Students of the MA Animation

At the beginning of this semester, Regina Pessoa, one of the most talented and famous animators nowadays, visited us at the Hochschule Luzern Design Film Kunst to give a workshop to the MA Animation students, where I had the opportunity to attend and meet her. We talked about her first steps in animation filmmaking, style, her creative process, inspiration, challenges, and advice for aspiring animation artists.

Regina P.

Regina Pessoa is a Portuguese independent animation filmmaker known for the short films The Night (1999), Tragic Story with Happy Ending (2005), Kali, The Little Vampire (2012), and Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days (2019), that were multi-awarded at different festivals, among them the Jury Prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2019. Her work shows darkness and light, strength, and expression through high contrast and texture that invite you to press stop on her films and appreciate the visual richness of each frame as a painting.

Still from “Uncle Tomas”, 2019

Hello Regina. I’m very lucky because 15 years ago, when I studied graphic design in Colombia, you were a great inspiration for me, and today I am sitting with you. Thank you for coming to HSLU.

Tell us how you first became interested in making films

Well, I grew up without any access to moving images, without television. So it’s like I grew up in the 19th century and never interested in animation. I studied art and painting at an art school in Portugal. Art was very expensive studies, so I was looking for a part-time job, and I found a small animation studio in Porto, the city where I was studying and living. I went there, and they were starting an independent animated short, which I have no idea what it was. I was very surprised and fascinated that this kind of content existed, the animated shorts, where each author would develop their own artistic identity and mix it with all the beloved artistic disciplines, such as music, sound, writing, literature, and the arts, so I got the opportunity to start my own movies, and since then, I never left the studio.

Short film: Tragic Story with Happy Ending, 2005 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnDrQDrTuFY

How do you define your style, your visual style? 

Well, how I define my visual style, I think, is… Well, I define it as light coming from the darkness. I am lucky because, in general, some people cherish my work, but there are people for whom it’s too dark for them. But I don’t think it’s dark at all because what fascinated me is exactly the opposite. It’s to have a dark; it looks like darkness, but then even a little light is wonderful. I like to explore that, this positive feeling of light coming out of the darkness. For me, it’s very inspiring and gives me hope.

What does your creative process look like?

Well, for me, when I’m working on my movies or on a new story, I need a permanent dialogue between writing and drawing. Sometimes, I start with a sentence, followed by an image, then another sentence, and so on. I normally work on the storyboard to figure out the visual narrative in a very intuitive way. Once a friend, a live-action director, told me you should write the script first. And I said, Oh, I should learn from live action, then I tried to write the script, and it was so dry. It was so hard, you know, and it didn’t work for me. I need this dialogue, this permanent dialogue between drawing scenes and writing. For me, it is very important what the idea is and why I want to do this. This is fundamental to find. When I found this, I could endure all the process and the motivation from deep inside me. 

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Well, mostly for the stories and even for the visuals, I get inspiration from my childhood and my experiences. I had no knowledge of film writing. So the solution I found was to talk about my little experiences. And the way I started my first film was my fear of darkness when I was small. I also find inspiration in different artistic forms, such as literature, music, and a lot in painting. I enjoy going to a museum and looking at portrait paintings of medieval and Renaissance art; it is inspiring.

02_Video: Regina posting illustrations

Could you tell us what challenges you faced while making a film?

Maybe it’s a flaw from my background in visual arts, but it’s hard for me to forget or to get rid of the frozen image. I mean, every image for me counts and takes a lot of time, which I have been assuming for myself in working night and day. I don’t know; for 15 years I worked like 16 hours a day, and now I cannot do that anymore.

What would be the best piece of advice for inspiring animation artists?

Well, I always think it is the one that I received from Abi, who became my husband and my producer. He told me. Regina, think about something that is important to you. If that is the case, you will be involved with the images you produce. So, people who will see those images will feel that strength and that commitment. For me, it was the best advice I have received, and I think it is the best I can give. 

Thank you so much, Regina.

It was nice to talk to you. All the best. 

by Pedro Nel Cabrera Vanegas, graduate of MA Animation

Regina and Pedro

What does Regina do in her free time?

Listen here:

Students in the workshop  Screening of the results 

Regina looking at the students’ work            

Hi. I’m Sven. I freshly graduated from the Animation BA at HSLU just this summer.

Up until the LuMAA, I’ve been a 2D Animator. I have opened Blender and I’ve set a keyframe before, but I never seriously approached 3D animation, let alone worked with a proper rig.

However, I have always had a fascination with the medium. Why not combine that interest with my love for character animation?

So when LuMAA came up this year, I decided to take the opportunity to finally take a proper stab at 3D. Follow along as I discover the world of CG animation!

And heyo! I’m Emanuel. I am in my second year and have been animating in 3D for some time now, but I want to grow and learn a lot more about 3D character animation. LuMAA is one of the best courses for growing as an animator, so why not take the plunge again?

Block 1A: Human Walk Cycle

Time and time again I’m amazed by how much I can learn from doing default walks!

Erica Palmerini showed us a blocking approach to 3D animation, where you pose the Character from keyframes to breakdowns to in-betweens, quite similar to the classic 2D approach. Because of this, I felt at home quite quickly. I was expecting my 2D experience to help, but I was surprised about just how well my skills translated to CG.

As for getting used to Maya: We had a small introduction prior to the workshop, which helped a lot to find my way around the program. Naturally, it still felt quite clunky in the beginning, but luckily Erica and the students from abroad were very happy to help. By day three Maya posed no more issues. (The Autodesk gods must have been on my side though, because the program crashed a whopping 0 times in my first week! I learned only later how blessed I was…) 

One thing that I soon learned to love about 3D animation is how easily you can experiment without being destructive. It’s crazy how much the attitude of a walk can change just by slightly offsetting or scaling keyframes. And it’s super fast to iterate!

As the week came to an end, we went down to the REX, the small Cinema of the HSLU, to look at our work on the big screen. Discussing our Animations this way was a great way to end the week, so the REX reviews became a weekly thing.

Block 2: Creature Animation

In week 2 we animated a quadruped walk cycle with Lukas Niklaus. Not only did we have double the legs to take care of, but we also approached it quite differently than in week one: This time around, Lukas advised us to work directly with curves, achieving our poses by changing the interpolation between as few keyframes as possible. 

