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Crash and Burn |
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Spot Focus : Good Stuff |
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Percy jackson and the Olympians |
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Making Of Long Journey |
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The Making Of Salty |
News Headlines | |
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Baby Data |
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Brickyard VFX for Toyota Nascar |
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IT'S ART Archive |
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This Shall Pass Too |
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CG Gallery Awards - Febuary 2010 |
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The Making Of unleashed |
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Death to all Iron Warriors |
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Making Of Dominoes |
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Shilo for Census |
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Making Of Cable |
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Toy Story Concept Art |
IT’S ART: Can you tell us about the roots of ARK?
Grzegorz Jonkajtys : I started thinking of this story back in 2002. The direct visual inspiration was some Christian Catacombs near Rome. The maze of underground graves made me think of the interior of a ship full of refugees and this image led to the story of ARK. But getting from this concept to the final stage was a long journey. The very last scene of the film wasn’t conceptualized until 2006.
IA: ARK is in a way a story about the human mind and our vision of the world. Why have you chosen to illustrate this concept with a SF theme?
GJ: ARK is indeed a story of the human mind but it is mostly about aging and how this can affect our minds. I have chosen the SF set up for the story mostly for aesthetic reasons but also to make it more universal and not tied to neither a specific culture nor any historical associations
IA: What was one of the main artistic goals of ARK?
GJ : One of the first goals was create a film with vision that will last in the viewers mind. To create a story that matters and keeps the audience thinking after they leave the theater.
IA: What was one of the main technical goals of ARK, if there was one?
GJ : The technical goal was to blend miniatures and CG elements seamlessly together.
And that we have achieved in 100% :)
IA: I can feel an influence of the animation movies of eastern European countries, am I wrong? Can you tell us more about the authors you've been influenced by while making ARK?
GJ : Brothers Quay films had a huge influence on the decision to use miniatures for ARK. And when it comes to the lighting the first ALIEN movie made by Ridley Scott was probably the biggest influence. You’re right about the influence of eastern European animation; they have a very distinguished and twisted style. I cannot point to one particular artist or production right now but it had an impact mostly character design.
IA: Looks like you've tried to reproduce some puppet attitudes in the characters, something like an old poetry impulse not only to the character but also to the general mood of the movie. Am I wrong? Can you tell us more about this artistic choice?
As I mentioned before, Brothers Quay films were a huge inspiration for the technique I used on this film. Using in a way stop motion camera and real miniatures, I wanted the animation to resemble stop motion a little bit as well.
I guess the main technical challenge was coordinating everyone across the globe to work on this project. Many thanks to producer Marcin Kobylecki for that! Managing data and building a pipeline (something I have never done on my own before) were big challenges. And finally, rendering, that was really tricky part since I didn't have any kind of render farm available I had to plan way ahead when to render the elements to make the deadline.
