Four Months, Three Teams and One Big Challenge
AniFilm/AniPlay Semester
The third year at Animationsinstitut is all about juggling different ideas, formats, trying new things, and venturing out of comfort zones. Part of the curriculum is the AniFilm/AniPlay semester, where students form interdisciplinary teams and develop their own Intellectual Properties (IPs). These consist of an animated film and an interactive experience. Students from the Animation, Visual Effects, Technical Directing, Animation/Effects Producing and Interactive Media studies come together for the first time during the semester’s brainstorming.
Over the next four months, each team creates an animated short film and an interactive experience that is then presented not only at the Animationsinstitut, but also at the FMX – Film and Media Exchange. However, it’s not about presenting the most polished animations or building the next groundbreaking VR app. The goal is to develop a working idea, a good concept.
“It is the first time the students meet in a bigger team situation. The students learn that even if everybody is an excellent artist, the quality of the product depends on the interaction in the team. They learn more about: What is important when I build my team? What can I do if we suddenly don’t get along that well? How can I motivate the other members of the team? Do I know the needs of the people on board?”
Karin Larsson, Team Building and Leading MentorTake a Look behind the Scenes!
This year, three teams took on the challenge of creating an IP within one semester.
Learn more about the individual projects and how the teams handled the challenging semester here:
Team KNUBBELS
“For KNUBBELS we developed a rather complex world of little root-like beings that built an entire society around the amassment of a mysterious, celestial, and mind-altering matter. The consumption and accumulation of this matter lead to more power.
In our film, Taro’s consciousness suddenly expands to unknown heights as they react to the mind-altering matter. After their first taste, Taro has no intention to participate in this circus of hierarchical exploitation. Instead, they sprint headfirst towards their new prime objective: to gain as much of the matter as possible, and as quickly as they can.
In our interactive experience, a VR game, the player is confronted with the aftermath of Taro’s doings. After the collapse of the organized hierarchy, all Knubbels are fighting in a more primal way for their matter. After growing through the amassment of matter, the player soon has to discover that there is no such thing as infinite growth. As the player gains more and more power, their sensory perception becomes increasingly overstimulated as well.”
Maximilian Schubert, Producer, Team KNUBBELS
What went well? What did go wrong or not as expected?
“Group projects with a lot of new people that never worked together before are like a box of chocolates. What started as a little package grew to be a lush gift basket of complex ideas and workflows. We were able to draw from a rich cornucopia of ideas regarding the world and society we developed, but, obviously, it could have been easier with a more straightforward approach. We’re still happy about the experience and the friends we made along the way.”
Maximilian Schubert, Producer, Team KNUBBELS
What are you most proud of?
“AniFilm/AniPlay is, regardless of the awesome outcome, first and foremost still a workshop and a workshop’s success shouldn't be defined by a finished product, but rather by the experience people are able to gain from it. It might not sound like much, but the proudest moment of the team behind KNUBBELS was that, at the end, we were really happy and content with our finished film and (sort of finished) game.”
Maximilian Schubert, Producer, Team KNUBBELS
What was the most difficult/easiest part in working together?
“Working with lots of new people always brings along that element of slight randomness. In this mélange, finding roles that fit oneself, the project, and the team can be challenging, but also hugely rewarding if successful.”
Maximilian Schubert, Producer, Team KNUBBELS
What have you learned during the AniFilm/AniPlay semester?
“I was able to learn how to be serious about meeting the individual needs of the team."
Maximilian Schubert, Producer, Team KNUBBELS
“I learned to become better in making compromises regarding the given resources and different ideas.”
Leo Neumann, Art Director, Team KNUBBELS
“I appreciate the benefits of having a well-organized production plan and the necessity of communicating regularly and clearly. Most of all I learned to trust the team and their abilities.”
Ilya Barrett, Director, Team KNUBBELS
Team MNEMONIC
“Our film is about a creature named Ivo that lives in a dark and cold world after the sun has exploded. He is constantly holding on to a piece of the sun that emits light and carries its memories. In our VR game, you can help Ivo put the sun together by finding all the missing sun pieces.”
Team MNEMONIC
What are you most proud of?
“I am proud of the team. The fact that we found a way to work together in this time frame and with those circumstances – it is a difficult thing.”