This was more abstract to me since it was a different way of thinking. Rather than coming up with poses, you would think about the speeds and offsets at which limbs move. 

Once I got the hang of it, approaching animation this way helped a lot with understanding how muscles work.

Working with fewer keys made it slightly harder for me to achieve organic movement. However, once I did, it was even easier to iterate than with the Blocking approach. Another bonus of working this way is that once you’re happy with your movement, you don’t have to smoothen it.

In the second week of the Creature animation Block, we tackled an acting shot. Together with Michael Aerni, we studied animals’ behavior in depth. We combined the previously learned techniques to bring our animals alive. For this exercise, I chose a little Bulbul bird. With its snappy movement it was quite the contrast to the tiger I animated the previous week. It’s really interesting to see how much body size influences movement.

Throughout the week, Michael also gave us interesting insights into previs and cameras inside and outside of animation software.

Block 1B: Lip sync 

By week 4 I started feeling quite confident in 3D animation, as I was slowly finding a workflow that felt natural to me: I would usually block out the most important body parts pose by pose, while tackling more simple movements and adding some follow through directly in the spline.

For Lip-sync week, Ramon Arango and Noah Demirci taught us a lot about how mouths produce sounds and showed us interesting observations about acting beats and subtle eye darts.

Conveniently, Ramon is also the creator of the Apollo and Artemis rigs that a lot of us had been using for the workshop. So not only did we benefit from feedback and lectures, but Ramon could also occasionally perform some Rig surgery.

Going from stepped animation into spline is always a hard step, but I found that for lip syncing, the smooth motion can feel especially jarring. When we talk, the mouth snaps from pose to pose quite quickly. So when we started splining the mouth, the focus was on getting the energy from the blocking back. Applying this I quickly achieved a satisfying, snappy animation. 

That week we also had a little screening where everyone could show each other projects they had worked on. I was absolutely blown away by everyone’s creativity, skill, and stories. We saw everything from psychedelic journeys through compost bins to silly 80s action movies with bugs and even played a little intergalactic rhythm game. The lovely evening ended with a heated round of Mario Kart in the cinema.

As every Friday, we ended the week with a cozy and delicious barbeque. This time it was also a little farewell for Matze and me, who left the workshop that evening.

The rest of the class was getting ready for their last big task: over the last two weeks of LuMAA, they would tackle more complex, full-body acting shots.

Block 3: Full Body Acting Shot

With the end rapidly approaching for LuMAA we poured all of our emotions into the acting shot. It’s the combination of all that we have learned with more SPECIFICITY. If there is something that our teachers from Pixar want us to remember, it’s this one concept. María Bjarnadóttir (and her partner Alyssa) and Kristen Willsher were focused on this concept and beat it into our heads as it had been drilled into them during their time at Pixar. This “specificity“ is the magic that really makes us see a person within a bunch of moving geometry. It’s the art of holding a look, an involuntary movement, or making specific choices that the character would naturally make, all while achieving the illusion that there is no puppeteer behind the scenes. But to learn more about this, consider joining LuMAA yourself.

Maria and Alyssa were there to help us come up with what exactly we wanted to animate for the following week, block it, and get it to IP (in progress – the stage between blocking and polishing). We listened to dialogue, learned about characters and how people move, and then blocked our ideas out. Meanwhile, they walked around and made sure we pushed our shots as far as we could. “It’s always easier to pull back an extreme idea rather than push a weak idea further“, and so we started with as wild-ass ideas as we could conceive, and pulled back some strings after. 

We had a lot of fun watching Luca together with Maria and Alyssa, a movie that both of them and Kristen worked on. It had become a little bit of a tradition to watch a movie that our teachers worked on during the weeks, sometimes with the teachers present. We also had another delicious Friday BBQ and a tour of the school so that everyone could see the vast number of departments in HLSU DFK.

Kristen was our teacher for the final week, which was all about Polish, her favorite step of the animation process. We also got introduced to splocking, which is a layered workflow, but this time we used it for character acting. With Kirsten’s clear feedback, we all made amazing progress on our shot and pushed it even further – sometimes, it was at the cost of finishing the shot, but on the other hand, we gained a lot of knowledge, experience, and clarity of our ideas.

In the final week, we tried to cram in whatever last activities were still not done yet, so besides a last weekend hike, we managed to go bowling and have a fun afternoon with the game of werewolf. Over the weeks we have done so many fun things together as a group, that helped us bond and connect with each other.

Bundling up whatever leftover energy and emotion within us and pouring it into our animation, we finished our shots. And trust me, the emotions were running high since we all knew that this wonderful time was coming to an end and we would have to say goodbye to each other by the end of the week. The last BBQ had plenty of food and a lot of heartwarming last hugs were given – then it was over. It was a great time and one that I will certainly not forget for a long time.

Once again thank you to Simon Otto, for supervising the course. Michael Aerni, Lukas Niklaus, María Bjarnadóttir, Erica Palmerini, Ramon Arango, Noah Demirci, Kristen Willsher, and Alyssa Ragni for teaching us so much. To the staff at Animation Lucerne for the support and for putting it all together and, of course, our classmates.
See you next year at the next LuMAA.

A striking bell rings out in the dormitory. Students groan, stretch, and yawn. As the morning rises on the rocky cliffs and the warm smell of breakfast fills the humble mountain hut, another day begins for the students partaking in the Out Of Home Animation camp!
This summer, from the 22nd to the 31st of August, 17 inspiring animators coming from the Hochschule Luzern to as far as Berlin, Rotterdam, and Vienna ascended to the Fromatthütte in the Bernese Oberland to partake in the annual Out Of Home Animation workshop. Surrounded by the alpine pasture, and luscious pine forest, and facing a beautiful view over the Bernese Alps, it is in this idyllic setting that we lived, hiked, and created together

Picture 1: Hills and Cliffs.

