The Animation Belgian has been from the start a voluntary project, and as such, it fell quite behind in the humongous pile of work I’ve been doing in the last few months. After five years of working as a freelance journalist, things really kicked off in July last year with new collaborations and upcoming projects. But that also means that I’ve been in a work tunnel since September, each month building up to the next. For those familiar with our dear friends Wallace & Gromit, this is what it feels like:

In fairness, complaining about this state of things is not what I want to do. I feel truly lucky to work in that field, so close to the medium I love, and at the same time being able to pay my bills with this. I know a lot of colleagues struggle, and it’s definitely not a question of skills. The media landscape is shrinking in Belgium and beyond, and it takes a lot of guts to stay in this line of work. Just as animation. So if you’re working in either sectors, just give yourself a pat in the back, or a round of applause. You deserve it.

Having said that, this also means I had less time to dedicate myself to unpaid initiatives such as this one. But as 2026 unfolds, I want to bring The Animation Belgian to the next level, more on that below. (Also, we’ve hit 300 subscribers, so thank you all for your interest in Belgian animation!)

Everywhere but here

Besides this very newsletter, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to push Belgian Animation on the global stage ! In fact, on the very day my last newsletter dedicated to Anima Festival went out, my paper on the Thousand Faces of Belgian Animation was published in the Fall issue of the (European) Animation Journal, which you read online now. Going back to the roots of Belgian animation and the works of Joseph Plateau, I tried to brush the portrait of our industry today, from unknown arthouse gems to big powerhouse studios. Even if, to be honest, even the big Belgian studios still have a lot to do in brand-awareness. Here’s an excerpt of the article.

If one had to define Belgian animation, heterogeneity would probably come to mind, for there never was a single identity of this very diverse and complex sector.

Whereas French-speaking Belgian cinema was notably shaped by the Dardenne Brothers in the 1990s, one could argue that Raoul Servais (1928-2023) defined Belgian animation in the late 1970s, after winning the Palme d’Or for his eerie short Harpya in 1979 and later creating is own process called “servaisgraphie”, blending live-action actors into high-quality drawn backgrounds .

But at the same time, few remember Nicole Van Goethem (1941-2000), the only Belgian director to ever win an Oscar for her raunchy Greek-mythology-inspired 2D short A Greek Tragedy, back in 1986. Or that, during the same period as Van Goethem’s one-hit wonder, Belgium was the homebase of what would eventually become nWave Pictures, one of the biggest independent animation studios in Europe.

Thrill rides and IMAX-aimed productions were at the roots of nWave, which switched its core business to animated feature films in the early 2010s. From Fly me to the Moon to Bigfoot Family and more recently Chickenhare, nWave has an impressive track record, thanks to its collaborations with French distributors STUDIOCANAL, SND and with Netflix during the COVID-era. With Chickenhare 2hitting theatres mid-october in France and Belgium, nWave continues to be a strong industry component of the Belgian animation landscape.

Hailing also from Brussels, Panique Production is also one of the main production companies which has historically been involved in animation. Created back in the 1990s by Vincent Tavier, it became the home of Belgian animation duo Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier, who created the A Town Called Panic! franchise, while coproducing many European projects, from features to series. It is thanks to this strategy that Panique has now had a long run Panique! specials, as well as an impressive track record of animated coproductions, from Barras’ acclaimed features My Life as a Zucchini and Savages to prominent tv series such as Jean-Michel, super caribou.

Speaking of Panique, I had the pleasure of visiting the set of their latest short, The Treasure, set to be released in 2026-2027 in Belgium. As a fan of the franchise, it was truly a dream come true, which I shared in the latest Surimpressions issue (in French). I’ll put this article (and the interview with Vincent Patar & Stéphane Aubier) here in the upcoming weeks, but in the meantime, here’s an excerpt of this interview:

Are you familiar with Cowboy, Indian, and Horse? Behind this trio, formed on the benches of Brussels Animation School La Cambre in the late 1980s, are the brilliant duo Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier. From upcoming filmmakers having fun and experimenting with toys, they have become accomplished directors, leading a merry band of animators and technicians, each more eccentric than the last.

