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 :)

Gift for a friend

Since I've been keeping my graduation blog, http://juliajagergraduation.blogspot.com posted I've been forgetting about my main page. So it's updating time!

It's a while ago, but I made a gift for a friend of mine, because she has rats as pets, but some of them died lately.. I wanted to let her know that I'm there for her through drawing.
This was the result;

It says: For Anne, one last time all your rats together. With you.

Graduation concept art I

This is my first post about my ideas about my graduation. It won't be long, because I actually have to go to bed ;), but I just want to update some work of mine, to show you some new things.

My graduation film is very much inspired by a little island near Venice, namely Burano. I went there last year and all the colors were so brilliant, and I was there on a bright blue day, and you can't imagine what impression that left on me.
I had to do something with that experience.

Around that inspiring island I made a story, it's still very conceptual, but I think the synopsis of my story will be;
In a little village, in which every house has a different color, lives a girl whose house is still white, on a little journey she tries to find what her color is and what color she should give her house.

I think some themes in my story are chosing a path in your life, and growing up.
I want to tell it like a children's story, something like 'Lost and Found'. And I very much want to be able to also make a children's book out of it.

Color will play a significant role and again the story, which I want to tell with the help of a poem.

Here's some very conceptual work, but it's something, I'm very glad that we can finally start and I can start this beautiful adventure :)

First sketch of 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)

Sometimes you have to convince..

yourself that you can still draw.
And this was such a moment. I was really in the mood to draw and I wanted to draw myself with my new haircut. I'm really pleased, so that's why I'm showing you.
The eyes maybe are a bit too disney (meaning it doesn't really feel like my own style), but oh well...

I do like my Tarzan feet, ~hahahaha, it was fun to draw them and it was nice to draw something of my own again :)

I want to color it, so maybe there will be an update later on.
Hope you liked it! I'm going to bed now, sleep tight!

Figure drawing

*Sometimes blogspot doesn't understand that I turned pictures, this is happening in this message. Also it doesn't understand sometimes that text doesn't belong with some pictures but needs to be at another position. My apologies for those malfunctions.*


These are the results of figure drawing last semester.
I do think they are sketches, mostly, but I like the idea of coloring some parts and leave other parts blanco. And I really like the colors.
In real life they probably do look better.

I want to put more effort into it and work on the colors. Elaborate it.
My style finally begins to take shape and it becomes clear what I actually want.
Straight lines and colors, more simplicity. Light subjects and more air to it.
I'd like that.





I actually wanted to add a peacock to this scene, but I didn't come to that yet.















In these drawings I liked to only add colors to the skirt, so this got more attention.

For now

Just for now, maybe I'll make it better some day, I don't have the time for a few weeks. But it will probably get my attention again in a while. (click on picture for better view)