Archives: Industry

This year’s industry seminars are broadcasted to you from London. Three excellent directors and creators of animation will share their masterclasses from a professional studio, to tell the audience about their work and approach for producing high-quality content, either if you stay home or find your seats at the festival venue of Fredrikstad Municipal Cinema.

The highly-acclaimed director and Oscar winner for best animated short film, Michaël Dudok de Wit will showcase his work and films, including his Oscar-nominated feature The Red Turtle, which was produced by the legendary Studio Ghibli.

Lizzy Hobbs is an experimental filmmaker who uses her unique style to tell surprising stories. With her analogue technique, her films offer a creative and artistic perspective on everything from historical moments to mythical tales. In her masterclass she will discuss her approach to creating short films and show details from her productions.

One of FAF’s main goals is to increase awareness of what is going on in the individual Nordic-Baltic animation scenes, and thus encourage a higher degree of exchange and cooperation within the region. “New Nordic Animation” is the festival’s yearly industry forum, and aims to give studios and other animation professionals a platform to show off their latest projects, exchange ideas and expand their international network.

For the 2020 session of New Nordic Animation, Norwegian director Yngvill Sve Flikke will be present alongside graphic novelist and animator Inga Sætre, giving a work-in-progress presentation of the upcoming feature film Ninjababy. The film combines live action and animation and is based on Sætre’s graphic novel Fall Technique.

The Danish studio Tumblehead and Swedish Soja will be joining the event remotely, presenting their work and new projects in their pipelines.

In Thursday morning’s seminar for students, two Nordic projects will be presented – both of which are painting their very own and unique universes.

The Finnish smash hit cartoon series Belzebubs is in development to become a TV-series, and during the Educational seminar, the series’ creator JP Ahonen and director Samppa Kukkonen will talk about the adaptation from comic book to animated TV-series. The series follows the members of black metal band Belzebubs and their everyday challenges between playing in a band together, family life and devil worship.

Rune Spaans, director of Two Buddies and a Badger 2: The Great Big Beast will share his experiences from the development process of the new feature film based on the universe created by Øystein Dolmen and Gustav Lorentzen. The film, which received critical acclaim and had the best opening weekend of all Norwegian films in 2020, is also part of Fredrikstad Animation Festival’s competition programme.

ANIDOX is a creative platform for the development and production of animated documentary projects. It runs a laboratory, a professional training course, a residency programme and masterclasses. Bringing together international film professionals to attend seminars and hands-on creative workshops, the main goal of ANIDOX is to foster and develop collaborations between animation and documentary creatives, and help them move further with their projects.

As part of a collaboration between the festival, ANIDOX and Viken regional film centre, a two-day workshop will be held, giving documentary and animation filmmakers the chance to meet and develop pitches for animated documentaries or documentaries that will use animation as a tool for storytelling. Concluding the workshop, the projects will be presented during a public pitch session at Fredrikstad Kino.

The workshop is led by Cecilie Bjørnaraa and Uri Kranot.

Norwegian animated film has been evolving rapidly in the last ten years, with new films premiering regularly in cinemas, and this development seems to continue into the next decade. In 2020 alone — a year in which conditions have been generally poor for feature films — four Norwegian animated feature films will premiere.

But are the Norwegian animated feature films good enough? Where does the animated feature film stand today, and what challenges must the animation community address in order to tell better stories?

We have asked journalists and writers from outside the animation community to point out the strengths and weaknesses of Norwegian animated feature films that have been developed in recent years. Journalists and critics Oda Bahr and Aksel Kielland will discuss the development of feature films in Norway in a conversation moderated by the head of animation studies at Volda University College, Trygve Nielsen.

The session will be in Norwegian.

In connection with the anniversary of Ivo Caprino celebrated during the festival, we have gathered a group of experts to take a closer look at the legendary filmmakers’ career and discuss his legacy.

Caprino emerged as a creative and innovative filmmaker who, in collaboration with other creative souls, used a variety of techniques to create a magical universe.

These films’ special place in Norwegian popular culture and their historical significance are the starting point for the conversation between Remo Caprino, son of Ivo Caprino and professor emeritus at Volda University College, Gunnar Strøm.

Want to present your work to one of the festival’s guests or partners? Are you looking for work, but do not know where to start? Sometimes it is essential to get some feedback on the work you’re doing. Bring your portfolio and impress our panel of great artists and professionals. For this year’s edition, the following festival guests are looking forward to offer their professional advice:

Neil Pymer
– Director, Aardman Animations

Charlotte Sanchez
– Line Producer, SunCreature Studios

In collaboration with Blender Collective, we invite delegates with an industry accreditation to use the facilities of the co-working place that the festival is part of. Free coffee, free wi-fi and the use of meeting facilities are offered to festival goers that have work to do, want to arrange a meeting or just wish to take a break. Exciting breakfast seminars are scheduled for Thursday and Friday morning, and you can use our video library to catch up on the festival’s short film programme if you should have missed a screening. More activities will be announced.

