Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 2, 2015. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
“The Present” won its 50th festival award as “Best Short Film” at the Belgian Filem’On Festival, which took place at the beginning of November. Filmakademie alumnus Jacob Frey, who successfully completed his studies in “Animation Directing” at the Animation Institute of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in 2014, received the great news in Hollywood, where he recently completed the “Talent Development Programme” at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Frey is currently working on the Disney project “Zootopia”. Only the trailer for “The Present” is currently online, but the team would like to release the full-length film with its powerful story in early 2016.
You can find the full interview with Jacob Frey in the animago section of DP 07 : 2015. Here is an extract.
DP: What inspired you to make “The Present”?
Jacob Frey: The idea for the film was based on a webcomic I found one night on www.9gag.com while looking for inspiration, and when I came across it I had just finished working on the children’s film project “Room on the Broom” at Studio Soi and was starting my diploma film. I saw the comic by Fabio Coala(www.mentirinhas.com.br) and knew immediately that this HAD to be my graduation film. The story blew me away and, as a big dog fan, really touched me. And it was also perfect from a production point of view: it featured three characters, one of whom only appears briefly; there were also quadruped and biped characters, which meant animation diversity, and only one environmental setting in which everything takes place.
DP: How big was the team?
Jacob Frey: The team that actually worked on the film continuously was – I think – very small for a project like this. Of course, there were several people who worked on it from time to time, but most of the time there were less than a handful of people working on the film.
DP: How long did you work on “The Present”?
Jacob Frey: Overall, the work from contacting Fabio to the final film took about a year and three months.
DP: How were you able to optimise the project process?
Jacob Frey: It was important to me that everyone who helped was always provided with work and that as little time as possible was wasted keeping people waiting for assets. So in the early days I spent a lot of time making preparations for each helper. Since no rendering tests could have taken place without a set and textures, I first modelled the complete set and created all the UVs; I also created dummy textures in the right size for each object and linked them to the objects. This meant that Natalia Alencar could paint textures for the set and the characters directly in Mari – without any annoying preliminary work.
DP: Which tools did you use for what in detail?
Jacob Frey: We modelled, rigged, animated and rendered in Maya. We created most of the textures in Mari – a tool I had never used before. However, Natalia Alencar had a lot of experience with it and now I couldn’t imagine a project without Mari. Yeti Fur was used for all fur and hair matters. Fortunately, Pascal Floerks had already put a lot of research work into Fur for his own diploma film “Bär” (see also DP 03:2014) and helped us to use Yeti. Rendering was done with Renderman and, to be honest, that was something I was very afraid of.
DP: Why?
Jacob Frey: Some Film Academy projects had previously tried to use Renderman for a film. However, it was often too complicated to use the tool to create a pipeline for a student film. In many cases, they switched to a different renderer in the middle of production. In order to finish on time, however, I needed someone to take over the lighting and rendering part. Markus Kranzler was interested in doing all the rendering for the film – but only on the condition that Renderman was used. I won’t deny it: there were often problems with Renderman during production, but that was also simply because we had to familiarise ourselves with it first. It was the first time that Markus had built up a complete pipeline for a film. So it took some time to find a sensible way to do it. However, the Renderman forum provided us with the best possible support and every problem was solved sooner or later. Markus Kranzler did a great job; in the end he lit and rendered all the shots in the film AND we finished on time. (you can find the Renderman article by Pixar artist Markus Kranzler in the Render Focus of DP 07 : 2016)
DP: How many concepts were necessary for the final look?
Jacob Frey: Max Lang realised relatively quickly which direction the look should take, and in just a few weeks we already had a final design for the boy and the dog
the dog. Bin-Han To also produced – based on my Blockmatic – Lighting
Moods from the key shots. In general, the Previs phase went with very few iterations – we always worked productively and efficiently in the right direction.
DP: Looking back, what would you do differently or optimise?
Jacob Frey: Nothing really. Of course you learn new things over time and look back on old projects – nowadays you would certainly approach them differently. But I think the whole team can look back proudly and say that at the time it was the best thing they could have done
was the best they could realise in the time frame. We put a lot of work
into this project and I am very proud of the result and the work that everyone has done.
DP: What was the biggest challenge of the project in general?
Jacob Frey: One of the biggest hurdles was getting the rights to the story in the first place. After all, you can’t just take a comic that you find on the internet and make a film out of it. The comic itself was in English, but when I started researching the comic artist, I quickly ended up on a website where I couldn’t understand a word. Fabio Coala comes from Brazil and speaks almost exclusively Portuguese. That’s why I didn’t receive a reply to the first email I sent him the same night I discovered the comic. Fortunately, Natalia Alencar is from Brazil and some of her friends were friends with Fabio on Facebook. She then wrote a message with me in Portuguese and I contacted him directly via Facebook and I finally got a reply. He had no objections to the animated film and we started work. When we showed him the finished film a year later, we realised that he hadn’t expected it to be so big. He and his wife cried with joy – they were very happy with the result.
DP: How did you manage to get accepted by Disney?
Jacob Frey: Thanks to the Film Academy and FMX, I was able to make contact with people at Disney for several years. In my opinion, FMX is unique for something like this in Germany: nowhere else can big companies like Pixar
and Disney can be approached as easily as during this one week in Stuttgart. However, contacts alone are not enough to gain a foothold in the animation industry.
DP: What else is needed?
Jacob Frey: Disney has a one-year Talent Development Programme every year,
which graduates can take part in. In the first three months, they are supervised by mentors and prepared for a possible role in production. Hundreds of people apply for this programme every year and only five people are ultimately selected for the animation department. To be honest, I don’t know exactly how I got into the programme. Maybe it was because – although I had only just finished my degree at the time – I was able to gain a lot of work experience during my studies. Working on the Oscar-nominated short film “Room on the Broom”, which was directed by Max Lang and Jan Lachauer, helped me the most. This project taught me a lot about animation and the scenes were a big plus in my reel. Another plus was certainly the fact that several of my own short films had screened successfully at festivals.
Team “The Present”
Director, Animation: Jacob Frey
Character Designs: Max Lang
Look Dev, Lighting Moods: Bin-Han To
Character Modelling: Anja Wacker
Body Rigs: Polina Bambi
Face rigs boy and dog: Pascal Floerks
Facial rig mother: Hanna Binswanger
Texturing: Natalia Alencar
Rendering, Lighting: Markus Kranzler
Compositing: Falko Paeper, Matthias Bäuerle
Sound Design: Marco Manzo
Soundtrack: Tobias Bürger, Sarah Kämmerer
Production: Anna Matacz
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