After a warm welcome involving fresh cinnamon buns and a delicious dinner, we took the time to recover from the intense but wonderful ascension to the chalet and stargaze a little bit before settling into our new home for the upcoming days. We started off the camp with a hike guided by a local artist. He told us about the myths and legends of the area as we snaked through the woods, surrounded by majestic cliffs. He periodically picked up a plant, a mushroom, or stopped next to a rock formation to give us a quick biology lesson, warning us about the dangerous plants and the impact of climate change on the flora. Some of us snacked on some wild blueberries on our way to the top.
On the second day, we had a similar program. We hiked to a mountain lake to sunbathe and take a refreshing jump in the water. It was difficult not to feel like we were in a fantasy book as we walked through the beautiful hills and cliffs and swam to the little flower-covered island in the middle of the lake! As we got to know each other while enjoying the Bernese Alps, we also filled ourselves with inspiration and ideas for our creative endeavors of the week.

Picture 2: the students sitting near a mountain lake. Picture 3: Elena and a student admiring the view.

But living so high in the mountains comes with a few quirks! Water and electricity are sparse, and we had to use both economically. A generator was turned on for a few hours a day so that we could charge our devices and work on editing or sound design. Cooking was in the care of Elena Rast and Lukas and done with an old-school wood fire stove or on a campfire. Showers had to be taken outside in a little standing tent and with a bucket full of water. But those limitations quickly became usual. They are part of the OOHA experience! Helping to prepare the meals, sleeping in dormitories all together, as well as finding new ways to spend time and entertain each other as there’s, of course, no Wi-Fi! This disconnect from the digital world allowed us to be more present, focusing solely on our surroundings and creativity. It cut us off even more from the outside, helping us focus on our animation in this cozy little world that we created in our hut.

Picture 4: A group of students sitting on rocks and listening to the guide’s stories.

Following our few days of excursions and warm sun, a thick fog rose from the valleys all the way to the top, enveloping the hut and cutting us off even more from the outside world. This eerie and mysterious atmosphere gave us the perfect conditions to get in the zone and start to work! As some began by sketching or painting, others were busy building puppets, playing with textures and collages, or even losing themselves in the mist to collect sounds, images, and trinkets. Inspiration seemed to be coming from all around, not just from nature but also from each other, as we talked, shared our worries, and discussed our ideas. Busy in work, under the guidance of Maya Gehrig, and only interrupted by games of Yatzy, the occasional visit of some goats or chubby marmots, everyone seemed to slowly find their flow while experimenting with materials and ideas. For me, it was extremely refreshing to let go of the usual production pipeline, to let myself animate whatever I felt like, however, I felt like!

Picture 5: Student taking pictures on a cliff surrounded by fog. Picture 6: Students deep in work on a table covered in various materials.

At the end of the school year, I found myself running out of creative inspiration and motivation. I was completely paralyzed and kept overthinking and changing my ideas every other day without being able to find a flow or let myself go in the creative process. I was obviously tired and in need of a good vacation. But after that, anxiety started to creep in…what if the same thing was damned to happen in September? Out Of Home Animation was, for me, the perfect opportunity to challenge myself to make a finished project in just about 5 days. The isolation from the outside world, the inspiring students around me, and the focus on more analog and simple forms of animation created the perfect bubble for me to do so!
I will admit that I signed up for the Out Of Home Animation workshop not really knowing what I was getting myself into. It sounded very fun and also a bit intimidating. Yet in the span of 9 days, I met wonderful people, and challenged myself physically and creatively! The bonds we formed and the inspiration we found in the simplest things, like a morning mist or the sound of a distant cowbell, will continue to influence our work. As I packed my bags and prepared to leave this magical place, I carried a heart full of gratitude for the moments we shared. OOHA 2024 was a journey I’ll cherish forever, and I can’t wait to see where it leads us all next.

Picture 7: Panorama of the view and a student admiring it.

Four students shared their experiences and creative processes behind making some murals at HSLU D&K.

Ella Cattaneo

I had never done a mural before, so signing up for this opportunity was very exciting and a bit stressful, but I am very happy that I took the plunge, and so grateful that it paid off! I came up with multiple concepts for the mural, but I decided to settle on one that didn’t depend too much on the format (aka the dimensions of my chosen wall), so that the organizers could potentially move me to another wall if needed.

I also wanted to depict something that related to the school, so I settled on drawing a crowd of students walking to class and choosing to depict them as animals of various shapes and sizes gave me a chance to play with proportions and composition more. I initially wanted each character to represent a specific Bachelor’s, but I soon realized that certain courses were going to be harder to represent visually than others, and that the lines between various art forms were often kind of blurry, so I decided to just freely assign art supplies to the various characters, and let the observer imagine the wider context.

I transferred my sketch to the wall by using the doodle method: I covered the surface with random irregular pieces of tape, took a picture of the wall, and then overlapped my sketch and the picture digitally. I found it much easier than using a grid, although I regretted not using a lighter color for the sketch, as I spent a good chunk of time painting over the sketch lines at the end… Otherwise, the painting was really enjoyable: I first blocked in the basic colors and then did the lineart, the quality of which varied quite a bit depending on how tired I was. I enjoyed being able to work on it virtually whenever I wanted and being my own boss. Compared to what I usually work on also felt much more straightforward: a wall is much more straightforward than a computer program.

The closer I got to the end, the harder it was to finish the project: on one side I felt fed up with the the whole ordeal, on the other side I had been enjoying myself so much that I didn’t want to be done, as contradictory as that may sound. Now that I’m done, I think that I’ll avoid the corridor where my mural is for a while, as I’m quite sick of it, but once I feel detached enough from it, I think that I’ll be able to appreciate it once again.

Janine Varga

Lea and I had the honor of painting a mural on one of the walls on the bottom floor of HSLU DFK. We spent many hours refining Lea’s initial sketch and transferring it onto the wall next to the elevator. A bunch of first-year students from the animation department banded together to send in as many applications as possible to secure at least one wall for the animation department. I eagerly joined in and submitted a simple design, which unfortunately wasn’t selected.
However, the plan was to help other animation students whose designs made it to the final round, so I got to assist Lea with her mural design instead.

I had painted murals before, so I explained some basics I knew from my previous mural projects to Lea, but even with all the experience I had, we were unprepared for the amount of work and frustration ahead. First, we analyzed Lea’s initial sketch and improvised most of the sketch directly on the mural rather than strictly following the initial design. We used yellow charcoal for the sketch, which seemed like a great idea at first but ended up causing problems later.