Together with the creative industry in Fredrikstad and Blender Collective, FAF presents a breakfast seminar to kick-start the festival on Thursday morning. Neil Pymer, a creative director connected to the interactive department at Aardman, will hold a workshop that he usually runs for Aardman Academy, covering the company’s brainstorming and paper prototyping processes. Helping sow the seeds of original and exciting ideas, encouraging creators to stay loose and free in the early stages of a project, the focus is on failing fast, working in groups and experimental learning using practical tools to help inspire future creativity. In this frantic course of interactive design, the participants dissect a story, then brainstorm suitable gaming formats and get hands-on with paper prototyping, designing a game or other interactive experience.

Practical information: limited access.
Please send registration to sabine@blenderco.no
The workshop is free for members of Blender Collective. Other participants must obtain a valid festival pass (Industry pass, Student pass or thursday day pass ).

A successful director of short films and one of the key figures behind an award-winning comedy series will be the speakers in the festival‘s Educational seminar. Short film maker Kristian Pedersen and line producer Charlotte Sanchez from the critically acclaimed studio Sun Creature talk about their work on Thursday 24 October.

Kristian Pedersen has marked himself as one of Fredrikstad’s foremost directors. With his often abstract animated short films, he has achieved great success at many international film festivals. In the educational seminar, he will present his work as an artist, and how he manages to visualise complex themes like poetry, mythical creatures or the atomic bomb. He will also give insights into how he works to create his award-winning short films and how his professional career has evolved.

Line producer Charlotte Sanchez from the acclaimed studio Sun Creature will talk about how the studio developed the comedy series The Heroic Quest of the Valiant Prince Ivandoe, which is available on Netflix and won four awards at the European Animation Awards last year.

Parts of the seminar will be held in Norwegian.

ANIDOX is a creative platform for the development and production of animated documentary projects. It runs a laboratory, a professional training course, a residency program and master classes. Bringing together international film professionals to attend seminars and hands-on creative workshops, the main goal of ANIDOX is to foster and develop collaborations between animation and documentary creatives, and help them move further with their projects.

As part of a collaboration between the festival, ANIDOX and Viken regional film centre, a two-day workshop will be held, giving documentary and animation filmmakers the chance to meet and develop pitches for animated documentaries or documentaries that will use animation as a tool for storytelling. Concluding the workshop, the projects will be presented during a public pitch session at the House of Literature in Fredrikstad.

The workshop was led by Frode Søbstad and Uri Kranot.

Read more about the workshop.

 

Fredrikstad’s creative industry is flourishing. Well-known for its optimism, the city ishome to several highly acclaimed studios and animation, film and design agencies. In this breakfast talk at the industry area at Blender Collective, you can meet some of the key players from the local industry and follow the presentations of two in-house studios:

Netron is a digital creative agency specialising in film, animation, and interactive media. Their work runs the gamut from motion graphics, via 2D animation to full-blown 3D animation and live-action film projects. They have a small but agile teamwith a wide range of visual styles, enabling them to choose the technique and stylethat best suits the message on a per-project basis.

Provinsen is a design studio working on projects related to visual identity and branding,but also film and animation. In close partnership with the filmmaker Harald Fossen,they merge design processes with the classic filmmaking process. Their goal is to move people with design.

Short film director Michael Frei’s award-winning short films are known for his traditional 2D hand-drawn line animation in black and white. In a collaboration with game designer Mario von Rickenbach, he developed the short films Plug and Play and Kids into small interactive games. In the latter, the animation was assembled, composited and choreographed using a game engine with a custom-made animation system in conjunction with physics simulations. In this seminar, Michael Frei will go into the details of how he and Mario von Rickenbach worked to successfully port the project from one medium to another, focusing on solutions to the technical and artistic challenges they encountered along the way.

 

The hysterically funny satire and comedy hit Checkered Ninja (“Ternet Ninja”), is one of few cross-Nordic successes that received a massive audience both in Norway and its country of origin, Denmark. Checkered Ninja is an atypical 3D animated film, focusing on an older segment of the audience than you would usually expect in the genre of stuffed doll title characters. In this ‘making of’ presentation, director Thorbjørn Christoffersen will give an insight into the production of the cult phenomenon, how it all started and how it really came to life. Christoffersen will also show the audience behind-the-scenes material, including a breakdown of the animation process and the development of characters and story.