It takes a formidable technical team to bring the stop-motion animation of these films to life, as Panique’s frame-by-frame animation uses a unique process: substitution. Instead of deforming a puppet millimeter by millimeter to create the illusion of movement (as seen in Claude Barras’s Sauvages, also a Panique co-production), dozens, even hundreds, of figurines of the same character are moved, replaced, and manipulated. A more “easier” process (relatively speaking) that gives A Town Called Panic its frenetic pace and unique style.

“It’s the body language, the movements and facial expressions that bring our characters to life,” the directors explain. “Like the films of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, it’s primarily this expressiveness that speaks. Chaplin, with his inventiveness, his incredible ideas, his visual humor, and the power of his images, is an obvious reference for us.”

This timeless, universal, and joyfully Belgian slapstick comedy (thanks to the voices of Benoît Poelvoorde, Bouli Lanners, as well as Jeanne Balibar, Wim Willaert, Ben Ellison, and Patar and Aubier themselves) debuted on television in 2001, followed by a first feature film in 2009, and then several medium-length films in 2013 (La bûche de Noël), 2016 (La rentrée des classes), 2019 (La foire agricole), and 2021 (Les grandes vacances). This is the fifth film in the series that the Panique team has crafted, this time nestled in the discreet yet vast temporary studios in Uccle, Brussels.

Going through the motions… together

Beyond these pieces, I’ve had the pleasure of attending many events, from Paris (PIAFF) to Berlin and the Berlinale (I hope you now have this song in your head), from Brussels (Anima) to Bordeaux (Cartoon Movie). Incredible opportunities and loads of work that led to a maelstrom of things to do and more unread emails than this newsletter has subs.

After going through the motions for more than two months, I’m finally able to settle down a bit, and manage this steady stream of work. Which is great, because in less than a month I’ll be the happy father of four (children), and by the end of 2026, of not one but two Belgian cinema magazines. Things will definitely be animated.

Speaking of animation, let’s get back to business! And as I mentioned, I have big plans for The Animation Belgian this year. In Belgium, unity makes strength. And that is why, starting from today, I want to open the Animation Belgian to other writers.

Are you a member of the Belgian animation industry? Do you write (in English) about Belgian animation? If so, reach out! Let’s make this project a collective one. Animation is a collaborative art, so how could this newsletter be anything else? If you’re interested, let’s talk about it by clicking the button below.

Last but not least, my Belgian Animation Oscar goes to Autokar, and her wonderful director Sylwia Szkiłądź

Litterally on the eve of the Oscar Nom’s reveal, I interviewed Sylwia for her Oscar-Shortlisted film Autokar. Since then, the film has won the Best Belgian Short Award at Anima, and the Best Animated Short at the René, our very own Belgian Oscars, topping a year-long festival run that started back at the Berlinale 2025, where the film also received the Jury Special Prize for a Short Film in the Generation KPlus category.

Autokar is the intimate and personal story of Agata, an eight-year-old girl forced to travel from Poland to Belgium to find her mother. In the film, there is Sylwia herself, but also echoes of countless stories of childhood migration, from the 1990s to the present day.

Lauded in many festivals, Autokar earned its place in the Oscars race by winning the Grand Prize at Animator in Poland. You can read the full interview on Cinergie.be (in French)

What drew you to this story?
Autokar was a long process for me, as this story is heavily inspired by my own experience of migrating between Poland and Belgium in the 1990s. This story has been with me since childhood and into adulthood, and at a certain point, I realized that it was still there, after more than 30 years. I needed to do something with it, and it was quite natural for me to turn to animation as a medium to reclaim this past.

