Puppet animation workshop with José Miguel Ribeiro

The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK), Ghent International Film Festival and the Geuzenhuis invited José Miguel Ribeiro to host a workshop during the festival. Ribeiro is a experienced puppet animation director. With A Suspeita (2000) he won numerous awards including the Cartoon d'Or. A Suspeita After his studies at the university of Lisbon, he followed a very intense 9 month animation workshop in Rennes (F) and Porto (P), also attended by other future animation professionals like Regina Pessoa and Philippe Julien. Back in Portugal, he immediately started working as an animator and as an illustrator. José Miguel RibeiroThe workshop Ribeiro will host in Ghent will focus on the expression and the posing of the characters. 'Instead of letting puppets move around a lot, I want to stress the importance of expressive details. A subtle glance can say a lot about a character. Sequences that involve only a little 'action' portray often the most intense moments. This is of course not easy for someone who is just starting to work as an animator. I don't expect the participants to succeed in this instantly. But I do hope that they will realize the importance of this aspect'. In order to achieve this goal, Ribeiro chooses to not waste too much time building the puppets. 'We will make the marionets on the first day. It would be nice to have a workshop of two weeks and spend a week building them, because they are indeed very essential to the result. But because we only have a week in Ghent, I will prepare some things and bring along material and parts that the participants can assemble.' In his workshops, Ribeiro grabs the opportunity to do things he cannot do in his film work. 'You can go in multiple directions, you can experiment more... When you are working on a film, you always have to deal with restrictions. In a workshop, we work with restrictions on a different level. For instance, I could give an assignment to work with a one armed puppet. So you force the participants to be more creative and you stimulate them to come up with unexpected characters or situations.'Sunday Drive Early 2009, Ribeiro's new short animation will be released. Sunday Drive is a 15 minute short about a disastrous Sunday family outing. 'It is a project with a long history', explains Ribeiro. 'I think we started it six years ago. It was a co-production between Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium (the VAF contributed €125,000, ed.) We created the puppets in Portugal and took them to the Beast Animation Studios in Brussels to work on the first part of the animation for about three months.' Despite the co-production between three countries, there was still a part of the budget that had to be filled in. So in addition to Zeppelin Filmes (P), il Luster (NL) and S.O.I.L. (B), French production company Folimage stepped in to fill the gap. 'This took a while, so after a year or so we took on the second part of the animation in France with a different team. Just like in Belgium, I knew no one of this crew. Today, the animation work is completely finished and the film is in post-production until early October. After that, the sound will be recorded in the Netherlands so I hope the movie will be finished by the end of the year. All in all, it took a very long time to get this project done, but in the end it has been quite an enriching experience. You know, team work is one of the reasons I make movies. Everyone involved in this film has put a lot of effort into it. And everyone is pleased with the result.'Sunday Drive PRACTICAL INFORMATION Workshop stop motion puppet animation, Het Geuzenhuis, Ghent, 6-10 October. Are you a Flemish animation filmmaker? Send an e-mail to Inge Verroken (iverroken@vaf.be) for further details about the workshop. LINK Watch A Suspeita WEBSITES S.O.I.L iL Luster Zeppelin Filmes Beast Animation Ghent Film Festival Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK) Geuzenhuis