Ka-Ching

Whoohoo!
Janneke and I (Harmke) went to Ka-Ching last Friday.
It was pretty cold outside, but inside the train it was nice and warm :)

It all started at the trainstation of Amsterdam Central.
We were sitting in the train at platform 14B.
A woman outside took a picture of us and we waved at her to make her happy :)
We never knew we had fans!!!

Well.... we arrived at Rotterdam Central pretty quick.
Here the adventure of "finding the bus" started.
It's kind of a chaos at Rotterdam Central, with all mudd and signs pointing in the wrong direction....
But we made it to bus 44!
The busdriver was very kind and told us where we had to get out.

Finding Ka-Ching was not very hard.
So everything went fine!

The end...



Ka-Ching
Owh I almost forgot to tell what Joost and Erik had to tell :)
First a little piece of historystuff:
They met eachother at an Artschool in Rotterdam.
For internships they went to Arjan Wilschut and Cartoon Salloon (Ireland).
They learned a lot there.
At Cartoon Salloon they, for example, worked on Skunk Fu.

Tricks

1. Joost and Erik showed us some files of Skunk Fu. Every character is editable to create the pose you like. All the bodyparts are clickable in the Flashfile, by doing that you enter the specific bodypart. There you see multiple frames, with each a possible position of the bodypart. It's like a dress doll :)
2. They prefer to draw directly in the computer. So do what fits you best.
3. If it fits in your style, you can use 3D for backgrounds. Joost and Erik prefer a 2D-look so they use only 3D-stills for backgrounds. It has to look like 2D so no "impressive" 3Dview of the background items and stuff. (And I agree :))

Work
Joost and Erik showed us some of there work.

3D-machine is a short with which they won an "Shocking Short Award" at the Dutch Filmfestival. A trip to Hollywood and Universal Studios is also part of the award :). Janneke and I watched the cartoon with the special 3D-glasses, but both of us are not completely able to see the 3D-effect-stuff so that was a pity. Allthough the cartoon was nice and cool and hot and....well..... AWESOME :)

Currently Joost and Erik are working on a cartoon-opera called "Kakkerlak". They showed us a short version (3 minutes) of the cartoon, which will become 25 minutes. The cartoon will be finished some where arround 2011, so we have to be patient.

Janneke and I are not allowed to talk about the "secret-stuff" so I'm not going to do that. Haha that will make you all pretty curious ^-^ gna gna!

AND!

We also saw modelsheets of Skunk Fu and art work from "Brendan and the Secret of the Kells" (which will be released in February'09). Teaser of this movie:

Owh and!

They had the awesome dvdbox of the Animator's Survival Kit!

I was pretty amazed by the fact that Richard really writes like he does in the book ^-^.

The book is very valuable, but don't examples copy directly, except when it is to learn from it (instead of using it for your work... well you understand :)). The dvdbox is even more valueable because Richard explains everything more clear. It's a pity that the dvdbox "only" costs 900 euros :(

Feedback

• Cut more things out of the story to 1. make the story more clear and 2. to make it easier for yourselves. For example the cat and the sister can be deleted, because they are not that important for the story besides that they are "there". So cut untill there's nothing left to leave out.
• Because Victer has an hangover, it's not realistic that he has a conversation with the lady from the bar. Maybe it's more nice to let her call him and speak to his voicemail. So Victer hears it from his voicemail and is happy than or something.
• Think about the environments. You have a lot of different locations, that is going to take a lot of work. For example, the disco Victor is visiting with Steve can be quite empty. 1. this is easier and 2. it makes the place even more booooring.
• Use a lot of stills
• Use smart points of view
• Create the animatic and add animated pieces. Probably you are not able to finish the animation in the quality you want. So it's wise to create an animatic with pieces of animation, so you are able to show your quality. The story is told by that, but with some pieces of animatic and animation. You better have this than an unfinished animation or a finished animation with is not as pretty as you wanted it to be.

Janneke and I enjoyed the meeting with Joost and Erik like rainbows and my little ponies. AWESOME. Eveybody that wasn't there missed soooo much fun, energy, inspiration.. and the secrets ofcourse gna gna!