Our latest visit to Studio 352

Fabian Erlinghauser and I have been on the road lately catching up with the animation teams in luxembourg and Denmark.

First up was Luxembourg , as usual we were happy to see the team in person instead of over Skype and Hobsoft. The team is entering the last weeks of production on some of the trickiest sequences in the third act , with lots of integration between efx and characters so there was much to discuss. But the work is , as usual , of the highest calibre. I really feel that with Tvpaint we have managed to get some really full and subtle animation , ironically with more fluidity and life in it than we could have done on paper with such a small team and budget. Every frame is still hand drawn but we can manipulate and tweak much more than we could on paper with lovely subtleties in the expressions and gestures . We are really lucky to have the cream of European 2d animation talent on the film and I hope we all get to work together again soon. 

 Background supervisor Pascal and a talented young intern Sidonie.

Basque animator Denis Figueiredo animating Ben swinging a hurling stick. He showed us some photos of a sport from the Basque country that seems to be related to hurling ... Certainly I've heard of a connection between Basque and the Celtic countries before...

The very talented Nicolas  who is seen here working on a great scene he animated of Ben and Cu being reunited . Lovely character interaction and joyfulness in his animation.

Giovanna  is snapped here animating some owls and some magic ... But anymore info would be a spoiler! Giovanna has done some gorgeous animation of Saoirse with loads of appeal and charm.

Geoff is busy animating some characters that are a mix of effects and character animation . Geoff has done some great cartoony yet emotional scenes of Ferry Dan and Cu as well as our main characters..

Beth is one of the amazing clean up and assistant animators working in 352. Their work is some of the most important and technically challenging as its the final line that will end up on screen. 

Tom is a long time clean up artist with Studio 352 , the clean up team not only make the final drawings but also have to prepare the files with different coloured transistion lines for where we have textures applied at ink and paint and the sometimes complex layering needed when characters interact with each other or the backgrounds.

Randi is another talented clean up artist -  I must say although i didnt manage to get a snap for the blog  of all the talented artists working In 352 that they are all doing top notch work under a very short schedule .

Heres the one time salooner Danas who has done some great animation of Na Daoine Sidhe playing traditional instruments - maybe he got some mental reference from the sessions in Ryans pub while he was in Kilkenny?

And heres Gilles the animation supervisor whos heading up the whole team , Gilles is one of the longest serving animators in 352 and has worked on many beautiful european features and tv series. 

Stefan , Fabien , Gilles ,Fabian  and I had dinner in Stefans place on the last night of the trip... Stefans dog Choco seemed to be auditioning for the part of Cu -a big friendly fella he is too , he hangs out at the studio sometimes , I guess he was good reference for the animators.. 

As its probably the last time Ill visit Luxembourg during this production Im looking forward to seeing everyone again at the premiere :-) ...but before that we have a few more minutes of animation and cleanup to get thru ... So its heads down for another while yet...