Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 27, 2005. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The Munich Film Festival and the Munich Media Days provide the occasion for the Animation Meeting twice a year. The venue for what was now the seventh Animation Meeting this time was a somewhat sterile landscape of trade show stands on the edge of the Munich Media Days.
As guests of the organizer Medien Campus Bayern, moderator Gert Zimmermann of Filmtools Consult was able this time to present Zeljko Karajica (Creation Club), Stephan Lethaus (4k Animation) and Peter Popp (Softmachine).
Zeljko Karajica revealed numerous details to the audience from the creation process of two future Premiere formats: The “Hollywood WG” brings together Flash-animated caricatures of famous film personalities such as Nick Nolte, Demi Moore or Charlton Heston in a shared apartment. Karajica and Gert Zimmermann, who was also involved, showed step by step how the look of the project emerged from the initial designs. By using the Flash format, those involved hope for greatly reduced effort and, above all, faster production.
The implementation of the “World Cup Experts” is further advanced: The format is to launch for the draw of the World Cup matches on December 9 in Leipzig. Also Flash-animated, football authorities such as Franz Beckenbauer and Rudi Völler discuss the events and provide proof that everything can be said with a repertoire of only 50 original phrases.
Stephan Lethaus took the podium for Berlin as an animation location. He emphasized that his company 4k Animation successfully produces only in the capital and outsources no work steps. To the delight of the students in the audience, he also praised the good quality of training in Germany.
Lethaus’ most important current project is “Marvi Hämmer”: The CG rat is the presenter of the National Geographic children’s programs and is animated solely by keyframes. For cost reasons, the good 40 shots for each moderation are created in a real, rented news studio, into which 4k Animation inserts the computer-generated Marvi character during compositing. In this way, four moderations at a time are created in two days per shooting.
By far the most technically demanding was the last project presented that evening: “Kaluoka’hina: The Enchanted Reef” is the 30-minute story about an enchanted reef invisible to humans and its rescue from disenchantment. Peter Popp and his company Softmachine produced the film specifically for 360-degree cinema domes (“full dome theater”). Although only one suitable dome exists in Germany so far, at the Hamburg Planetarium, 45,000 viewers have already seen the film there. The film has also already been sold to other European countries and the USA.
A sophisticated system of six to nine projectors throws the film onto the dome-shaped screen in such a way that the viewer feels placed in the middle of the action. Softmachine had to solve numerous problems such as diffuse stray light. Recording the 3D animation with five virtual cameras (top, front, rear, left and right) was also difficult. Animatics helped the team imagine what the viewer could see in their field of vision. But movement also always had to take place outside it – automated schools of fish provided the cost- and time-efficient solution here.
The next Animation Meeting is planned for the Munich Film Festival in summer 2006.