I discovered animation thanks to a friend at the Anima festival and a teacher from Saint-Luc (where I went to school), Stéphane de Longrée, who showed us The Triplets of Belleville, a real revelation for me. This film showed me a new path, beyond illustration. Animation encompasses music, dialogue, character acting, but also drawing, set design, story, and pacing. A true revelation.

As a medium, animation presents many technical challenges. What challenges did you encounter during this production?
There were many. First of all, you should know that I had never made a complete 2D short film before this one, with a few exceptions. But 2D has always been a part of my life, and I’ve been drawing since I was very young. So I surrounded myself with a strong team, sensitive to the story I wanted to tell, to accompany me on this journey. In Belgium, we worked with Ozù Productions and Vivi Film, and with Studio L’Enclume for a good portion of the animation. Beyond this solid collaboration, I must say that everyone [the film is co-produced in France by Amopix and Novanima] who contributed to this film did an incredible job, from the animation to the music, the casting, the set design…

For me, the first challenge was telling this story, both from a screenwriting perspective and in its audiovisual translation. Many aspects of the film are emotional, sensory, and intimate, and had to be received as such. Finding this balance between realism, magic, documentary style, and dreamlike quality required a great deal of thought.

Autokar’s intimate ambiance and immersive atmosphere also rely heavily on sound. How did you approach this aspect of the film?
From the animatic, I worked closely with my editor, Jérôme Erhart, on the sounds and the rhythm. Before casting, I recorded the dialogues for the twelve characters myself, and then we worked with Ewa Borysewicz (herself a director) to find Polish actors and actresses. These voices were very powerful for the film, both in terms of rhythm and because it’s a story with a lot of dialogue. What I also find interesting is that the voice editing (by Camille Schaeur) was done by someone who doesn’t speak Polish. This brings a musical quality to the way these voices are handled and reinforces the film’s unique atmosphere, which evokes childhood and emotion.

The final sound design was created at Studio Corto in Angoulême, with original music by Polish composer Barbara Drazkov, who, like me, divides her time between Poland and Belgium. Her instrument is the prepared piano, and this brings unique sounds that take the film to another level.

Twelve characters, 18 minutes of film, a long-term project that has been rewarded with this first selection at the Berlinale in February 2025. How did you feel about this at the time?
To be honest, I wasn’t prepared for it at all. I discovered it while scrolling on my phone, and I burst into tears. My partner didn’t understand! (laughs) The film had just been finished, after four and a half years of intense work and personal involvement, with a wide range of emotions. Leaving the film, a little shaken, and having to dive back in was powerful. Especially since that screening in Berlin, Germany, was symbolically very intense. We were there as a team, with my mother, the producers, and I simply lost my voice! But they are truly beautiful memories, a shared experience as a team and a very strong sense of community.

Since then, your film has traveled the world, seen by many audiences, and has won numerous awards both in Belgium and beyond. How do you feel about this success?
It’s fabulous to be able to bring so many different people together around the same story, and it was a wonderful surprise for me. Ultimately, I wanted to open doors with this film. This story is certainly personal, but it relates to a specific time. It’s also political in a way, and resonates today. But it’s also a genre film, fantastical and unsettling, that I wanted to develop around the theme of childhood [the film had its Belgian premiere at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival], and I’m delighted to see that it’s proving popular!

As for this journey to the Oscars, it was completely surreal. Winning the Grand Prize in Poland at the Animator Festival was already incredible, but when we won a second prize in Chicago, which also made us eligible, it was totally unexpected. For me and my family, many of whom immigrated to the United States during communism and had to work hard to survive, this recognition is symbolically very powerful.

For those willing to know more about Autokar, you can do so on Ozù Productions’ website here.

As for myself, it has been a delight meeting Sylwia, Jérôme, and to learn more about the stories behind Autokar. And what joy to see it triumph in Belgium as well! I can’t wait to see what Sylwia does next, because — as she confessed — of course she already has ideas.

In the meantime, thank you for staying interested in the Animation Belgian, and I hope to be back soon with more content, new collaborators, and more animated gems from all sides of Belgium.

