Since the start of October, the Animation Bachelor atelier has been boiling with life! Next to the already installed 3rd years working hard on the development of their bachelor films, we, the student of the second year have settled in our cubicles. Eager to finally have our own desks, we’ve been painting and decorating the space all over!

But through the fuzzy plush worms hanging from the ceiling, the fairy lights, motivational posters picturing our beloved head of study: Jürgen Hass and other nap corners, there isn’t only laughter and late-night werewolf games in the atelier. Now that the class is split into teams from 2 to 6 students, we have been spending the past few weeks working hard to build our applied projects for the semester; 25 second (to a minute) idents for the corporation clients: Adult Swim, Amnesty International and KurtzFilmNacht.

During this pre-production period we’ve had multiple inputs on scriptwriting, character, prop and background design as well as storyboarding and sound for our animatics, helping us to develop every aspect of our projects and getting multiple rounds of reviews from various perspectives and expertise. While the 2D groups are refining their character designs and storyboards or exploring textures, the stop-motion based teams are already busy building their puppets and sets, next to the only 3D project, which is deep into modeling their assets and discovering the brand-new brushstroke tool add on from Blender.

Although supervised by our semester’s coordinator Jochen Ehmann, we are mostly self-organized and the different needed roles throughout the production pipeline such as storyboard artist, puppet builder, rigger or sound designer are designated through discussion within our work groups. This allows each student to develop their individual skills in their specialization, but also for some to discover new roles within production that might interest them in the future and that they would not have considered otherwise. It has been greatly satisfying to finally put the theory and basics learned during our first year of the bachelor to practice. As well as learning more interpersonal and organizational skills, such as communication within a team, making sure that everyone’s needs and voices are heard (including oneself!), managing time and unexpected obstacles and finding time to have fun and laugh as a class.

Soon enough, our animatics were ready to be sent to the clients for approval! (Not after a last-minute change of format of course!) PowerPoints ready on our hard disks, we gathered on the 5th of November, to present our work so far to our peers, teachers and clients, of which Wolf Gehart the Adult Swim envoy was present via Zoom. The teams working for a different client got their review per e-mail. The aim of those presentations isn’t really to show our process yet but more to do a sort of checkpoint of what has been accomplished during this phase of pre-production.

Picture 1: The team Phonomenal Battle presenting their 3D blocking and concept art in from of the class

Picture 2: The team of Blossom Blade listening to the reviews of Wolf Gehart

Picture 3: The team Forever Together presenting the concept art of a church in front of the class

Pressure is building up, only 5 minutes scheduled to present and 15 minutes of feedback. Does the rhythm of the animatic work? Will the joke land? Will the clients understand our vision, or did we completely miss the mark? Does an element not fit into the guidelines? Did we remember to add a black frame at the beginning of our animatic as fervently asked by our headmaster?? Many questions running through our heads before it’s our team’s time to present. Deep breath. Here we go!

The few technical problems put aside; the presentations went quite smoothly. It is always stressful to present the work in which not only you, but your colleges and friends have been putting their hearts and souls into for the past weeks. Yet every team’s review was delivered in a caring and insightful matter. Without of course a few laughter in reaction to the not-so-quite-on-point suggestions and concerns worded by the “London Colleges” now famous within the student body. All in good faith of course! As we, for the most part, are discovering the joys and frustrations of commissioned productions and client relations. (Of which our coordinator Jochen Ehmann still takes on most of the toils for us.)

This round of review was our chance to get a fresh eye on our projects, to take in the first reactions from our peers and advice from our teachers who have accompanied us so far, to clear up any miscommunication or inconsistencies as well as simply showcasing our progress so far! How greatly rewarding it was to see our idents and the ones of our friends and colleges slowly come to life and become more and more tangible! Working on such a big project for the first time is stressful for any student, but those presentations, allowed us to see that our efforts are really paying off and that we not only have the support of our teammates but all 2nd year students behind us. The positivity, encouragements and the gentle criticisms from the other students truly showed us that this ident is also a class effort to give each other the strength to power through and inspire one another!