The first phase of painting was met with frustration when we discovered that other students had contaminated the paints with other colors. This caused the paint to look inconsistent, with darker and lighter shades mixing together instead of appearing as solid colors. This was a problem since we intended the mural to have flat colors only. Consequently, we had to repaint most areas with inconsistent colors, like the orange of the frogs. The yellow charcoal also mixed with the paint, altering its color, which further complicated the process.

Despite our efforts to avoid dripping paint onto other areas, we still managed to do so,
forcing us to repaint several sections, especially during the line art phase. Initially, we were excited about doing the line art, but it turned out to be the most frustrating and soul-crushing part of the process. Although we bought brand new brushes specifically for the line art, we eventually had to buy new ones because the brushes we initially purchased were too big or too rough to paint with. Lea did most of the line art while I stood behind her with three different colors of paint, ready to correct any mistakes. Throughout the process, I took on the role of fixing any errors we made.
In the end, it was all worth it. We were very happy with the final result and learned an important lesson: next time we do a mural, we will keep the line art out of the design.

Lea Glitsch

While I was reading through all the initial information about the murals and the walls that were available for painting, I was quick to choose the wall next to room 079. I‘ve sat in that room multiple times for various art theory classes, so I thought it would be fun to design some characters that kind of “walk” toward the room and try to „interact“ with the door. Since frogs are some of my favorite animals, naturally I had to include them in my concept.

Although I was excited to do a mural, I was also nervous because I had never worked on one before and my painting skills left much to be desired. Thankfully my friend and classmate Jan came to my rescue and we teamed up to tackle this endeavour together.

The sketching stage, in which we tried to bring the initial design from my iPad onto the big wall without the help of a projector, was very tedious and difficult. It made me realize how much I was used to only working on a small screen. Jan had some experience with mural painting already and she was able to correct all my embarrassingly wonky lines. We made adjustments to the design to simplify the painting process and added a few little references to some of our classmates.

The flat painting stage was very satisfying and relaxing (not preparing us for the horror that would be the line art). The only difficulty we faced during flat painting was the fact that many people didn’t clean the shared equipment properly so sometimes old, seemingly dry paint on the palettes would suddenly mix with our fresh paint and mess up the flat coloring.

The line art was definitely the least fun part of it all, it required a lot of concentration and a steady hand, little mishaps would be visible instantly and we needed to do quite some cleanup work with the flat colors to cover up our messy accidents. After some time Jan and I came to the silent agreement that I’d take over most of the line work and she’d stand ready with all the flat colors in case of mistakes and mental breakdowns. I guess after some time you just adjust to the misery of it all and accept the fact that some things just must be done somehow.

Aside from that the overall experience was extremely fun, with Mara and Ella just around the corner working on their own murals. We were all open for a silly chat now and then and seeing everyone’s murals progressing with each passing day was very inspiring.

Looking at the mural now that it’s finished I’m very happy with the result and I’m very grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to add a little splash of colour to one of the concrete walls of the school!

Mara Biscioni

Personally, I always really liked the hallway area of our school. For one, because it has a nice open space at its end, and for the other, because the floor has a yellowish tone. I don’t really like yellow but hey, at least it’s a color. Most educational buildings I have been to have dark gray floors, which makes the whole ambiance of the area gloomy. Needless to say, the bar for nice, colorful atmospheres in buildings is extremely low. Even in art schools. That’s just sad. It was about time someone killed the white of this canvas. I’m so grateful for this opportunity.

The color palette was set for all the paintings to give a sense of harmony to the hallway as a whole. I initially didn’t mind this limitation since blue and orange go well together. However, I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with the given colors, as there was only one main blue to work with. We had a light blue, two midtones, and a dark one. They were all slightly different hues, which made them look disharmonious. Personally, I would have loved to see more confident variations in the tones. Maybe an almost turquoise? Maybe a purple tone in the darkest blue? But that was a problem for later. First, it was time to lay down some Ideas.

Blue and orange immediately make me think of a nice warm light source. So I made a few sketches around this idea and chose the one that would be the most fitting for our nice little space.

This used to be a rougher sketch but I finished it outside of the mural project. I just thought it looked like the two characters were burning down the circus behind them, which would’ve been a more fitting image for my previous school’s walls.
This one stayed in its sketch form and never got to be anything more but a chaotic color exploration. It would have looked pretty stiff anyway with the four bluetones given.
I decided to go with this one since it featured a lot of people looking at the same light ray, much like all the people in this school have a common interest in art.

And that’s it for my current language skills in Estonian, an absolutely strange one, which has no connection to any of the languages I already know. Nevertheless, I must admit that it is like music listening to the aberration of the Finnish language. And it also helps to remind me: I am in a new country, I am in the unknown.

Even though this exaggerates the situation, since I am still in Europe and everything culturewise still feels similar. Yes, I must admit, that I was at first a little bit confused and lost in this hyper digital city; had to get used to the digital infrastructure. Coming from the smaller city of Lucerne, Tallinn is a lot busier and there is a lot going on. Not counting mountains, because it’s flat and just straight everywhere you look, but you have the ability to see a clearer panorama of the mixture between Wall Street-like architecture and the leftovers of the Soviet times. Tallinn feels a little bit like a mixture of Scandinavia: a typical modern banking-smart utopian city and traditional Soviet-European antiques. That’s why it feels like a delightful conglomerate of different backgrounds, every corner certainly has a different feeling. The atmosphere of a down to earth Kaurismaki fairy tale in one street, a melancholic Tarkovsky in the other and sometimes the cynical satirical Andersson, when you stand in front of a Ukrainian flag with the tourist tool in hand photographing the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. And in the middle of it all, close to the centre of Tallinn, you can find a quite small stop-motion studio called Nukufilm. So, let’s talk about filmmaking.

The story of my internship starts with an Estonian meeting, a general Monday gathering. Nothing unusual for the studio except having the Swiss person in it, trying to look like paying attention to the incomprehensible language and then having a short introduction in English.

There was not a lot of time for chit-chat, since they are at the end phase of a French coproduction and are a little bit stressed. Pretty straight forward, I got an atelier surrounded by a lot of tools. My first job is in props and so I started working. And oh, how do I like this studio, the working atmosphere is so friendly and from the first day on, I felt treated like being on the same level with all the employees. I think around 15-20 people work at Nukufilm. Therefore, it is pretty small and you get quickly familiar with the people and the working spaces.