As always, have a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

In the last newsletters, we’ve showcased the wide variety of Belgian studios gravitating around Cartoon Business, and how this special event could foster creativity in our national industry.

Meanwhile, in France, the RADI-RAF (Rencontres Animation Développement Innovation / Rencontres Animation Formation) wrapped up last week with many interesting takes, albeit with the a grim observation : schools (especially some private ones) need to face the reality of a shrinking industry, and re-think their models (more on that topic on 3DVF.com)

But as always, the animation community is strong, and I genuinely believe that artists, producers and school heads can work together (in both France and Belgium) to find healthy and respectful solutions to this problem.

I mean, you basically have to throw capitalism down the drain, and find new ways of working together with an art-centered, human perspective. How fun could that be?

In Belgium, ABRACA is doing just that (along with other things of course). Members have just been offered the opportunity of a portfolio review, and community events are still very much at the core of the association. Meanwhile, animation producers in the Producers’ Union are also actively campaigning for more support towards animated projects from the Centre du Cinéma, and we can already see the ripple effects of these actions in the upcoming shorts and feature films submitted to the CCA.

Anima, the Brussels Intl. Animation Festival, is also treading this path. For the first time, the Festival will host a Coproduction Day on Wednesday, February 25, with pitching sessions and one-to-one meeting. Deadline: January 11. All info here, along with Anima’s 2026 poster below by Samuel creator Emilie Tronche.

Which brings us to today’s conversation with Philippe Moins, circling around his book Anima à l’affiche. Moins, whose son is now stepping up (with veteran co-director Dominique Seutin) as the new co-director of Anima, has been deeply involved in the Belgian animation industry for more than forty years, and it’s always a delight to discuss this rich and fascinating history with him.

We sat for an hour long conversation about his book, the festival and the way it all started, back in 1982. Here, you’ll find bits of this long exchange, I hope you find them as interesting as I did! And maybe someday I’ll work out the time to publish the full length of this interview in audio or video here.

Do you recall your very first experience with animated film?

As a child, I owned a Super 8 camera, so I did some experiments. I made little cut-out films. I cut out all sorts of characters from magazines and moved them around in front of the camera. It didn’t go very far and I did not pursue these experiments and for a long time, I lost interest in it. Then, as a teenager, I went back to animation. I’ve always been drawn to it. I didn’t go to the cinema much, but I have the impression that because of this, when I saw a film, it had a much stronger effect on me. Sleeping Beauty both terrified and fascinated me at the same time. The use of colors, the dragon and the bridge, but also the three fairies, it had a very strong effect on me.

Later on, I discovered a wider scope of what animation was like, but you have to understand that back in that time, the concept of adult animated films was still very unknown, and you had very little opportunities to see them. I discovered La Planète Sauvage and Yellow Submarine, and then Picha, but for short films, it was much harder. But by then, my curiosity was already peaked, and being also a comic book reader from magazines such as Métal Hurlant, Pilote or Charlie, it all connected.

How do you go from passion to creating this institution that is Anima today?

When you start organizing an animation festival in the seventies and eighties, since nothing is available, you had to step up, grab your backpack and go to all the embassies. There, you’d search in all the cultural departments of the embassies, and God knows they were well-stocked back then. That’s what the students from the ULB (Brussels’ University) local cinema festival did, and they would rent the Uni’s biggest auditorium and screen four, five or six programs of shorts, categorized by country. For guys like me, it was a real joy to discover all that richness.

As I finished my studies in Art History, I stayed connected to animation by working on optical toys. Then, doing my civil service for a non-profit, I ended up being in charge of relations with film clubs. It is during that time that I met with Philippe Allard et André Pint, with whom I created the first Rencontres du cinéma d’animation de Bruxelles. After that, the event evolved thanks to my collaboration with Studio Graphoui and with Doris Clevens. Graphoui became the main organiser, until 1988 where Doris and I created Folioscope, the organization now behind the long-standing festival.

