mandag den 8. august 2011

The Walrus Iceberg story


Back in 2007, I graduated. So I supposed I had to start working in the real world. I had a solid education in my pocket and for some reason I wanted to work for TV.

But instead of going to Paris and start a career as a little animator struggling to obtain and sustain the nice French status of intermittent (endangered by politics); I considered the status of 'political refugee' in Denmark at the Open Workshop.


I applied with the Iceberg TV-series concept that needed development. The basic concept was: 4 animals from the Arctic are pushed to sail on an iceberg, away from their northern home melting because of climate change, looking for the Antarctica. The episodes would tell about that journey around the world. That's when my own world tour started.
Being in the Open Workshop offered me a lot of opportunities of, let's say... inspiration for the iceberg's journey. I met people from all China, Sweden, Turkey an Greenland who invited me into their homes, I got into the well named Animation Sans Frontières production training, and I have been teaching animation in Bolivia, Romania, and soon in Burkina Faso.
But meanwhile I travel the world with the most interesting projects ever, the walrus’ iceberg was melting its way down to the bottom of the priority list. Though, each time I was coming back at my desk I would see the Iceberg's shape more defined. Clear angles came out; the female polar bear, using stop-motion, the shoe-box puppet theatre, all of that emerged naturally of the melting.
And then all of the sudden, I don't know what happened, perhaps the water of this melting iceberg leaked a drop on her foot, and  as a result Ellen Riis took the Iceberg for a nice refreshing cure in the Basmati Film freezer. We obtained the west-Danish film fund, with which we could afford the script writer Peter Reeves to come in Viborg and start writing episodes and a trailer.





In a week from now, the Iceberg will be ready to be taking off to go in Hamburg which will be the port of registry at the stop-motion studio TRIKK 17, where we will start making the trailer with Hamburg, regional fund. As unexpected as it can get: soon I will be a Hamburger!
So come back here, in my next posts and check out: Storyboard, watercolour backgrounds, and some of the technical issues to build and animate paper walrus puppets.

Denis Chapon

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