After a week I already feel settled there. It feels normal to walk into the studio. Adapting to the work field was easier than I thought. Also holding back my will in creating my own things is pretty easy, I am capable of shutting it down and just do the things I am told to do. I am in this mindset from 9:00-17:30; the usual working hours of the studio; and can easily leave it behind when I step out the doors.

Now everything sounds so smooth, but let’s go back to the start and remind ourselves of the language. The language barrier is and will still be a topic for me. English is not the main language here, also not in the studio. I was surprised when I arrived and realised, that not everyone is good in English as I thought. Most of the studio members have sufficient knowledge of English, but sometimes there are still some problems in articulating certain information. Nevertheless, it worked out well this week, but it also underlines my status as an outsider. And even though I feel comfortable around here, I still have to get used to this fact.

I don’t know the Estonian word for goodbye yet, so when everyone leaves, I just simply mumble a BYE.

Electricity is scarce, you shower with cold fountain water and the stars appear as clear as ever – Out of home animation feels like escaping society for a few days, leaving all your day – to – day stress over 1000m below.

The OOHA experience started with a little hiking adventure. We enjoyed the view and got to meet all the wonderful people who joined the workshop from all over Europe. After three hours of walking uphill, and finally crossing the “DEATH VALLEY” (which is really just a slightly steeper pathway with some rubble), we had finally reached the Fromatthütte!

There, we received a warm welcome by Elena and Felix. They had already prepared food and cold drinks for everyone, which was highly appreciated. After dinner, we all needed some well-deserved rest.

The morning of the second day, Ewald, who grew up in the area, came to visit us. He told us fairytales about an infinite chunk of cheese, showed us where the dwarves have champaign parties and where the military tested grenades in the 80s. On an excursion through the underwood, he taught us a lot of interesting facts about the local fauna and flora.

Filled with inspiration, we then finally started gathering material for our projects. Some built puppets or knitted tiny outfits out of moss and grass, while others tried to lure butterflies with margarine.

We all embraced and collaborated with our surroundings to create films. Throughout the week, there were several inputs and screenings to spark new ideas. During the process I felt low pressure but very high creative energy. It was like a long needed mental reset for filmmaking.

The following days we got to know each other. We cooked and ate, played games, doodled and talked, and made movies together. The People at the Fromatt were very sweet and fun. It felt great spending time with such inspiring fellow artists!

In the middle of our stay, we went on another hike, to the Seebergsee. As it was a rather hot week, we were all happy to go cool down in a mountain lake. We were greeted by some lovely ducks who seemed very happy to see us. However, this took a turn when they started attacking us for food! Their mission succeeded, when they stole Elenas sandwiches (twice!!) After burying the hatchet with the ducks, we went for another swim to the small island in the middle of the lake, before heading back to the Fromatt.

The trip was a well-timed break and gave us just the right amount of distance from our projects. In the evening, we presented what we’d been working on with a fresh perspective.

We had some vague ideas about what people were doing, since we always surrounded each other. But actually seeing everyone’s progress gave us a new boost of excitement for the remaining time.

The last two days were spent mostly on our computers, where we processed the material we had gathered. All 20 people cozied up in one room and worked to the humming sound of the generator. We closed the last evening with a final screening of our progress.

With that, out of home came to an end. We played our last few rounds of Brändi Dog and got ready for bed.

In the morning, after everything was packed and the hut was cleaned, Godi came to pick up our luggage as we began the hike downhill. Shortly before arriving at the train station, some of us took the chance to buy some yummy local cheese. Then it was already time to say goodbye.

Some of the students from abroad stayed in Lucerne for a few more days. We made some fondue for the full Swiss experience, showed them around the city and doodled together for one last time.

Now summer is over. The semester has already started again, and I’m sitting in my atelier writing this text. The screening of the final OOHA films is only a month away and (although my own film still needs some work) I’m very much looking forward to seeing how everyone’s project came out in the edit!

I hope to carry as much of the OOHA spirit as possible into our graduation year. It was such a great experience, and I would 100% go again if I could! Thank you to everyone who participated, but especially Maja, Elena and Felix for making this so special!

(PS: In case you’re reading this before the screening: Be at the Rex the 26th of October at 17.00 to see our films!)

What the participants had to say about OOHA 2023:

«Out of home animation was the best summer experience! I really got the chance to find myself in this beautiful mountain nature and to learn to understand better my emotions and use them in my art. This workshop really helped me in exploring my boundaries in animation and made me become much more confident in experimenting. But the best part was definitely the people I got the chance to meet. They were all really cool and kind and accepting which made me feel like I could really open up to them.»
Eliška

«Meine Woche im OOHA in der Berner Bergwelt war das reinste Träumli. Jeden Morgen eine heisse Tasse Kaffee mit der wunderschönsten Aussicht, jeden Tag eine eiskalte Dusche aus dem Brunnen und jederzeit umgeben von ganz tollen und kreativen Menschen. Wie üblich im OOHA haben auch wir Filmprojekte umgesetzt. Dies jedoch ganz ohne Druck und mit sehr vielen Freiheiten. Es hat mir sehr grossen Spass gemacht und ich werde noch lange von dieser Zeit zehren. Vielen Dank!»
Laura

«t was one of the most beautiful experiences of the whole year. In the middle of the Swiss mountains, I completely lost track of time and just enjoyed the joy of creating with amazing, smart and funny people. Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this workshop!»
Klára

«For the project during out of Home I was in a team of two. That was very nice because we were not pressuring ourselves and just had a lot of fun working together, using the phone to make some pixilation of each other with the wide angle lens (I dunno if that’s the actual English word for it?).

Also It was lovely to meet so many new and awesome animation people from other countries. I really enjoyed the time in the mountains with them:)»
Luzia

Auf einer spärlich bewohnten, idyllischen Insel in der Nähe der norwegischen Kleinstadt Bodø befindet sich eine Gruppe seltsamer hölzerner Kabinen, in denen jeweils eine Künstlerin arbeitet. Gegen Ende des Sommers hatte ich das Glück und die Gelegenheit, zusammen mit zwei weiteren Kolleg*innen aus der Animationsbranche für drei Wochen in eine dieser Kabinen einzuziehen, um an meinem persönlichen Filmprojekt zu arbeiten.