It’s interesting to me that you chose the way of the poster to tell the story of Anima. How did you come to such an approach?

I almost feel, during my time as festival director, I built each festival around the poster. When I think about an event, it’s always the poster that comes to mind first, and then I created the festival around it. It may feel a bit weird, but its been that way since the beginning, as I drew the first one. Creating the poster has always been an extremely important process to me, and we could spend a considerable amount of time on it, and on the animated trailer.

For me, it was also a way to retain a creative part in my job [Philippe Moins is also an illustrator, animator and novelist and has worked on many creations for Graphoui, including the Quick & Flupke tv series from the eighties. He now writes novels and short stories, along with books about animation]. And so, I could dedicate a huge chunk of time to this process. I remember when we created the poster and animated teaser for the 1990 edition with Jean-Louis Lejeune, we rented a whole theater just to shoot the picture and video on which he would then work for the poster and teaser. It was crazy, because it became like a real shooting.

And sometimes, it doesn’t work. I had to turn down Bill Plympton, because after we had contacted him to create our poster, he sent me a drawing with the Manneken Pis and a very, very big pencil-shaped penis. I could not use that as a poster! And back then, the back-and-forths were more difficult than today, so we eventually did not manage to collaborate. He was very angry at me at that time, and I was also annoyed to be fair, but I had no choice. In the end, he came later to the festival and we did not have any grievance towards one another. After all, this is animation.

Anima has always been about showcasing all types of animation, and throughout the years, you managed to get many international stars. How do you feel about this legacy?

I truly feel that we created Anima at the right moment. Animation had just been through a rough patch, and independent animation was still quite unknown, even with thriving oasis such as the Eastern animation scene, and the ONF. Even back in that time, Annecy was still a very niche event for animation people. At the end of the seventies, there was a new boom, and that’s also when Raoul Servais became famous internationally [with Harpya, Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1979]. I am from the same generation as guys like Tim Burton or John Lasseter, who both worked back at Disney during that grim period, and were both experimenting with new paths in animation. Both came to the festival [back in 1984] thanks to the work of my late wonderful colleague Hengameh Panahi, and they were completely unknown at the time! Lasseter was exploring computers and cg animation, while Burton was fascinated with Czech animation and had already made Vincent.

Anima was always crafted like this, a mix of luck and know-how, and little by little, our reputation grew and we started receiving submissions [now, Anima receives more than 1,600 short submissions per year]. Welcoming these shorts, while retaining big feature events created a diversity that is rooted in Anima’s DNA. As we say in French, “la mayonaise a pris”, and things started to work out even better. Aardman also rose to fame around the same time, and they’ve been very good friends of the festival over the years. To be honest, we felt part of a movement, and I think this was a moment where new generations sort of broke the barriers that had been standing between big studio productions and arty obscure films, to shed new light on animation.

In that sense, Belgian animators like Patar & Aubier are a perfect example of that. They craft arty, experimental commercial animation, and it all started as a joke of animated these still characters with a quirky voice-over.

You’ve been at the helm of Anima for 32 years, from 1982 to 2014, how did you feel about the evolution of animation, both internationally and from a Belgian perspective?

Animation has definitely regained some momentum, and I’d say there are several factors that helped shape this rebirth and growth. First, Europe became interested in animation as a cultural industry, and that led to a sudden flow of money toward animated coproductions and studio consolidation. MEDIA, in that sense, has been key, but there are also national programs which have been built to support this initiative. France is of course a great example. Where there was next to nothing in the early 1980s, there is now a flurry of studios and initiatives, along with new schools that opened branches for animation (ENSAD, Les Gobelins, etc).

Also, we mustn’t forget that new digital technologies gave animation a huge boost, starting in the early nineties. Not only in terms of artistic value, but also in terms of means of coproduction. The rise of the internet made coproducing much easier and cheaper. Before, you had to send tons of paper through Fedex, just in order to be able to work on the same material!

