Animationsfilm für die Becherpfand-Spendenaktion von “Children for a better world e.V.”

Zusammen mit Saint Elmo’s aus München, die die Idee und den wunderbaren Rülpssong geliefert haben, habe ich in wenigen Tagen einen kleinen illustrierten Animationsfilm erstellt.

Der Film wird rund um die WM 2018 und auch danach als Spendenaufruf bei public-viewings und lokalen Fussballspielen eingesetzt.

Animationstechnisch war es eine ordentliche Herausforderung einen geeigneten Head-rig zu basteln, der es ermöglichte den Kopf sowohl zur Seite zu drehen, wobei sich hier der Mund auch komplett öffnen lassen musste, und in der Seitenansicht somit “ausgeschnitten” ist (damit das Getränk hineingekippt werden kann) als auch den Kopf ganz in den Nacken zu legen, damit wir bis unter die Nase schauen können und sich der Mund (jetzt in der Frontalansicht) vollständig zu einem Rülpser öffnen kann. Ganz schön knifflig, aber mit dem großartigen Script “Joysticks ‘n Sliders” von Mike Overbeck hat es funktioniert. Für alle, die in After Effects animieren, kann ich dieses Plugin nur wärmstens empfehlen, ist in jedem Falle sein Geld wert und bietet tausend Anwendungsmöglichkeiten.

Client: Children for a better world e. V.

Agency: Saint Elmo’s, Munich
Art Direction: Arwed Berendts

Sounddesign: Space Enterprises, Munich

Illu 18 is coming, and I have just a few days left!

Illu 18 is a biennial group exhibition in Cologne, Germany. This year again, it will be hold in “Michael Horbach Stiftung“, lovely spacious and renovated former industrial halls. In the recent years I was happy to be selected, and it was always great fun to meet and exhibit with my colleagues from the region.
This year I was selected by the jury again and the organizers gave me the most prominent place, right across the entrance. So I really had to produce some new stuff…

Oh, my wife Dasha got selected too! And they gave her the spot right next to mine, so we share a corner.
I aimed for printing five new plates, four of them being single motifs and one plate with eight small illustration. It took me nearly three weeks of cutting, printing and watching paint drying, but I managed to finalize and frame them all – two days before setting up the exhibition…

I wanted to show some big prints, the two newest wooden surfboards and as many small prints as possible. So I decided, I needed to build a base for stacking the small prints to a tower. As I always wanted to include the printing plates in one of my exhibitions, that was a good opportunity to use them for the walls of the base.
I also needed some sideboard to present my catalogue, portfolios and my brand new “dinosaur – friendship – book”, so I sketched it and did an simple build out of leftover beechwood.

Tomorrow the setting up of the exhibition starts, still a lot left to do, but I’m really looking forward to see the other illustrators again. And probably couple of new faces too.

Illu 18 / illustratoren-festival

My canadian represantative Anna Goodson interviewed me on illustration, influences and the artistic life in general.
Here’s a small excerpt:

Can you recall the first time you realized you were going to be an artist? What were your earliest impressions?
I must have realized I was going to be an artist when I was a kid. My image of working in any profession was, for me, the thought of doing the same thing every day for the rest of my life. That thought was frightening. I always loved to draw, craft, create, and make films. It was clear to me, that I would need to work as an artist.

Who or what influenced your art when you were young?
I was influenced by books, comic books, films, music, cartoons, and my big brother.

Do you remember what your first artwork looked like? Do you still have it?
It depends how you define “first” and “artwork.” There were a lot of drawings, collages, and clay figures I was proud of, but the first time someone, outside of my family, asked to have a drawing of a cat I scribbled was during class. I was twelve years old and a girl I fancied…

Read it in full here

Rock Trust asked me to provide a Christmas card for their annual mailing.

Rock Trust is an Edinburgh based organization providing help to homeless youth. For a couple of years now I participate in their actions and was happy to help again.
They wanted something no “too christmassy”, to transports their message of helping out together, so I thought some animals cooking a soup together might fit.

Client: The Rock Trust, Edinburgh

I was invited to participate in the annual Xmas exhibition at the Design Post in Cologne. Only problem was: I couldn’t hang my prints on the walls!

The Design Post is a huge showroom for exhibiting Furniture, Vases, Clothes etc. and I was given a corner close to my fellow illustrators Katrin Stangl, Heike Herold and Ulrike Viola Henrich. The corner was equipped with a big and heavy table, some chairs and some shelves. Everything was extremely expensive and we had to put some cloth between everything, not to leave any scratches. Same was with the walls: no nails, no screws, just hanging something with a nylon thread was okay.

For me it became clear that there was now way that I would hang all my prints with thin threads so I decided to present them in a new way: I stacked them on top of each other, clipping them together on the backside, building a round tower. It worked fine and looked really nice and after putting up my surfboards, some more prints on the shelves and a big one with nylon threads on the wall, it suddenly felt quite comfortely there.

The show found a big audience, even though it was not the audience I’m used to. As illustrators (all doing prints) we felt a bit like the outsiders in a crowd of fashion, furniture and jewellry designers. But in the afternoon some more of my colleagues from cologne appeared and it became a nice meeting.

My kids visited the show as well, and I was quite happy when my daughter pointed at each picture and enthusiastically yelled: “Papa, we have the same picture. And this too. and this too….”
So my biggest fans were happy and that was the main goal;)

Every year my canadian representative, Anna Goodson Illustration Management sends out a set of coasters.

The topic was a bit vague: loveisloveisart, but I understood it to be as a counterposition against the recent divides in society, upcoming racism nationalism etc.

There are so many things we share as humans, and I wanted my illu to be a very quiet, peaceful one. So I came up with the idea of cloudwatching people.

Anna Goodson Illustration Agency

I was asked to provide an original postcard for Rock Trusts Postcard Art Exhibition & Auction 2017. I already participated in the recent years, so I was happy to participate again.

Rock Trust is a scottish charity organization helping and working together with young people who are homeless or at the risk of becoming homeless. Every two years they organize a big postcard exhibition and auction, with participants from Scotland and abroad..
This year the Exhibition will take place in Summerhall, Edinburgh from 23. June until 14th of July.

For more information visit Rock Trust Exhibition Site

and for the auction go the Auction and bid!

Neilla, my intern at that time, filmed  the whole process. With little additional footage and some editing I finally did a short clip about the woodcutting and printing process. So, lean back and watch how it’s done!

For La Viva Magazine, I regularly provide artwork about the main character “Iva” I created a while ago.

Here’s the newest one for the upcoming spring issue.

Client: La Viva Magazine
Agency: Gruner & Jahr

For Lidl’s Kids App I provided some illustration and animated a short Clip also using the existing artwork from the app.

The clip was first shown in Portugal, but will soon be adapted for more countries…

In this App you are managing a small market place. If you are successfull and satisfy the customers you are able to upgrade your stands until it will become a real supermarket.

The whole project was build and animated in After Effects, using the 3d features and quick camera movements for the transitions between the stages.

Client: Lidl
Agency: Leo Burnett, Frankfurt am Main