Die Menschen, die ich während meiner Zeit im Arctic Hideaway kennengelernt habe, waren genauso inspirierend wie die einzigartige Umgebung. Da war zum Beispiel Trond, ein norwegischer Künstler, der mir viel über die norwegische Kultur und Geschichte erzählt hat, oder Misha, eine rumänische Metallbildhauerin, deren elegante und tiefgründige Werke mich genauso beeindruckt haben wie ihre Persönlichkeit.

In meiner Arbeit suche ich nach dem Absurden und dem Überschreiten von Grenzen. The Arctic Hideaway bot mir einen abgelegenen und inspirierend schönen Arbeitsplatz, der jedoch nicht an Vielfalt und skurrilen Interaktionen und Situationen mangelte. Es treffen sich verschiedenste Personen an einem von der Welt abgeschiedenen Ort, wo sie sich gemeinsam auf ihre Arbeit und das Zusammenleben konzentrieren.

Das Arctic Hideaway ist eine Residenz, die von der grenzenlosen Leidenschaft der Besitzer und Helfer sowie von uns, den Kunstschaffenden, belebt wird. In Zusammenarbeit mit der HSLU Design und Kunst ermöglichte uns das Arctic Hideaway, unsere Kreativität an diesen Ort zu bringen und in den naturnahen, wilden und dennoch stilvollen und harmonischen Alltag auf der Insel in Fleinvær einzutauchen und uns von ihm inspirieren zu lassen. Jetzt bin ich zurück in der Schweiz und teile meine Eindrücke begeistert mit allen, die zuhören möchten. Ich hoffe, dass ich auch andere ermutigen kann, eine dieser hölzernen Kabinen für eine Weile ihr Zuhause zu nennen.

Another year, another LuMAA!

This time around with air-conditioning. The course and its structure stayed the same, but on hot days, the air-conditioning was a blessing – since PC-stuffed rooms aren’t known for their inherent coolness, temperature-wise. As per usual, we opened the doors of the course to fellow students from partner schools, namely Jirio and Harry from Filmakademie Baden Württemberg, Violette and Robin from MOPA, and Astrid, Sofie, and Liva from TAW. Oh, and us, of course, a rambunctious bunch from HSLU, with first years in the majority.

The location, the PC room of our dear animation department. The students, a wild bunch from all over, eager to learn. The software, Maya, a difficult beast to master. The teachers, a great many with years of experience under their belt, ready to guide us to new heights of animation. So here’s how that went down.

Week 1 – Walk cycles with Yves Ruprecht

Beginnings are difficult. Especially if you have never touched Maya before. Luckily, Yves was there to help us newcomers start off on the right foot, so to speak. He recommended a return to the basics–so we all hopped on a treadmill and shot references of each other. Later, we analyzed our walks as preparation for animating our walk cycles. This task was a familiar one—but this time around, we were able to push them further with Yves’ feedback, be it a vanilla walk or one with more personality.

Yves is not only a kind and motivating person, but also a great informant on everything regarding the animation industry and what to expect as we enter the field. One especially important piece of advice: you need patience to find the right job in this industry. But in the end, that patience pays off.

Week 2 – Lip-sync with Ramon Arango and Noah Demirci

In week two, Ramon and Noah returned to LuMAA–not as students, but as the teachers up front. They told us they were nervous–but seeing how passionately they spoke about the subtleties of facial animation, we would never have known if they hadn’t said so. Two pieces of advice stood out in particular. Firstly, blinks can be wonderfully diverse, and very effective in showing the inner world of a character. Secondly, not every sound has to have its own mouth movement in order to feel believable—a hint is often enough.

“No matter how many years of experience you have in this industry, each new shot is a new challenge … and to realize that was eye-opening. “  – Noah Demirci

Week 3 – Creature Anim: Walk cycles with Lukas Niklaus

Due to a scheduling mistake, Ramon was kind enough to teach for the first two days of the week before Lukas took over. Armed with experience working on creature animation at Weta, the studio behind the VFX of Avatar and LOTR, he was the perfect teacher to help us tackle the quadruped’s walk cycle. Most of us animated a tiger, so he was able to concentrate on teaching us in-depth detail and knowledge about how this marvelous creature moves. Thanks to him, we all managed to incorporate even the smallest details, down to the subtle rotation of the core and the squish of the paws. Alongside teaching, he showed us examples of the impressive professional projects he has taken part in–including work from the studio “floating rocks”, which he is co-leading.

Week 4 – Creature Anim: Body mechanics with Michael Aerni

We all know it to be true–everything in animation is a bouncing ball. Armed with this golden nugget of knowledge and guidance from Michael, we made simple shapes move around. Since Michael animates mainly in a layered fashion, we took it upon ourselves to try it out, with great success. Many liked this layered approach so much, they continued to use it in the following weeks. For the uninitiated, layered animation is a method where you focus first on the movement of the character’s core, and then “layer in” the limbs and other secondary elements. Instead of making one full pose after the other, you slowly build the animation from the core. This has the advantage of making the weight of the character look and feel more believable in less time than a pose-to-pose approach. It is a process that takes a bit to get used to, but is certainly worth learning.

Week 5 – Acting shot with Nicole Ridgewell

The week with Nicole started even before the week began, as we were tasked with finding good dialogue–a quest much more difficult than initially presumed. All recognizable samples (those which are already overused in acting shots) were immediately struck out, and we were sent on a search for our own characters and their stories.  That involved daily observational drawing, looking both into ourselves and at the people around us. Adding all of that together, we pitched our shot and got started. Our goal? To reach IP by the end of the week. IP (short for “in progress”) is the stage of production where, although many things are still rough and need to be polished, the central idea of the shot is already clearly communicated and can be built upon with more work. By Friday, we were fully invested in the characters we had built up over the course of the week, and were looking forward to Week 6—when we would finally flesh out the animation in more detail.

Week 6 – Acting shot with Dan Nguyen

Not only did Dan bring his vast understanding of character acting, but also a calmness that perfectly complemented Nicole’s energy from the week before. With his wise words and insightful feedback, we started to polish our acting shot. It takes a lot of time and a good eye to spot which small subtleties require correction, but with Dan’s help, we made great strides in this vital skill. With that we were learning the last lesson of LuMAA, true patience. It takes a lot of time to go from the initial idea to polish. Every curve is cleaned out, all arcs are accounted for, the small deformations of hands are added, cheeks are squished into appealing shapes … all the small details are refined truly bring the performance to life.