In Belgium, we’re also seeing a boom in terms of school productions. There are of course the well-established La Cambre and Gent (KASK) schools, but now more technical schools such as Haute Ecole Albert Jacquard are also doing animation, and lots of it. So you have a whole pool of talent to draw from. The drawback is that the ecosystem isn’t great for building a career in animated shorts. So people either find ways to make ends meet, or they move abroad to work on bigger projects. Belgium has seen some incredible talents rise such as Kim Keukeleire or Christine Polis, who both worked with Wes Anderson or Claude Barras.

We have had people who worked at Aardman, and all these talents sharpened their skills in Belgian schools.

So, if we have the talents, if we have the schools, what do we lack? In my point of view, we’ve lacked producers. Obviously, there are some great producers who have been working on the French-speaking side for a long time such as Vincent Tavier, who contributed to the success of A Town Called Panic, or Arnaud Demuynck, who built his own short film production model that is very efficient. But apart from them, it was — from what I know — quite small. However, we’re now seeing a new rise with producers such as Anne-Laure Guégan (Need Productions), Gregory Zalcman (Take Five), or Hugo Deghilage who now works with Panique as well.

My impression is that compared to the beginning of the festival, animation in Belgium is now definitely on the map, but it’s still struggling to break our borders and get the international recognition it deserves. Back in the days when we started, Raoul Servais and Gérald Frydman had created a momentum around Belgian animation, but it made such a lasting impression that until recently, I had many journalists come to me asking “is Servais making a new film?” when I started talking about Belgian animation.

How did you know it was time to let go of Anima, after 30+ years of being at the helm of this event?

It’s very easy. For a very long time, I loved doing the festival. But at a certain point, I realized that I had gotten fed up with it. And this realization actually came while selecting the films. It felt that all the films where things I’d already seen, and I was becoming increasingly picky. In my opinion, when you get annoyed easily, it’s time to take a step back.

So, after I left, I went through detox, and lost all interest in animated films. Today, I hardly ever watch them to be honest. It’s not that I find them repulsive, it’s just that I get bored quite quickly and I don’t connect so much with the cartoonish, neon vibes of modern 2D animation.

But I know that’s also a generational bias, and that’s why it’s important to have different age groups on the selection committee. I’m not just talking about young people, because that’s not the solution either. A good balance is a mix of every age, gender, and I think that’s very important to grasp what animation is today.

Below, you can discover the Grand Prix for International Short at Anima 2025.

Thank you for reading this long interview with Philippe Moins!

If you want to purchase his book, you can do so directly on Edition Lamiroy’s website.

Thanks again Philippe for this very wonderful discussion! As for me, I’ll now go back in the history of Belgian animation to prepare my December newsletters, and treat you with special gifts for the end of this year!

Have a wonderful animated weekend <3

Kevin

PS: this article was written during the nationwide Belgian strike, a movement protesting Prime Minister Bart De Wever and the Arizona government’s attempts to shrink Belgium’s debt by changing labour laws and reforming unemployment benefits and pensions, while increasing defense budget and cutting education, culture and health budgets.

As a freelance journalist standing for culture, education, social welfare and human treatment for all, I am strongly against such measures, and I strongly support all people impacted by them, especially animation artists, producers and members of the industry. More info here

Before diving back into the panels, a quick shout out to all those studios that presented Wednesday and Thursday morning. They are doing outstanding work, and they are also (most of them) looking for talents and young artists. A statement reflected in the lovely Wednesday afternoon they spent meeting with students and junior artists.

Why is it important?
In the ever-changing landscape of animation, Belgian artists tend to struggle, some of them forced to go and work abroad on productions. Where studio work isn’t what everyone is looking for, it is indeed a great way to build experience, add depth to your portfolio, and have the opportunity to work on world class animated features, tv series and specials in both 2D and 3D animation.

