo.

Studio Soi's Ludwigsburg building is shared with a dozen other creative businesses provides access to warehouse space on the lower levels which when rented is available for live action, stop motion and office space when they require extra resources.  It's a really economic system allowing production costs to be kept down.  We ventured downstairs to see one of these spaces where the second Gruffalo was in production, "The Gruffalo's Child", and got a sneak peak at a few of the sets being dressed.

from storyboard to concept art to stop motion set.

The Gruffalo is to date Studio Soi's most prominent work and has earnt them a great reputation within the Industry.  The technical processes involved in it's creation are complex and require a physical set to be built for every scene in the film and then shot in stop motion.  I found it hard to believe at first but all characters are computer generated and animated in 3D.  When rendered a clever use of shaders and textures  taken from real clay sculpts give the creatures a true visual continuity with the stop motion environment.  The final film looks so tactile and hopefully the direction this film has taken will inspire many more similar features.

original illustration from "the Child of the Gruffalo"

After Only a few hours we had all fallen in love with Studio Soi and their beautiful work but alas we had to go and leave them to work for the rest of the day. A great experience and deffinitely a studio I hope to work with in the future.

Animation Sans Frontières: - Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Part 3)

 

The first week of ASF workshops drew to a close and we took time away from the animation world, to explore Ludwigsburg.  
On our wanderings we visited the grounds of Ludwigsburg Palace, stumbling into flamingos and pumpkin sculptures of all things and took the opportunity to exercise our camera skills.

The weekend also saw our group venture to Stuttgart for “Stuttgart Nacht”, a city wide celebration of the creative arts.  I managed to catch some great live music and try my hand at salsa dancing for the first time, though I wasn’t much good.  Overall It was a nice break from animation but by Sunday we were all definitely getting withdrawal symptoms from our sketchbooks.  

After a relaxing Sunday we started the week with a lecture from Dr. Jörg Bochow accomplished Professor of Dramaturgy and Theatre theory.  The session named “From Real Life to Plot” explored the process of redeveloping and adapting real life scenario into fictional scenes and stories. Dr. Jörg spoke from his experiences when transforming Maxim Gorky’s “The Lower Depths” written in 1902 into a contemporary performance.

An audience desire authenticity in their entertainment, through the interviewing of real people and their personal accounts you can attain an understanding of personality.  Not entirely related but I noted that one of Dr. Jörg’s interviews sourced that bankers only get fired Tuesday to Thursday due to increased suicide risk over the weekend, a very interesting point for anyone with a banker character.

To better explain how traditional story telling and historical texts could be modernised we ventured into the origins of storytelling and the use of Peripeteia (the pivotal point of transformation from good fortune to bad fortune).  A quick history of performance and storytelling marked out periods of particular significance a good example being the Arab scholars that kept Greek tragedy alive and in turn influenced creative minds of the renaissance.

Footage of the play "the Lower Depths".

Cause and effect was an interesting point, in reality things happen by coincidence without sight of a cause, so the goal in fiction is to make cleverer connections than in real life.  After a break down of the translation of realism to fictional scenario and how to case study a character from notes we interviewed one another in groups to try out what we had learnt.  My self and Márton Kovács decided to Interview Gobelins graduate Clement Desnos.  We had a great time asking questions and I definitely got to know Clement alot better during the workshop.

Andrew gasping in sheer amazement of Celement balancing on a seat.

The lecture/workshop provided a great understanding of the evolution of drama, story and character and since has changed my approach to fictionalising reality.  Still not up-together with blogging so a few more Germany blogs to go.

Animation Sans Frontières: - Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Part 2)

 Hello Again, Here are some continued notes from my time with ASF in Germany. The Thursday and Friday of the first week consisted of a 2 day lecture and workshop by Kim Björkqvist, a highly successful creative director and advertiser from Norway.  He opened with the statement “it’s all about Ideas” and began to compare our personal approaches to generating Ideas. 

We embraced our crazy, nonsensical sides as we scribbled ludicrous and seemingly irrelevant ideas onto post-it notes.  The exercise was aimed at “widening our span of relevance”, Kim explained how the General Stamford model of idea development is commonly used but not very effective. 

Kim then presented how a company called IDEO in California uses another model named the “RSBVU model” which has revolutionised their creative process. (http://www.ideo.com/uk/)

’ll have a go at explaining the RSBVU Model, The method lies in the post-it word association leading to the grouping of words into specific themes and then setting directions with them.  This then leads to linking content from the directions and generating Ideas into content concepts.  The next processes are Refining and finally Implementation.

Laura pondering over post-its

not so organised

After Kim’s lecture we split off into groups to develop Multi Platform Media Concepts with the title “The Perfect Crime”.  Again we took on the post-it method and fashioned 4 walls, top to bottom in yellow post-its with associated words and crazy ideas.We followed the RSBVU process which led to developing a hostage negotiation reality show of all things. 

The Idea coming together with Sarah at the helm

Once we had our Idea we had to pitch it to the rest of the group using what we had learnt from Mike Robinson as well as from Kim.  Having presented many times to directors and managers through work and HND students this was still quite daunting but we seemed to impress Kim with our structure and pacing in the end.  

Luckily everyone also speaks English, very lucky!

Thursday and Friday took quite allot of concentration but were well worth the caffeine overdose, eventually we had some spare time to explore the wonders of Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart.  One week covered in 2 blogs so plenty more to come, Thank you for reading and should anyone have any questions please do post a comment or email me,  Thanks!

Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg

Hello, A quick post from Germany.
Having been at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg the past week I have been sketching away and meeting some incredibly talented people.  A storyboard for "Chimney Sweep" did not happen in time to present to the other particpants here but that might be just as well.  With any luck the talent arround me might be able to crtique the project so far and point me in the right direction. 

For anyone interested I shall post some notes on my time at ASF when I arrive back in Britain. In the meantime here is some moth concept work i forgot about.

Refference for Moth animation

I am currently in the storyboarding process of "The Chimney Sweep" as well as thumbnailing some animation just to get a sense of timing and correctly composing the shots. This video should be really useful in making the moth character believable.

Milt Kahl (mowgli) pencil test

One of the best examplesi've seen of Milt Kahls true animation talent.


Milt Kahl (Mowgli) from Victor Ens on Vimeo.

Sketchoholic

I have very recently joined the Sketchoholic online community and i urge anyone else with a love of drawing to do so too. The idea behind the site is that accomplished illustrators and designers can set competitions for other members giving limited edition prints and original drawings of theirs as prizes. Can't wait to get stuck into some competitions now, hope to encourage a few more members with this post.
www.sketchoholic.com/