It’s been a long semester. Us first years have wrapped up our final projects for the semester after having had a taste of 2D, CGI and Stop Motion. Meanwhile, the second years have wrapped up something even bigger… an ident for Adult Swim!

Usually, these presentations happen at the end of the semester (hence the name «Semester End Presentation») but this time, they were hosted a week before the final deadline so everyone could get a little extra feedback they could try implementing with the time they had left (or for their future projects even).

This year, we’ve got a huge variety of amazing films, ranging from the cute and sweet to the macabre and weird. If you wish to see them yourself, they’ll be screened at the International Trickfilm Festival of Animated Film (ITFS for short) in Stuttgart, alongside other animated films from the Bachelor’s and Master’s programs.

Apocalypse Playset

First one was «Apocalypse Playset» (dir. Markley Cahn von Seelen, Mykolai Filevych, Alain Fleury, Ole Niemann, Jeongeun Park), a charming CGI/live-action ident in the style of a toy commercial. Everything from the cute gardens with perfectly vertical vegetables to the evil mutant rats was stylized with a plastic sheen to really sell that toy look. One of my favourite details were the monitors in the background of some shots. They were modelled after glued-on stickers! Growing up with Legos, I’m used to the occasional decal one would have to carefully place during builds every now and then and small touches like these really help convince you this is a real toy commercial.

But you might be wondering «wait, this all sounds very CGI, didn’t you say this had live action elements?» Here’s the kicker, there was a live-action hand that was green screened into the animation to interact with the toys!

Personally, I’m a bit biased because my girlfriend played the hand model for this one – one day they just approached her while she was washing dishes in the animation kitchen and said, «Pretty hands there, wanna help?» (I’m paraphrasing here, but it was more or less like this according to her).

Jokes aside, this just goes to show how collaborative and spontaneous the process can be at this school.

Claw Me

Up next came «Claw Me» (dir. Ana Sofía Aillaud Trasviña, Irina Georgiadou, Cheyenne Gia Klossner, Inna Soroka, Ysabel Steiner). I think we’ve all been there, folks. We desperately want a plushie from a claw machine, but it’s slipped away from us. No matter how hard we try, it escapes our grasp!

The idea for the short was born when Cheyenne, the director of this ident, visited Japan. She was inspired by all the arcade cabinets she encountered in her time there and returned to school with new ideas. They clearly resonated with people, because this was easily the largest group of the bunch with five people on board! Due to the size of the group, the teachers encouraged them to go crazy. Go big or go home as they say… and they went BIG, but as one of the members of the project so succinctly put it:

«Dream big, but if you dream big that means you have to work more.» – Irina

This was exemplified with a shot they dubbed “Shot 666”. It’s a crazy perspective shot, and Irina, the storyboard/layout artist, fought hard to keep it in. It required lots of planning and reference footage – but the end result speaks for itself.

One thing I should mention is that after every presentation, the groups would receive individual feedback by each of the teachers and an associate from Adult Swim who was connected via Zoom. This was another of the highlights for me. Being connected to industry professionals from across the globe is very exciting, but what is even more exciting is when they are drinking some kind of mystery sludge on a big cinema screen. Kino.

Zombie Golf

Zombie Golf (dir. Jessica Eugster, Fabian Betschart, Dana-Elena Binică, Gian Widli)  – bam, what a title! Need I say more? It’s zombies golfing in the apocalypse, c’mon! This one was one of my personal favourites. Unlike most idents, this one is a blend between stop-motion and CGI and the behind-the-scenes process for this one was wild.

First, of course, is the stop-motion animation. But, as usual with stop-motion, before you get to the animation part you got to build things first. For this, they decided to build them out of foam latex which involves a very fragile and delicate process involving molds and what not. It was easy to get many imperfections during this, but for zombie puppets this was perfect.

Now that the puppets are ready the team was ready to finally animate but how do you go about making a somewhat seamless blend between two mediums? Very careful planning. Lots of it.

On the CGI side of things there were some challenges too. 3D is finnicky because, for something like this, it’s too perfect. How do you replicate the imperfections of stop-motion in a software that can produce the best, most optimal results? How do you get textures that match the textured realism of stop-motion?

