Wow… 2012… Time flies when you’re having fun. 2011 was a very tumultuous year, with a lot (a LOT) of cool projects, a lot of new people and a lot of changes in the studio. So it’s safe to say, that 2011 was crazy busy, which can only be a good thing. Having said that, we do feel somewhat sorry about the lack of updates on our website, but rest assured that in 2012 we’ll try to be much more active on the website. Beginning with a boat-load of news, new work and animated awesomeness coming to the website at the beginning of March. So check back with us then, for our RocknRoll Animation Spring 2012 Update Extravaganza!

Like we promised you in the last post, here’s a look at one of our latest projects: the promotional launch animation for StoryCatcher. StoryCatcher is a new media initiative by the Veronica association, that gives young people the chance to create their own film. Kids between the ages of 13 and 23 can submit their movie-idea to Veronica, after which they go through a selection process, at the end of which, the winners get a substantial amount of money and the help of industry professionals, to actually go and direct their film.
For more information, check out www.storycatcher.nl

RocknRoll created the promotional animation to launch this new initiative. We were responsible for the entire production, from concept to finished final product. Sound design was done by our buddies at GreenCouch (www.greencouch.nl) and the voice-over was taken care of by the people at Veronica. The production was done in Full HD and will be screened at movietheatres, music festivals and, of course, on the internet. Total production time was about one month, from briefing to final deliverable.

Checkout the final animation above and scroll down for a look at a selection of artwork and high resolution stills from the animation.

Moving storyboard:

High resolution stills (click to enlarge image):

March..? March 2011..? What the hell man! Time is going way to fast. We’ve hit the ground running this year, with three cool projects running simultaneously. We’ve already finished the first one, which turned out pretty cool and can be seen on rocknrollanimation.nl in about two weeks. On the other project we just wrapped-up the pre-production, finishing up artwork and moving-storyboards. And on the third project, the short film Waterlanders, things are moving quite quickly as well. Besides getting a firm grasp on what we want to do visually, character and environment designing, a few weeks ago we wrapped-up the first storyboard, weighing in at over 350 panels… So, that means we need to get out our editing knife and cut out all the fat.
So the year is well underway and things are looking pretty good. And while things have been a bit slow on the website, you can expect a lot of new work popping up here in the coming weeks.

The snow is falling, the nights are long, the days are cold and the first year of RocknRoll Animation is coming to an end. And what a first year it was: we’ve done a couple of great projects, we met a lot of kickass people and we already have a bunch of awesome projects lined up for next year. So, we’d like to wish everybody happy holidays and a rockin’ new year!

Check out our animated holidays greeting below!

While it’s common knowledge that most animators are just inches away of being 8-year olds, this fact can’t become anymore apparent, than when an animator is presented with crayons. We LOVE crayons, especially these pastel crayons. They behave almost like oil paint and they’re ideal for quickly sketching colour designs and moody concept art. So, it may come as no surprise that our fingers are currently, permanently stained with dreary grays, mystical greens and earthy browns, while working on the pre-production for our dark and moody short film.
But we’ll give our hands a break from looking like muddy rainbows, as we just received the final draft of the script and will finally begin the storyboarding process.

So, what have we been up to lately? Well, first of all we’re working hard on the short film project for il luster. The writer is currently busy finishing up a ‘final’ draft of the script. Meanwhile, we’ve continued working on the art direction, character designs and set designs. This means a lot of sketching, painting en getting loads and loads of reference materials (whoohoo, field trips!). Last week, on a cold and dreary day, we went to the forests near Putten and we were able to shoot some awesome footage and we got a lot of ideas for the film, both for settings and cinematography. Good stuff. Hopefully we’ll have a version of the script at the end of the month ready to be storyboarded.

We’re also finishing up work on a short 2D/live-action commercial project. Arjan is currently finishing up inking and colouring, after which Gatze will take everything in compositing.

And finally, besides doing a ton of pitching, we’re working on the snail project again. It’s coming along nicely, sculpting and shading being more or less done. They’re now ready to be rigged and animated, so that’s pretty cool. But the coolest thing to note about the snail project, is that we’re using it in our migration to Blender and Maxwell. Yes, that’s right, from now on all of our 3D CG animation will be done in Blender and rendered in Maxwell. While changing software is always somewhat trying, we’re actually very happy with the move. Blender has recently become a very mature and professional 3D authoring program and Maxwell has been one of the most awesome render engines, since we first started using it, over 4 years ago. The more we’re using our new pipeline, the more confident we get in our choice to change software.

New stuff in the Our Work section! We’ve created a montage of all the shots we created for the World Class Maintenance project ‘Join the Future’. Also included are a couple of Full-HD stills. Enjoy!

And that ideal size is 35mm. While that might sound somewhat small, in film, it’s exactly what you want. Say hello to our new toy, uhm, I mean cinematic film making tool: the JAG35. The JAG35 is a 35mm adapter, which allows us to use 35mm lenses on our HD video camera. The use of 35mm lenses helps you give your footage a very cinematic feel, characterized by a very shallow depth of field. We’ve done a couple of short tests and we love the footage coming out of the thing, so it’s definitely going to have a lot of use in future projects.
Speaking of which: we’ve already started work on a couple of new projects. First of all, we’ve continued work on our short film project. Currently, we’re busy writing a new adaptation of the writers final script and continuing the character and environment design process. We’ve also started pre-production on a small, traditional 2D project, which will be finished in November. And finally we’re in talks on doing two larger commercial projects.

With the World Class Maintenance promotional film in use, we’re now able to show you the end result of what we’ve been working on together with the Film Factory and Klas2. Sound designer Ronnie van der Veer created the sound effects for our (as of yet, still nameless) green character. So pull up your easychair and enjoy the following five minutes of Maintenance:

Oh, and for all those busy people with less than 5 minutes to spare, we’ve extracted a couple of shots for the animation enthusiast on the go. Enjoy!

Pfheeuw… It’s finally done! And we can finally talk about what we were doing these past two months. As you know, we were working on a fairly large project and you’ve seen some small snippets from the pre-production process. Well, we were working on a promotional video for a new area of studies, called ‘maintenance’, for the southern Dutch ROC’s and HBO’s. As part of the World Class Maintenance campaign, we were hired by our fellow Utrechters at the Film Factory, to design, create and animate a mascot of sorts, to play the leading role in this promotional video.
After a lengthy pre-production process of character designing, prop designing, focus testing and storyboarding, we had one month to model, rig, shade, animate, light, render and composite over a 100 seconds of animation… in Full HD! Never one to shy away from a challenge, RocknRoll took the project head-on and managed to deliver on time and on budget.
Now, after some much needed sleep, we thought a blog post was long overdo, so check out a selection of our final design process and check back with us next week to see the actual film. We are a MOVING picture company after all.