With their profound, Oscar®-nominated stop motion feature Anomalisa, Starburns Industries marked themselves as an innovative and imaginative production company. Specialising in stop-motion, traditional 2D, and CG animation as well as live-action projects, the studio delivers a wide range of productions for film and television.

Two of the studio’s creative talents, director Duke Johnson and writer and executive producer Dino Stamatopoulos have produced many highly recognised tv-series in the genre of comedy and satire. With many award-winning productions, such as Moral Orel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole, Beforel Orel and the Emmy Award-winning episode of NBC’s Community: Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas under their belts, the two creative filmmakers will give a broad insight into animating and writing for satire and comedy, including preview materials from productions that the studio is working on for clients such as Comedy Central and Amazon.

 

What’s going on in the Nordic countries?

The festival invited four speakers from Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway to present their latest projects. The animation scene is vibrant and growing in all of these countries, and the presentation will feature some of the hottest directors, producers and studios from the cold north.

The forum is put together in collaboration with different Nordic associations for animation: SAAVA – The Swedish Association for animation and VFX, ANIS – the Danish association for animation and Finnanimation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the promotion of the Finnish animation industry.

The speakers in this year’s forum:

Director Rasmus Sivertsen of Qvisten, the biggest animation studio in Norway, who will present their upcoming feature Helt Super, which is currently in development. From Sweden, head of Dockhus animation Mikael Lindbom will present the studio and some of their latest projects. Terhi Väänänen is the CEO and co-founder of Pyjama Films, a Turku-based Finish animation studio, and will talk about the studio’s freshly developed series Belzebubs and Planet Z. Last but not least is Irene Sparre, CEO of Danish concept, development and production house Sparre Production.

VR is one of the most exciting emerging areas in technology and the involvement of the major tech companies like Facebook, Google and – it is rumoured – Apple are illustrative of the huge interest and potential for innovation in the field. 

VR as a tool has seen a huge leap in development the last years; enabling the artist to create objects, characters and worlds in 3D space. We now see the contours of a future of more efficient 3D painting, which also allows artists to preserve their original expression throughout a more fluent work process. 

Goro Fujita is part of the Oculus Story Studio team in San Francisco, where he works as an art director for several VR projects. He will talk about his career path right through from his first entry into the film industry, all the way to creating VR content. Using his journey as an example, he will discuss the different ways to succeed and show how creating a routine can improve your skills. The discussion will be followed by a live Quill VR painting demo. Goro will also be showing his short film Beyond the Fence which was created using Quill.

The seminar is open to participants  with an valid Industry or Student pass (Friday or for the entire festival).

Looking back at a long and successful career in the international animation scene, Eric Daniels will share with the audience the insights and skills he has gained through working on numerous major productions. A traditionally-trained animator, programmer and inventor, and now an EFX animator at Disney, Eric has a long history of finding new ways to bridge the worlds of art and technology, and is frequently called upon to help solve technically challenging artistic problems. 

Eric will talk us through the processes that enabled him to solve some of the more interesting challenges he has faced at Disney Animation and how false starts and dead ends encountered along the way led to new solutions in art and technology. 

The seminar is open to participants  with an valid Industry or Student pass (Friday or for the entire festival). 

Remember your favourite character from Ratatouille, Coco,  Finding  Nemo, Shrek or  Despicable  Me? Chances are that character was created by Carter Goodrich. The creator of a majority of the characters in these movies comes to Fredrikstad Animation Festival to tell us about his work and the methods he employs in creating iconic characters. Considered one of the greatest in his field, Carter Goodrich possesses a distinct and easily recognizable style that places a particularly rare and imaginative spin on all his characters. During Friday’s seminar, he will give a keynote in which he shares his experiences as a character designer and illustrator, and shows us some of his work through three decades.  

The seminar is open to participants  with an valid Industry or Student pass (Friday or for the entire festival).

What’s going on in the Nordic countries?

Four speakers from Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Denmark is invited to present their newest projects. The animation scene is growing in all of these countries and the seminar presents some of the hottest directors, producer and studios from the cold north.

The forum is put together through a collaboration between different Nordic associations for animation and include the Swedish Association for animation and VFX – SAAVA, the Danish association for animation – ANIS, and Finnanimation, a non-profit organization for promoting the Finnish animation industry.

The speakers in this year’s forum are:

Frank Mosvold from Norway, with a work in progress presentation of his feature about the TV heroine Ella Bella Bingo; The Danish production house Late Love Productions; the producer Lana Tankosa Nikolic and the Swedish director Chritian Rytelinus will tell about his newest feature. From Finland Hanna and Kari from the production company MRP Matila Röhr Productions Oy will showcase what they are up to.

The seminar is only open for audience with a valid industry pass (Saturday or the entire festival).