The team tried many things, but it seems like the best solution was the simplest. After getting nowhere trying to replicate the textures of the stop-motion set, they tried taking a picture of the set and using that as a texture… and it worked! To quote one of the team members:

«Keep it simple, stupid.»

Simple solutions such as colour grading or adding film grain in post-production worked wonders to blend both styles, giving more credence to this simple wisdom.

Dinner Date

If you had your fill with the man-eating zombies then wait till you get the bill with the next ident, «Dinner Date» (dir. Iara De Jong Goncalves, Anna Müller) . We’ve all been in bad dates before. Don’t you sometimes wish you could bite their heads off? This is what the duo behind this ident sought to answer with their quirky yet gory homage to the UPA style of animation.

They were faithful in trying to replicate the look of cel animation, going to great lengths to ensure its authenticity. The ident was formatted in 4:3 instead of the standard 16:9, the quality of the video had been slightly blurred, as if recorded from an old VHS tape but Jürgen Haas, a veteran from the era and the lead of the animation department, pointed out some slight inaccuracies. Guess you can’t fool a trained eye.

For these idents, the school collaborates with the music department of the «Zurich University of the Arts» to provide music as well as «Speech Academy» who bring the characters to life with their voice acting. The music in this short was definitely a standout with how jazzy it was but also due to the slight horror undertones they managed to sneak in as the ident ramped up to its bloody finale.

A funny anecdote the team shared with us was the fact that everybody at Speech Academy wanted to voice the femme fatale protagonist «Lily Mantis», yet no one wanted to voice her smarmy and pathetic date, «Chris Fly».

As a little gift, the team ordered some stickers based on the short, including one for Chris Fly! Perhaps we can give him the love he (doesn’t really) deserve.

The Legendary Treasure

«The Legendary Treasure» (dir.  Benjamin Gilli, Emanuel Strehler, Jiani Fei, Jonas Opderbecke, Sina Mazziotta) is a fun take on Indiana Jones and Greek Mythology. An intrepid adventurer runs for his life, chased by a giant creature, dodging past spikes and fire and what not.

The style for this ident was inspired by contemporary 3D projects such as Spider-Verse and, primarily, Arcane. As the other big group of five, they decided to go big too, trying to give their own spin to the show’s iconic style.

But before they get to that they have to model their stars first. The monster wasn’t much trouble however the human was quite the adventure to get right. Making a stylized human was more difficult than expected. He often slipped into the uncanny valley and getting the texturing done for him was quite difficult.

At first, the team tried experimenting with some procedural shaders to get the painterly look but just like the artist behind Arcane, they had to resort to painting everything by hand.

Something that was nice to see were the various team building activities they did outside of animating. They visited adventure rooms (though there was no legendary treasure at the end of these), shared snacks and just overall seemed like they had a great time.

Los Limpiadores

Next group was «Los Limpiadores» (dir. Mártin Alfredo Allmendinger, Tifany Perera, Marija Simovic), an ident about two cleaners suddenly forced to face an extraterrestrial creature. The film was a kind of ode to the wonderful janitors at our school who face an even scarier monster than the one in the ident… the wacky shenanigans of a school full of art students. Makes me shudder to even think about it.

Again, a little bit biased here due to myself being involved in this one as the voice of one of the janitors. Just like the other collaboration with the second years, this one was very spontaneous. I was just asked randomly by one of the team members while on the bus and well, the rest is history. Now my screams of terror as I try to fight off a horror beyond my comprehension will be immortalized forever.

Development on this film wasn’t as smooth as some of the others, given that it had over a dozen different animatics. It was a tough road to reach a vision the entire team agreed upon. They had to wrangle new software and faced technical difficulties with the old ones they knew, but by the end their hard work paid off.

Open Wide

«Open Wide» (dir. Jérémie Jayraj Itty, Mona Joana Gassner, Suwoo Kim, Viktoriia Vasylets) was, well, what other way to put it other than widely beloved among my classmates. A rugged, (and dare I say sexy?) pilot flying through the skies is suddenly caught in a storm! His engine catches on fire, his airplane nosedives on a sure path directly to the cold, harsh seas but then… a baby!?

