My segment for Udo Prinsen’s community project “Motion Blend nr.1”. Udo connected animators and business owners in the Griftpark Wittevrouwen area in Utrecht to make animations inspired by their businesses.

I was introduced to Tibor Kis of Utrechts Glas in Lood, our meeting at his stained glass workshop was very inspiring. The precision, patience and variety of tools and materials reminded me a lot of the work that goes into stop-motion.

I walk through the Griftpark almost daily and see a lot of interesting animals and people, which led me to the characters in this animation. The center of the stained glass piece represents a very recognizable hill in this park. The background of this animation is a photo taken from that very hill. The dog was supposed to chase a bird but that didn’t make the cut.

I spent some time researching the materials, seeing how the different kinds of glass reacted under studio lights and in motion. I got a lot of interesting results but only a small part of that was used for the animation.

The idea was to make this by hand in stop-motion, but it ended up being too complex.
Although everything is animated digitally I photographed real glass pieces, loads of them!
Designing the stained glass piece was a part I underestimated, learning how to balance color and texture in this technique took some extra time to figure out.

This project was a lot of trial and error for me but in the end I learned a lot. It has inspired me for future projects!

A special thanks goes out to the people of SonicPicnic, they did an amazing job on the sound and even made a little edit for my own version.