Konstantin Schraps, Producer, Team MNEMONIC
“I love our game! Everything about it. We can be proud of what we achieved within this AniFilm/AniPlay semester.”
Tobias Eckerlin, Director, Team MNEMONIC
How did the AniFilm/AniPlay semester challenge you as a group?
“We came together as a team of people who didn't knew each other at all and had a very short amount of time to create everything from scratch. That was especially challenging as we also had completely different visions, opinions, and tastes within the team. So, the process of getting everyone together for the story and look was incredibly hard.”
Tobias Eckerlin, Director, Team MNEMONIC
“I think the main obstacle was that we didn’t know each other before. The majority of our team were lateral entrants and we didn’t anticipate how different our visions of animation are. We got to know each other primarily during production. That’s when we realized that the constellation doesn’t work and then we had to find solutions.”
Lilli-Luisa Heckmann, Animation Artist, Team MNEMONIC
What have you learned during this semester?
“It's certainly not a new learning, but this project showed again how essential and difficult (clear) communication is. Feedback should be precise and mindful. Missing trust and prejudice within the team can be very problematic. I think it's also good to keep track of important decisions and having an uneven number of people who can make decisions. Overall, there is no benefit in forcing things together that don't fit.”
Tobias Eckerlin, Director, Team MNEMONIC
Any special anecdotes/fun moments?
“When I think of something funny, the gameplay tests come to my mind. It was so entertaining to see how our teammates, fellow students, and lecturers interacted with the new game version.”
Tobias Eckerlin, Director, Team MNEMONIC
“After completing the project on time with blood, sweat, and tears, we were made aware that we forgot to mention the head of the Animationsinstitut in the credits, so, we had to render all versions again.”
Lilli-Luisa Heckmann, Animation Artist, Team MNEMONIC
Team SYMBLINGS
“Our story unfolds in a dying, tragic world. Its plants and mushrooms once used to live in peace. But over time the soil got poisoned. The mushrooms tried to clean and heal the ground, but some got infested in the process and started to mutate. Forgetting their original noble goals, the mushrooms gave way to the urge to consume the plants. In the midst of this catastrophe are the Symblings, hybrid creatures created from a symbiosis between mushrooms and plants. They are the only beings that can move and are immune to the toxic soil. But their greatest strength is their ability to communicate with both plants and mushrooms.
Our 2D animated short film tells the story of a Symbling finding one of the last living plants and its little seedlings in a polluted swamp. But deep down in the muddy ground, something terrible is lurking.
In our game, the player plays the same Symbling from the short film, exploring the gloomy underground world. He or she has to fight against the mutation, travel through the vast caves, and most importantly: Find a better place to live. To do this, the Symbling has to communicate with both the plants and mushrooms in their separated worlds. The game is a 2D side scrolling puzzle platformer game full of beautiful imagery and sinister threats.”
Team SYMBLINGS
What are you most proud of?
“Every lecturer told us in the beginning that we tried to do too much. Our film was supposedly too long and the game too ambitious. But we did it anyway. We finished it all in time without any burnouts and are all still friends. That’s what we are most proud of.”
Team SYMBLINGS
What went well? What did go wrong or not as expected?
“What worked best was the world building process in the beginning of the project. We worked as a team of eight people constructively on a world and a story for our little Symbling every day. We kept improving our idea that each team member liked. It feels weird to write this, but also during production, generally speaking, everything went well. Of course, we had some issues here and there and things took longer than we expected but it was nothing major. Also, since most of us never made a game before, we didn’t know the games-producing-process. That was a whole new experience. Some of us had different expectations of how this process works, but in the end, we were very happy with what we’ve achieved.”
Team SYMBLINGS
What was the most difficult part of working together?
“The most difficult part was actually beginning to work together and finding out how every single person in the team works and who needs what to operate best. This took some time because we never worked together as a team before and some of us never had been in a team this big, but it wasn’t a major problem at any point.”
Team SYMBLINGS
What have you learned during this semester?
“An important learning was that putting the team spirit and health above the product helped us to work most efficiently. We finished a film every one of our lecturers believed was too long to complete in this short amount of time. Having a healthy team was one of our goals that helped us to exceed even our own expectations of what we could achieve.”
Team SYMBLINGS
