Trailer Kleurrijk Wit (Colourful White)

Finally, the trailer for my short animation film I graduaded with a few months back!

Trailer Kleurrijk Wit from Julia Jager on Vimeo.

Showreel 2013

I've got a new showreel but it's still private on Vimeo.
I encountered more problems with the audio then I expected, because it's copyright infringement.
So I have to find myself some other catchy tune ;)

For now you can watch it with a password! I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Enjoy and stay tuned for more news!


Showreel2013 from Julia Jager on Vimeo.

Password; Showreel2013

Update on graduating

Although I'm keeping you posted via this website: http://juliajagergraduation.blogspot.com

Here is some work I've been posting there.

My story is about a little girl that lives in a colored village, with lots of colored houses, but her own house is still white. She has to find her own color and realizes she always had it in her.

Project finish date is June 17th. 23rd of June I'll know if my graduation is approved and June 28th I will get my certificate, if that's the case :). There's an exhibition of all the graduates in my school, that will open the night of June 28th, till the third of July. (Beukenlaan 1, Breda, The Netherlands).

Rough of the street, something to hold onto, so it won't be total chaos in me head ;) Will probably be changed while the story evolves.

Different take on my character :)

Entry for a competition

Last semester we have been busy with a little project, which became quite big in the end.. It was supposed to be a warm up, before we would start on our graduation films. Apparently last semester wasn't part of our 'graduation' yet, so instead we had a different assignment in which we could practice possible concepts/ideas that we had for our graduation film. In my case that would be 2d animation, story and the use of color.

School found us a media competition with a nice theme in which we could place these concepts to practice and get warmed up, namely the NTR media prize.
The theme was family history. What historical events had influenced your family, what event changed a family members life forever.

My subject/event wasn't necessarily historical, but it did change my father's life forever.
It was a very hard subject and something that still grabs hold of my father, in terms of guilt and trauma, but it also plays a part in beautiful encounters.
It was not an easy proces and it wasn't easy to transform this lifelong memory into 1.30 minutes, especially with something so delicate as your father's memory of a traumatic experience.

My idea was to describe my father's story, in a poem like story, and try to end with a positive note. I knew it was a heavy subject, but I hoped I could give it this simple uplift at the end. I hope I succeeded.

By now I've sent my film to the NTR and I'm curious as to what they think of it, we'll see :)
Anyway, I'm glad with how it turned out, although there aren't a lot of animations, I think a lot of effort went into telling the story right and using the right images in combination with the color and animation and I'm content with that.

NTR media Ter nagedachtenis aan Anton from Julia Jager on Vimeo.

A translation of the poem would be;

When my father was young,
He went out with his three brothers,
Tall, middle and small.

When my father was young,
Being the oldest, he promised at the door,
'We will not go on the ice'

The silence is broken,
A promise is broken,
The small went under the ice,
One manages to come back on land,
And saves his older brother with a helping hand.

When my father was young,
He smashed the ice above his little brother's shadow,
But couldn't change his fate.

At the age of 10,
My father promised things,
That would never let go of him
and he couldn't have foreseen.

But when I see my father,
I don't think of that,
In those moments, I'm very glad that we can be on the water,
To watch the sunset together,
And that we don't compare the water of the past with the present.

(It was a poem made for Dutch, so it doesn't really rhyme well in English)

The Life of Death trailer

This is the short of Marsha Onderstijn, in which I supported her with animating deer in the background.

The première was in the Chassé Theatre in Breda, around a month ago. It was really cool to see all the graduation movies, knowing that it will be my turn next year :)
Marsha was also really kind and gave me the dvd of The Life of Death and a little present, a small version of the book of Muybridge, with lots of animation walks in it :) really good for reference and really appropriate because I used a lot of walkcycles for the deer.

The Life of Death - Trailer from Marsha Onderstijn on Vimeo.

Anyway, check her website, the short will be online soon; www.marshaonderstijn.com.