“If you don’t have that connection to people who are actually doing the job, it can seem kind of abstract and distant.” – Dan Nguyen

Ping pong and other worthwhile activities

Unbelievably, we did not just animate for six weeks straight, but also lived our lives to the fullest. With such an amazing cast of characters, how could we not have fun? (Besides when we were screaming at our computers.) We cooked together, had weekly barbeque parties, and screened each other’s graduation movies as well as inspiring films and series in the REX (the school’s mini movie theater). Some of us got so good at ping pong that they graduated to playing with dustpans instead of paddles. We learned drinking games and had chocolate and beer tastings.

The weather was wild, from very cold rainy weather, where the aircon was our doom (we could not set the temperature, so it got rather chilly at times), to scorching heat, where the only escape was the river. We went swimming often, floating along with the current, and even enjoying a boat ride.

With all these experiences behind us, Maya almost trauma-bonding us together, and just being around each other for six weeks, it was hard to say goodbye. But time marched onward, and the experience ended. For some, school would commence again soon, while others had to start searching for a job, and yet others were beginning internships. Before we all went our separate ways, we promised we would see each other again soon, be it at festivals, in the industry, or—perhaps—even at next year’s LuMAA.

Thanks to Nicole, Dan, Michael, Lukas, Roman, Noah, and Yves, we now understand that a fulfilling life working in film is not only possible, but likely. Great opportunities await us in the entertainment sector, and we are lucky to be a part of it in these exciting times! One thing all our teachers agreed on: they are happy with their decision to enter the film industry. Even after 20 intense years of working on big movies to independent productions, they couldn’t imagine doing something different. We cannot imagine anything else either.

At the start of February 2023, four 2nd year students from the HSLU Animation department (Alice, Dario, the other Dario and me, Sven) were invited to join the “My Hidden Dinosaur” workshop at the Film University Babelsberg in Potsdam.

The goal of the workshop was to create a short film in the span of five days. “My Hidden Dinosaur” is the successor of “Animation Unplugged” which was led by Gil Alkabetz, who sadly passed away in 2022.
Shortly after arriving at the Film University, we were greeted by Anna Sumo who now leads the workshop. In the morning of the first day, we talked and wrote about our deepest fears – what an ice breaker! In the afternoon we spent an hour animating blindfolded to get the creative juices flowing.
Not only the drawing itself, but already the organization of the workspace turned out to be quite the challenge. Alice worked with wax crayons and developed a way of trying to feel the textures where she had drawn as a way to orient herself. Anna challenged us to implement at least one frame of the resulting animations into our final products.

After this exercise we started gathering ideas for the films we were going to create in the four days left. Later, the students from Potsdam showed us around their massive campus.
The majority of the second day was spent gathering and workshopping ideas around thefears we wrote down on the first morning. I was quite surprised about the fact that most people wanted to work on their own, as we are used to working in teams. In the end, the Darios and I turned out to be the only people who made a film as a group. However, we did discuss each other’s ideas a lot and gave each other inputs throughout the week.

Apart from these feedback sessions everyone spent their time until Friday afternoon fiddling on their films. Normally, the musicians would compose the music to our films on Friday after we are done animating. This year however the schedules of the music department didn’t fit ours, so they provided us pre-composed music on Wednesday evening, which we then had to put into our already half done films.
We spent the evenings going out for drinks, visiting Berlin and enjoying an improvised, but also very cozy short film screening in the stop-motion cellar (sorry for the bad focus of the picture, but look how charming!). On Friday we had our final screening and celebrated the results as well as the time we shared.

Making a film in one week stood in stark contrast to the idents we had been working on until the week before the workshop. It was exciting to see what could be done in a week after we had all worked on 20-30 second projects for half a year.
Unfortunately, ours is the only film currently available online. You can watch it here:

Diesen Februar wurde zum ersten Mal der „Living Lines Workshop“  – ein Vertiefungskurs für 2D Animation – an der Hochschule Luzern Design & Kunst durchgeführt, und zwar von zwei Alumni: Amélie Cochet und Louis Möhrle, aka Studio PIAF. Wie kam dieser Workshop zu Stande und wie war die Woche für die Beteiligten? Wir baten Amélie und Louis, uns ihre Erfahrungen zu schildern.

“Die Idee entstand während des Filmfestivals Locarno an einem späten Abend. Sie gärte aber schon lange in unseren Köpfen – bereits während den drei Jahren unseres Studiums in Animation wünschten wir uns sehnlichst eine 2D Version der LUMAA. Als dies auch im Sommer nach unserem Abschluss noch in den Sternen zu stehen schien, entschieden wir uns – noch nicht ganz so ernsthaft – einfach selber eine „2D LUMAA“ auf die Beine zu stellen.

Wir fingen damit an, mit unserer Idee auf verschiedene Leute aus der Schweizer Animations-Szene zu zu gehen und waren überrascht, wie viele uns darin ermutigten oder uns sogar ihre Hilfe anboten; es schien tatsächlich ein allgemeines Bedürfnis zu sein.

Also begannen wir damit uns ernsthafter damit auseinanderzusetzen: wir überlegten uns was wir an Infrastruktur und Lehrpersonen brauchten; wo, wann und wie das Ganze stattfinden sollte und wie wir es finanzieren könnten. Ein anderer Aspekt war, herauszufinden, wie wir das Interesse der Leute dafür wecken; wer unsere Zielgruppe ist; was wir persönlich davon erwarten und wie wir die Werbung möglichst weit streuen könnten. Wir verfassten eine Konzeptskizze und gingen auf die Abteilungsleiter des BA Animation an der HSLU zu, die uns ebenfalls in unserem Vorhaben bekräftigten und sofort ihre Unterstützung zusagten.

Schliesslich hatten wir alles zusammen: Dozierende, Räumlichkeiten, Materie, einen groben Zeitplan und einen Wochenaufbau. 

