Well it has been busy three days. We have been working, arguing, laughing and living in one hose- the red house- for three days now. The main thing which i would take from it all is a feeling of how interesting, fascinating and productive is to have 5 different authors, Phill Mulloy and three producers under one roof. To tell you honestly last night i tough we have failed…we could not reach a resolution on how to marry the stiles, ideas and approaches of five individuals into a single organism. Put we put the pen to paper, did sketches, more sketches, storyboarded, brainstormed and managed to find interesting solutions to the problem. We all agreed to keep the palet of colours reduced, and this was the uniting element which brought us together.
the day started with everyone just doing sketches of their approach to bits of the script- here are two examples out of a bunch we did…
as you can see, the styles varied allot…
we did allot of story boarding to see how we visualise the script which by this time was half finished by Phil Mulloy,
here is one of the frames from this process..in this idea i played around with having the story set in rooms, and this room represented a forest…
the next excersize was in trying to blend the styles together..This is an example of this…
In the end we gathered our heads and together tried to create one single storyboard…
As can bee seen from just the few images i have uploaded it has been a whirlwind of creativity…
Now the task is to take this when we leave tommorow and make a film out if it….Wish us luck!:)
Im writing this from Sofia, Bulgaria, where i will be staying for the duration of the week working on a Compote collective animated documentary “FATHER”.
The film will be co-produced with Bonobo studio and eyeCATCH. The purpose of this meeting is a chance to have all the people connected with the project meet at one place and kick start the film. The film will be made by 5 authors from three countries and it will be 15 minutes in length. I already made one post in regards to the project which you can find on the blog. The interesting bit would be how to make a film created by 5 different authors? how to make a 15 minutes short telling a story of 5 different father child relationships? Not easily:), but with Phil Mulloy on the helm of the project im confident it can be done! I will not go into the project related details which im sure will bore everyone except me and a few friends, but will write about the challenges and the solutions of a multicultural cooperation spanning over Germany, Croatia, Bulgaria and the UK.
The main challenge is to derive a script made out of five different interviews which can be made into a film by 5 authors , each animating 3 minutes of the film. The easy solution would be to make an omnibus type of film, with each author animating 3 minutes and then just putting those different bits one after the other into a 15 minute short. That would be the easy thing, but it would not be that interesting. We plan to attempt a film which will not have such a linear structure, but will have an organic blend of all the authors and stories into a mosaic of emotions derived from the father child relationships from the interviews.
Stay tuned for future articles on this, where i will hopefully present the ideas and solutions on these problems and more
This weekend saw the first festival of Croatian animated film, held in Zagreb at the Europa theater. The event lasted for two days and had a program that showcased the short animated film production in Croatia in the last two years. The award for the best film went to the short film “MY WAY”, produced by BOLD studio and directed by Veljko Popovic (me), with the visuals done by Svjetlan Junakovic. Besides this the festival jury awarded Svjetlan Junaković with the diploma for the best design! It was a great evening for our team and i hope its a start of a great festival season!
Here is a short clip from the short animated film “my way”, directed by me (Veljko Popovic), produced by BOLD studio Zagreb- Be sure to check out the full film at a festival near you:)
About a year ago the good people of BOLD studio Zagreb asked me to direct a short film they wanted to make based on the book by Svjetlan Junakovic called “my way”- I fell in love with the illustrations made by mr.Junakovic and immediately said yes!(be shure to follow the link to his online portfolio- you’ll find some great stuff there)
I am sooo happy to say that the film is finished and proud to invite you to join me for the movie premiere at the Festival of Croatian film in Zagreb 20-21.02 2010 at the “Europa” cinema. I will post a short clip from the film in a few days, but for now, here are a few stills….
I will use this opportunity to thank the great crew at BOLD studio zagreb for the best job experience ever:)- If only there were more of you out there….
Last year i was invited to the ITFS Stuttgart film festival pitching forum- We had the chance to present our new project and to hang out with some cool dudes- unfortunately, we did not win anything but fortunately a great project did win- It was a Bulgarian film called “Father” produced by Compote collective. I hanged out with the guys from Compote and went home thinking, what a nice project and what nice people…Imagine my surprise when a few months ago i got a mail from the guys at Compote asking us to participate, and create one of the five stories the film will be made out of! The deal got even sweeter when i found out that Phil Mulloy is the filmography consultant! In the end, it all made sense when BONOBO studio agreed to co-produce the film
Here is a postcard promo material for the film! It speaks for it self, so i will explain no more…Looking forward to my trip to Sofia in a months time to meet up with the guys and start work on the project!
Hi! Here is a render of a textured and surfaced exterior shot- This is the first step, after this the model goes into mudbox to add subtile model changes and details, then we render hand drawn elements and overlay the wood textures and dirty up the image. This was done by Marjan
Its been a while since i last posted on the blog, but with the new year and the hollydays, its been crazy….On top of this i have to say the money is gooone….Since we managed to secure a fraction above half of the funds required to finish the film..This is why we have been forced to focus more on the commercial jobs to keep the studio running, which in the end makes the film suffer, with the studio spending less time on the film and more on securing money to pay the rent. In the end we will have to pay for the third of the film out of our own pockets. I feel that larger co-productions and funding outside the state funds is the only way to secure the funds for the entire film, which in our case is around 90 000 euros… But!, enough- I am happy to post new models for the film- The first one is of the old woman as a little girl and the other is the neighbour, for whom we have already done the morph targets…