Aurora internship finished

This is kind of a late message. Because I finished my internship the 15th of June.
But I haven't had the time to tell you how it went, due to holidays etcetera.

My internship went very well, I'm really really proud to have been there and that I helped. One month ago there was the première in the Tuschinski theater in Amsterdam, and I said back then that I couldn't have imagined myself standing there 4 months ago.
Everything went so fast. I've learned so much in such a short notice.

I've had the pleasure to get to know more people in the animation field, I got to go to Annecy 2012, I've never had such a clear view of what I want to do next year, although I still have a lot of choices to make, but instead of having to make a choice what road to take of a 100, I think I've limited myself to about 8.
Apart from all of this, I don't think I really understood in the beginning that the short that I was working on would be played in Pathé cinemas. I think I didn't really grasp that part. So after 3 months of hard work and traveling from Breda to Amsterdam, it kind of came to me that this opportunity was so special, and that I couldn't have had a better place then this...

Tomorrow will be the REAL première, because Aurora will be played before the movie Abraham Lincoln; the Vampire Hunter. And because Abraham Lincoln is premiering tomorrow, Aurora is aswell.
The ironic/sad/coincedence part is that we wanted our short to be played before The Dark Knight Rises at first (months ago), but after last events we're really glad it didn't. It would have been such a sad coincedence, and I guess our short would have been taken out of the cinemas.
If anyone of America reads this blog, by any chance, I'm so sorry for what happened in Aurora, it's so cruel...

I'm not really sure what I can actually show you, without betraying something of our short (I can probably show it in the fall, when it's more widely known)
But I do want to share a few sketches, and the trailer of Aurora. I had to animate a tree, and I had to get my inspiration of the scene in which Snow White is running through the Haunted Forest. It was a long process of changing and altering, making the tree even more scarier, I think in the end it came out well. (I also animated some other things, but this was my main duty)
If you live in Holland, go see Abraham Lincoln ;)

Rainy day

Well it's not exactly rainy today, it was rainy yesterday (it was very hot at first and then all of a sudden it started raining) and I got really wet. But anyway... My character resurfacing again. Apart from that, I needed a personal card so I can hand them out when I'm networking. So this will be the picture on the card, because I like this character. Maybe I should make more of these, just for fun :D We'll see..

Animation results Minor

I never told how my minor period went, so I'm doing now.
Actually... There's not very much to tell, but there are some things I can show you. I've helped Marsha out with background animations, furthermore I'm still coloring shots at this moment, though I am having an internship in Amsterdam at the moment.
I do miss school a little bit, I especially miss being at the place you need to be in 5 minutes. It takes 4 hours traveling a day to Amsterdam, before I'm present at the studio. I do like the studio very much and I feel I ended up in the right place. I have very nice collagues and there is a very good atmosphere at work.

I do think that time goes rather quick and I can't keep up with how fast it's going.. I think it's a pity I barely have a month left, and thinking about how fast the last 2 months have gone, it will be over in a blink of an eye.
I will be able to accompany Aimée de Jongh to Annecy Animation Film Festival though, and that makes me very happy. I'm really looking forward to that week. It was arranged so suddenly that I haven't really adjusted to the idea yet, I didn't think it would be possible to go to Annecy, because I thought it would cost a lot of money, but I bought my flying ticket last week, got my festival accreditation from the producer Jantiene and I can sleep with Aimée and her friends for an affordable price in an appartment! I'm learning a lot and I'm thinking a lot about what I'm going to do when my study is over.

Anyway, I wanted to show you the animations I've done for Marsha's graduation movie, colored and all. There's some repetition in the animations, so you have the time to examine them better, because they're rather short. Also there are sometimes more animations in one video.

Animating deer

This is some of my work the past few weeks.
I'm working on school every day with fourth grade students, Marsha, Fieke and Jordie.
Gladys, who is in the same class as me, is also present.

It's really nice to work with people you like. We also make tea and listen to the radio all day long.