Now, let’s dive into the different studios

Vivi Film - Studio Souza - Creature

I’ve already talked extensively about the great set up veteran producer Viviane Vanfleteren has created with Vivi Film and the studios connected to her production company, spanning from Brussels (Studio Souza) to Ghent (Creature). Their recent projects include Titina, The Polar Bear Prince, the Upside down River, and upcoming Stitch Head and Ewilan’s Quest.

People wanting to know more about these studios should reach out directly to the teams. There are currently no open positions at Creature (per their website), but as you may know, it all depends on upcoming projects and upcoming productions, so don’t hesitate to check out their website (and their socials) regularly.
You can reach out to Studio Souza directly at recruitment(at)studiosouza.be

Dreamwall

Located in Charleroi, Dreamwall is a multimedia service provider studio specialized in creating animated content in all types of technologies (2D, 3D, hybrid). With it’s wide technological approach, whether in the professional tools used (2D, 3D, etc.) or in the production tracking tools that the studio can integrate with (Shotgrid, Kitsu, etc.), Dreamwall has placed agility at the heart of its identity.

Part of the Media-Participations mega-publishing French group, Dreamwall has been working on features, tv series, animated docs and much more. With collaboration on hit series such as The Smurfs, Le petit Nicolas, or acclaimed animated features such as Michael Dudok de Wit’s Oscar-Nominated Red Turtle.

As of now, Dreamwall is very busy working on several projects, many of them scheduled for 2026. On the feature side, the 2D gem that is The treasure of Barracuda has already been released in Spain, its local market, and will release in other territories in 2026. Les légendaires, a 3D feature film adapted from hit comic book series of the same name, will hit French and Belgian theatres in January 2026.

On the series’ side, Dreamwall is working on another comic book adaptation, Louca, a 3D series backed by Media Valley, Belvision and TF1.

People interested in knowing more about Dreamwall or applying can do so directly on their website through spontaneous application. And good news, Dreamwall is always looking for talents!

Walking the Dog

Another long established studio in Flanders, Walking the Dog has been behind most of many world class animated projects for the past 25 years. Working with Ari Folman on The Congress and Anne Frank, Eric Goossens and Anton Roebben also collaborated on Jack et la Mécanique du Coeur, a striking musical 3D film crafted back in 2014, and have been collaborating with the Richard the Stork and Fox & Hare franchises. On the more “arthouse” side, Walking the Dog has brought forth films such as Another Day of Life, Best Animated Film at the European Film Awards, but also the latest film by Sylvain Chomet, A Magnificent Life.

On that last project, Eric Goossens underlined the fact that it was difficult to find senior 2D artists in Belgium, connecting to my previous point.

As per recruitment, the veteran producer (and co-founder of Belgian animation producers association anim.be ) was both enthusiastic and cautious : “We try to employ as much interns, juniors, mids as possible, as well of course as seniors and specialists. But to me, if you want to apply at Walking the Dog, be as direct and detailed as possible. We are also human beings, we don’t have that much time, and we are looking with people willing to go the extra mile with us.”

A good way to go through the cluster of email candidacies is to attend such events as Cartoon Business, and meet the recruiters face-to-face. If you’re not able to do that and you’re interested in applying, reach out at hr[at]walkingthedog.be and here.

nWave

I won’t go too deep on this one as well, as I already covered the rich history of nWave in a long conversation with its co-founder Ben Stassen, as well as its latest film Chickenhare 2 here. But nWave has many more projects up its sleeves.

One of them is their “Untitled Jean-Paul Gaultier project”, slated for 2027, but they’re also working hard on a new feature, Yugly, that they pitched back at Cartoon Movie. The film is in production right now, and there are many other projects (both commissioned work and original ideas) in the pipe at nWave. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of that film when I did my Chickenhare 2 interview, and trust me when I say it’s going to be a visual treat.

People wanting to apply to this Belgian animation powerhouse (that now has also offices in both Liège, and the north of France) can find more info here.

The Pack

More than solely an animation studio, The Pack defines itself a “a bunch of talented artists, supported by a powerful infrastructure and solid production.” What do they do? Not only VFX for live-action, but also series, commercials, postproduction and stunning VR experiences, some of them screened in international festival.

