Author Archives: Jakob

THE AMAZING WORLD OF ANNECY: AWARDS FOR “A MORNING STROLL” “GUMBALL” AND “PRINCESS’ PAINTING”

Great news from France: “A Morning Stroll” by our friends at studio aka (directed by lovely Grant Orchard) won the JUNIOR JURY AWARD for a shortfilm, Ben Bocquelet’s “The Amazing World of Gumball” was awarded with the CRYSTAL for BEST TV PRODUCTION for the episode “The Quest” and Studio Soi’s “Das Bild der Prinzessin” was crowned as BEST TV SPECIAL! Congratulations to the teams of all three projects!

For everyone in Germany: “Das Bild der Prinzessin” will premiere this weekend on KI.KA. Watch the film as part of the children’s series Siebenstein at 11:35 a.m. on Sunday, June 19th!

MISS FOX OF “TOTO HOUSE”

“Toto House”, our latest, designed and directed by Uwe Heidschoetter can now also be seen in its entirety in the “work” section of our website. Above are some few of the endless poses Uwe drew as preparation for the animators. (click to enlarge)

WELCOME TO “TOTO HOUSE”.

“Toto House”, a five minute corporate film for japanese manufacturer of fine sanitary ware TOTO, is currently premiering on the web and at ISH ’11, Frankurt. Directed and designed by Soi’s Uwe Heidschoetter, the little film follows the lives of rather recent neighbors Mr. Rabbit and Mrs. Fox and their gentle first encounters. Watch “Toto House” here.

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“THE AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL” IS COMING

A first sneak peek of CN’s upcoming show “The Amazing World of Gumball” has just been released on youtube. Created by Ben Bocquelet, Gumball was produced by Dandelion Studios Ltd , Boulder Media Ltd and Studio Soi.

“THE GRUFFALO” IS NOMINATED FOR AN OSCAR

Magic Light Pictures’ and Studio Soi’s “The Gruffalo” has been nominated for an Oscar. We couldn’t be happier and we would once again like to thank all the fine people who worked so hard on this.

(The picture above we nicked from one of these people, matte painter Alex Lindner.)

RANDOM FACT

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Reminder: Tomorrow, Dec 24th at 10.40 on ZDF: “Der Grüffelo” with Heike Makatsch, Christian Ulmen, Otto Sander, Edgar Selge and Gerd Voss! Here’s some more of the beautiful colourwork Neil Ross has done for the project, this time from the opening sequence, which at some point during development was set at first snowfall. More from that sequence here.

IN THE PRESS…

There was some lovely press lately to accompany our christmas countdown: The Frankfurter Allgemeine ran a long and insightful article on the life and mindset of Axel Scheffler, illustrator (amongst many other great books) of the Gruffalo. Süddeutsche Zeitung ran a very funny review of our adaptation of “The Gruffalo” today, reminding their readers to watch on Christmas Eve what the Stuttgarter Zeitung, in today’s issue, called “possibly the most beautiful thirty minutes of television this year”. Thank you! (image: F.A.Z. / Axel Scheffler)

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Facial expressions for the Gruffalo, dgtl. paint over by Max Lang. Watch the film on ZDF, Dec 24th 10.40 am.

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Top: Owl’s windbeaten “treetop house”, in a colourkey by Neil Ross. Below: An earlier layout for that same shot, with Owl’s house still seated in a conifer and some later designs for the tree as a broadleaf, both by Manu Arenas. Bottom: Manu’s eerie designs for the spiral staircase Mouse escapes on in that sequence.

See “The Gruffalo” this friday, Dec. 24th, 10.40 am on ZDF,

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Here are some of the horrible things we had to do to Harald’s beautiful drawings further down the road (click to enlarge). Modelsheet for Owl by Jakob Schuh.

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Many christmas countdowns could be done with the beautiful drawings Manu Arenas has blessed this project with. Here are three of Jakob Schuh’s personal favourites.

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Above: Colourconcept for the lake by Neil Ross.

Below: An early sketch Manu Arenas had originally done for the film’s framestory (see Mother Squirrel in the background) ended up serving as the layout for Mouse’s lilypad-passage over the lake. See the German version of “The Gruffalo” premiere on Dec 24th 10.40 am on ZDF.

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Left: Snake’s design was largely based on the way Max Lang drew the character in his storyboards. Right: The final modelsheet, a dig. paint-over by Jakob Schuh based on a maquette by Klaus Morschheuser (click to enlarge). See more from that sequence here.