Die erste Ausführung war ein Erfolg – es wurde viel gelehrt und gelernt, gelacht und ausprobiert. Wir haben den einwöchigen Kurs in verschiedene Themen gegliedert und diverse Aufgaben zur Verfügung gestellt, aus denen die Teilnehmenden eine passende auswählen konnten, mit der sie sich während der Woche zu den unterschiedlichen Themen auseinandersetzen konnten. 

Frederic Siegel (links) und Veronica L. Montaño (rechts) machten als Dozierende den Einstieg in die Materie und gaben am Montag und Dienstag Inputs und Feedback zu den Themen Staging, Keyframes und Characterdesign. Weiter ging es am Mittwoch und Donnerstag mit Justine Klaiber und Nino Christen, die Acting, Lip Sync und Basic Animation unterrichteten und den Teilnehmenden individuelles Feedback auf ihre jeweiligen Szenen gaben. Zu guter Letzt gab Etienne Mory am Freitag den Teilnehmenden Feedback und Einblicke in das erstellen eines Tie Downs und in verschiedene Aspekte der 2D FX Animation. Am Samstag profitierten die Teilnehmenden von der Infrastruktur und konnten frei und nach Belieben an ihren Szenen weiterarbeiten. Den Abschluss machten wir alle zusammen am Sonntag mit einer Kino-Session, wo wir die entstandenen Projekte sehen und kommentieren konnten. Wir beendeten den Kurs schliesslich mit einer ausführlichen Feedbackrunde auf die ein kleines Apéro und gemütliches Beisammensein folgte.  

Mit dem Elan, den wir nun nach dem ersten Kurs haben, setzen wir uns gleich an die Planung der nächsten Durchführung im 2021. Da wir bester Zuversicht sind, dass der „Living Lines Workshop“ jährlich durchgeführt werden kann und sollte – werden wir alles daran setzen, eine angemessene Dauer gewährleisten zu können und den Kurs auf die Spitze der Professionalität zu treiben, damit die Teilnehmenden in Zukunft maximal davon profitieren können. Wir haben bereits Pläne für den nächsten Kurs und Ideen, wie wir diese umsetzen und finanzieren können.

An dieser Stelle danken wir noch ganz herzlich den Dozierenden der ersten Ausgabe: Veronica L. Montaño, Justine Klaiber, Etienne Mory, Nino Christen und Frederic Siegel! Sie waren mit grossem Engagement, Kompetenz und Begeisterung am Werk – es war eine wahre Freude mit ihnen! Auch den Teilnehmenden des ersten Kurses ein herzliches Dankeschön für euer Vertrauen und eure Rückmeldungen, es hat uns sehr gefreut, zu sehen wie motiviert ihr an der Arbeit wart!

Wir würden uns freuen, bei einer nächsten Ausgabe wieder begeisterte Animatorinnen und Animatoren an Bord zu haben, die mit Begeisterung Neues lernen und diese Plattform für ihre persönliche Weiterbildung und Vertiefung in der Kunst der 2D Animation nutzen wollen.

Informationen zur nächsten Durchführung wird es in baldiger Zukunft auf diversen Kanälen geben. Ihr findet den Living Lines Workshop auf Instagram und Facebook, folgt uns dort, um immer auf dem neuesten Stand zu bleiben und Einblicke in den ersten Kurs zu erhalten!

Bleibt gespannt und geschmeidig

Herzlich
Louis Möhrle & Amélie Cochet 
aka Studio PIAF

Living Lines Workshop auf Facebook
Living Lines Workshop auf Instagram

Schon hat die vierte Woche der LuMAA angefangen, und die Konzentration ist nach wie vor hoch.

Woche 3: Creature Animation

Dozent in der dritten Woche war Michael Aerni, der ebenfalls bei Weta Digital in Neuseeland arbeitet.

Zieht euch mal sein Showreel rein, da werde ich ganz kribbelig und will das auch mal machen (:

https://vimeo.com/145841969

Mit Respekt näherten wir uns dem Creature Animation Shot an, denn auch wenn wir auf 150 Frames beschränkt wurden, der Workload war riesig… Ich hatte zwei Tiger, die miteinander kämpften, und schaffte gerade mal, 50 Frames auf einen relativ sauberen Stand zu bringen. Aber ich bin trotzdem sehr zufrieden mit dem Ergebnis, da ich zuvor noch nie eine Interaktion zwischen zwei Kreaturen animiert hatte.

Die verschiedenen Farben dienen der einfacheren Auseinanderhaltung der beiden Tiger bei dieser komplexen Interaktion.

Wie schon in den ersten beiden Wochen hatten wir die fantastische Möglichkeit, uns direkt zu unseren Shots Rückmeldung zu holen; Michael war sehr hilfsbereit und hilfreich!

Woche 4: Lip Sync

Zur Zeit läuft die vierte Woche mit Stefan Schumacher, der uns von Pixar besucht.

Lip Sync und ein kleiner Acting Shot stehen auf dem Plan. Ich habe mir eine wahrscheinlich viel zu subtile Szene ausgewählt, denn ich habe so meine liebe Mühe mit animieren diese Woche. Vielleicht merke ich mittlerweile einfach auch, dass ich schon vier Wochen jeden Tag zwischen sieben und acht Stunden am animieren bin, etwas, was ich noch nie zuvor gemacht habe. Es ist also nicht nur ein Vergnügen, auch wenn es Spass macht! Doch wir beissen uns natürlich durch, denn das Lernen steht im Vordergrund.

Wie schon die Dozenten vor ihm hat Stefan uns sehr viele nützliche Tipps gegeben, zum Beispiel in welcher Reihenfolge man am besten die grosse Aufgabe des Lipsyncs angeht. Auch in einem eher simplen Rig eines Gesichts hat es viele Controller, von denen man sich nicht einschüchtern lassen darf!

Stefan nahm sich sehr viel Zeit für unsere einzelnen Anliegen, was sehr angenehm war und uns wahnsinnig weiterhalf.

Wir gingen auf viele Details ein, zum Beispiel welche Teile des Gesichts sich bei einer Änderung von Emotionen zuerst bewegen oder wie man Denkprozesse eines Charakters rüberbringen kann. Faszinierend, was man alles mit kleinsten Bewegungen universal lesbar ausdrücken kann!

 

Text: Rhoda Berger
Fotos: Leoni Dietrich