Anyway, Marsha tells me which scenes need to be done and where there are deer in the background. She also gives me instructions that the deer in the background shouldn't distract from the actual animation in front.
It's really nice to get so much feedback, I'm learning really fast and Marsha guides me well :)

So, here are some results of the past few weeks. It's not much, but I'm on my way.

(In some videos I made Marsha's work invisible, because I felt it's not mine to share on the internet. I didn't think much harm would be done with the deer eating.)

Deer

I'm helping out a fourth-year student with her project. The story is about death falling in love with life, and life is being symbolized by a deer.

This is her webpage with a few pictures of the project : http://marshagallery.blogspot.com/

I'm going to help her out with animating deer in the background. So I'm doing a little research right now. The following is not really mine, there are links mentioned, where I got the images from.

Besides these cycles that I have arranged, I have drawn more deer today. This morning I realized I still didn't really understood how to draw a deer, so I've practiced all day and my results are below. I'm pretty pleased with how they came out, and now I have the confidence it will work out during animating.






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UHxHxQbe0E


http://yueki.deviantart.com/art/Deer-Walk-cycle-5160404


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWtI1g1Wzfc


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgI0jU6dgvM

Showreel and end product

Yesterday we had our assessment and the teachers were very pleased with what I made.
I received good grades, four times 8 points out of 10.

So I'm really proud to present my finished work :) I would have been proud without the good grades aswell ;) so don't worry.

This is my showreel of January 2012.


And this is my final animation for the lipsync exercise;


First part says; Listen Animation, Second part says ; Speach Animation.

The first part is a reaction to a text of a friend. My friend designed a little fox, and it was supposed to be her plushie, that she still has.
First part says:
Hello. I'm the fox of Irene and I hate that. I live in her bed, and there's nothing there to enjoy, like running around or hunting. I would really like to get out of here! So adopt me!

In the Lipsync animation, this is what's being said :
I love the Vespa. It is so much fun when I drive really fast, and when I take bends really quick. It's like I'm someone else. I'm not insecure anymore. At that moment I'm the girl on the Vespa.

I worked on this for about 2,5 months. It took a lot of effort, but it was totally worth it.
I got the inspiration to make this, because I'm a very proud owner of a classic Vespa myself.

Originally my character was in 3d, but I rendered it with a Toon shader. I think it works really well, but if you're curious how it would have looked in 3d, I also have those videos, but not online. So let me know if you want to see them.
I hope you enjoyed my work!

Cookie Monster

This is the result of the project last semester.



My animation is the swimming scene, the light/shadow scene and the cupboard scene and I made the soundtrack. Hope you enjoyed it!

Results of 3D semester

I didn't even realize I hadn't posted my videos of the 3D semester.
Very bad of me to just forget.. Maybe I was to glad that it was done and that I made it. It's already such a long time ago, and I don't know if I want to go into detail.
Let's just say I have the feeling I only just made it to the third year. I definitely want to be better next year and I want to work on it very badly.

Anyway. I'll just show you the videos that I made.
In the end my character just bounced a bit across my self-designed forest and there wasn't really a story behind it. I was really desperate to just finish something in the end. The way I planned things was way off, and I definitely need to work on that. Although I have to say I was quite happy at the time that I even finished something and I had to work so hard in the last week, to even make this happen. So in a way I was proud that I could show something and that it wasn't a total failure.
The second video was about getting across the atmosphere, in this case, a scary forest, in which you feel haunted.
In the end I really had to juggle with some things, but I do think I made the right choices. Definitely the right choices to at least make it to the third year. But enough with the details, because I said I wasn't going to tell about them.

This is what I made of it, and I really did my best, and if that's the case, I couldn't have done any better at the time.

(my character is in playblast, because there was no time left to render it.. I rendered a few stills, so I could show how it should have looked)





This is my scary forest :


I'll be uploading more shortly, because I'm walking behind schedule.