Live action feature film "Als der Weihnachtsmann vom Himmel fiel" is based on a novel by Cornelia Funke and was produced by Uschi Reich. Companies Scanline VFX and Farmstudios provided the visual effects work for this Christmas adventure. The film features two digital characters, who are Christmas gnomes and function as cheerful sidekick characters.
As Animation Director for this project, my first task was to further flesh out the personalities of these two gnomes. Seeing the first draft of the film and talking to the director and producer I got a first impression of how they imagined the two gnomes.
Later I wrote down detailed character descriptions and made up little background stories so the animation team would have a good understanding of the gnomes. This step is important as different animators might work on the same character and would need to know the figures exact personality if the animation should stay in character.
In production I supervised a team of five character animators and in addition worked on several shots myself.I really have to say that the team was fantastic. Everybody was very professional and concentrated at work. Nevertheless we laught a lot and never lost our good mood during the whole production! One of the main reasons for