It’s fairly simple story that works well, subverting expectations on a dad feeding his baby some food, pretending it’s a little plane so the baby actually eats it.

The team made a point to put communication and a healthy work ethic as a key part of their group’s core. They took care of each other, set ground rules, made sure they were getting enough sleep, all to ensure a good working environment.

The ident used a blend of CGI and 2D in a subtle way. The airplane itself was animated in Blender and essentially rotoscoped in 2D later down the pipeline. Work smarter, not harder, folks.

Don’t tell anyone, but my sources (the director himself, SHH!) told me that his laptop broke down mid-production. One day we were at his place playing games on it, the next the screen wouldn’t turn on anymore. With no cloud backups of any sort, it seemed like a chunk of their ident had gone missing! Luckily, he managed to get it fixed. Phew! A good reminder to back up project files on the school’s servers or a personal cloud storage. Or both, probably both is good.

Even though the team had a healthy work ethic it was still hard for them to stay healthy in the physical sense. During the presentation they showed this humorous slide ranking how often a member of the team got sick. Except for one member who outstood them all… The Mighty Suwoo.

Everyone tried learning new things during the production of the ident and they all seemed pleased with themselves by the end of the project. Personally, I learnt something new too, as Jürgen gave some surprisingly detailed feedback on the design of the plane. What kind of life has he led as to know so much about planes…?

Space Girls

«Space Girls» (dir. Mélina Bron, Yuliia Bykova , Daniel Neto Dias) is about space divas competing with each other in a dancing game, only to lose to someone who’s not even trying. If you’ve ever played Just Dance you might find this one relatable.

Heavily inspired by a captivating Y2K aesthetic mixed with a retro futuristic style from the 70s, this ident is seriously stylish. You can gleam a lot from its inspirations from Sailor Moon, Bratz to that Angelina Jolie fish from Shark Tale, they really made sure to go all the way to nail down the vibe.

As mentioned earlier, there is a collaboration with the ZhDK for these idents and the filmmakers here used it to their full advantage. They went from a song that «sounded like a The Weeknd song» to an instrumental that feels like it could’ve been lifted straight out of a Britney Spears album.

The animated dance choreography is nothing short of impressive, though sadly, this short wasn’t finished yet at the time of the presentation, and two of the three people in the team were now in an exchange in Singapore. I hope they manage to finish the ident despite the differing time zones because just like the space girls, it has the potential to be a star.

Fastest Way to Bingo

And at last but not least we have «Fastest Way to Bingo» (dir. Julia Flor Estrada Torres, Touka Fatemi, Della Miranda, Jiwoo Yoon), a fully stop-motion animated ident about a grandma who’s dead set on arriving to bingo as fast as possible, even if it means trespassing the law…

Anything that is stop-motion is like catnip to me. As someone who experienced it during my studies here, I have nothing but respect to those that are dedicated enough to commit to it. There is a ridiculous amount of work involved in making a stop motion film and just hearing them talk about their production had me and others reminiscing about our own time down in the «mines» (our «affectionate» name for the Blackbox where the stop-motion films are shot).

The team had complications building the puppets as Touka showed us pictures of the handful (heh) of hands she made for the main character, only to realize they didn’t really need them. Though some parts of the process were hard, others were sped up significantly by using new techniques such as laser cutting, used in the final film to create an authentic looking metal bridge.

The look of the ident was very grounded, therefore the main subway set had to match as well. As the set designer talked about the challenges of building miniature, tiled, ceramic walls some of my classmates groaned empathetically as the memories of doing the exact same thing for their own film returned to them.

All teams made some excellent projects! Their presentations, detailing the process behind each ident, were an excellent way for us first years to learn from.

So… what did we learn?

Dream big!

Communicate!

Foster a healthy work ethic!

Plan ahead. Do LOTS of planning ahead.

Maybe for next time they’ll get another first year to write about me and my classmates’ very own SEP.

P.S. And if she’s reading… Love you, Kathy! (Hope this ages like wine and not like milk haha…ha)