Hello everybody!

Hello everybody!

You know, maybe it is just because I am very, very curious. It is an explanation somehow. I am writing this because they asked me to host a blog for them. Therefore I have to come up with some preliminary remarks. I will try to tell and sell you the why, who, what as briefly as possible.

“They” means by the way the brilliant team of FMX conference based in Stuttgart/Ludwigsburg (Germany). I have been attending this conference every year for quite some time. You must have heard of them, after all you are on their website now, if you read this. It is a mind-blowing conference. Like SIGGRAPH only a bit smaller, more informal. Like meeting a big family on a yearly event like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Only that it is in April. And on these meetings you discover more and more uncles, nephews, nieces, grand-aunts and all sorts of members you never heard of every time you go there. And I for myself always find out, that there is always more than meets my humble eye. The moment I think, that I have at last learned something fundamental, something completeley different comes up and tries to broaden my narrow horizon again.

Richard "Dick" Williams (r.) fooling around with me (Johannes Wolters, l.)

At FMX you don´t just meet very interesting and unbelievably creative people of all fields of animation land, you can also ask any questions to them. That is, if you are curious enough to ask. By the way animation land is an expression that I use for every great convention, where the business people and the creatives heads meet. As a German - I live in the beautiful city of Cologne - I can find animation land at the Stuttgart Animation festival. I am lucky to follow it every year to the wonderful city of Annecy. I sometimes have the pleasure to go to Toulouse to attend Cartoon Forum or I travel to Lyon to meet the people of Cartoon Movie. Of course there are many other wonderful places I could travel to, but I have to admit that my favourite animation land is FMX. Why? Because it´s like Rick´s Cafe from Casablanca – but without the Nazis of course! Everybody comes there to meet, greet, listen, teach, communicate, connect, network, and have a good time. Most of those wonderful people are very approachable! FMX has never failed me in that respect. Being so curious in the matter of the art of animation and always wanting to know more, FMX is the greatest place for me to be. Of course I am very honored to have the opportunity to contribute something to their amazing wor

  

You should know by now that I am a super enthusiastic animation fan (that´s a quote!), who is beside himself with joy, if he sees something uniquely funny, clever, sophisticated, beautiful, touching. I am very emotional, so you can see me often cry or laugh hysterically at the cinema, if a film (short, medium or feature lenghth) touches me, linear narrative or abstract, handdrawn or the latest mix between live action and cgi. I also do not like, sometimes even hate some movies! This hate, however is subjective. Just because I do not like it, doesn´t mean that nobody else will like it. If there is someone who likes it, that makes me very curious and I want to know why. I have myself disguised as a journalist over the years but do not let yourself be fooled by me! I am a curious fan, nothing more!

I got infected by King Kong and The Old Mill, so I blame Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack and the fantastic animators around Walt Disney. I watched King Kong, my very first film at a cinema, when I was five years old. Of course, as you can imagine I was more then overwhelmed. I saw Disney´s Silly Symphony a little bit later on televisison and again I was taken by the fantastic story the film told without using any words. Those films hooked me on animation forever, because I understood that in contrast to so called life action films everything was possible, everything could have a soul, everything could come to life, no words were needed, nothing was, is, will be impossible. Everything you can draw is possible. So I was not surprised that this medium exploded in the last 30 years and I call myself very fortunate to live in these glorious times. But at some point I stopped being content with just watching the masterpieces of old times and the groundbreaking new wizardry coming to cinemas. I wanted to meet the magicians, the women and men behind the curtains, who came up with those wonderful ideas, brilliant solutions and unbelievable love to this medium. And I was again very fortunate to meet some of them in the past years. In the end I was even able to create my own animation land by hosting the INDAC events, based on my little festival, the International Days and Nights of Animation Cologne, where I have arranged meetings between the German animation people and talents from abroad coming to Germany to present their work. A brilliant win win situation for me and my curiosity.

And like Oliver Twist I want more. I am still curious. What is the next big thing? How did those pioneers do that? Is the industry still expanding? What has still to be discovered. Are there more uncanny valleys? What secrets have to be rediscovered. Do we still have to advance backwards to the 1940´s like Richard Williams once told me? What has to be done? Where is the danger? Where is the joy? So I still want to meet as many people working in this industry, in every artform of the medium, sand, paper, puppets, cgi, handdrawn, whatever you will come up with. So I thought what a brilliant idea to create a blog here, to have a place to explore, to ask you all my questions and where you all are invited to share your opinions with me. Because I hope, that, if you have read this so far, you might be curious too. So for the future here I would ask for your opinion.Tell me where I am wrong, I do not understand certain things correctly, if there is something important I missed, if you share my opinion, disagree with my emotions, if you cannot understand my enthusiam. If you don´t tell me in the first place, beware: I will jump at you and bombard you with questions. Again and again.    

 Because I want to know. Because I am curious. And hopefully will always be.