We will dive more in a further newsletter on the multiple aspects of their work, but it’s interesting to say that they are also exploring gaming, in a very transmedia approach, combined with (following in Vivi Film’s footsteps) a tri-region setup that helps them get funding from all Belgium.

What are their works? The Pack collaborated on the indie, award-winning animated feature film Journey to Yourland, as well as crafting the Venice-selected The Sad Story of the Little Mouse who wanted to become somebody, and are currently working on next projects such as The Bottanix, a coproduction with Canada & Germany.

Interested in knowing more? Go to their website here.

There are, of course, many more studios based (or having offices) in Belgium. I had the chance to meet with the team at Waooh! during Cartoon Business, and they will be (as well as the Pack) the subject of an upcoming newsletter. Submarine, a Dutch studio which also has an antenna in Antwerp, is also very active.

So there’s definitely more to talk about! But right now, I’m diving back in the last Cartoon Business panels.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, and I leave you with not only one, but a load of Smurfs episodes, animated by Dreamwall as well as many other partners.

Have a Smurfy animated weekend <3

Kevin

Last week, I had the pleasure of treating you with Harpya, one of the Belgian animated hidden gems by Raoul Servais, an author I keep going back to.

In the meantime, I took part in the press jury of Filem’On Intl. Festival, where I discovered great live-action pieces but also animated shorts, from Belgium and beyond.

Among them, I had the pleasure of catching up with Berlinale Special Jury Prize winner Autokar by Sylwia Szkiladz, a striking 17-minute wonder which also won the Filem’On Belgian Short Film Award. I can’t wait to chat with Sylwia about the makings of this project, hopefully by the end of the year.

Next week, we head to Cartoon Business, hosted in Brussels for the second year. A great opportunity for all people related to the animation industry to learn more about the latest trends in TV, feature and digital production, and a great stage for Belgian animation studios.

On Thursday, VFX and post-production company The Pack and 2D/3D animation studio Waooh will present their most recent projects in front of Cartoon Business’ audience, kicking off a dense 48 hours of panels, keynotes and debates about the future of the industry.

A breather in this packed program, Camera-etc will present its latest award-winning short In Thousand Petals by Louise Bongartz, (with whom we discussed ahead of the Magritte, where Bongartz later received the Best Animated Short Award).

It’s been a busy autumn for Liège-based studio Camera-etc! Just a few weeks ago, the studio wrapped up a successful second edition of its Fête de l’Animation, an evening dedicated to animated indie Belgian shorts, in collaboration with studios Zorobabel, Graphoui and schools La Cambre and MedIADiffusion.

As the studio heads to Cartoon Business, we spoke with Bastien Martin, producer and coordinator at Camera-etc about his ambitions for the future of Belgian animation, both on a local and a global level.

Can you introduce us to Camera-etc in a few words?

Camera-etc was founded in 1979 in Liège. Its founder (and director until his retirement in 2021) Jean-Luc Slock firmly believed that everyone, including children, could do animation. The studio therefore initially focused on group workshops.

Then the children grew up and became animators themselves... In 2008, part of the team decided to move into directing: this led to films like La Boite de Sardines, Orgesticulanismus, Poils, and many others that have been shown all over the world. Today, the team consists of 13 people, half of whom are animators, and the studio’s activities are divided into three main areas: group workshops with children, teenagers, and adults, as well as through partnerships with other socio-cultural or educational organizations ; commissioned films; and author films, a department that I wanted to emphasize when I became coordinator in 2021.

All of this represents about twenty films a year, and last year, our collaborative and author films garnered 240 festival selections and 24 awards, in addition to 189 screenings worldwide.

How does Camera-etc fit in the Belgian animation industry (if such an industry exists)?

Of course it does! This industry just remains discreet because, unfortunately, we don’t have the resources of Portugal or the reach of France, but we shouldn’t underestimate our talent and our producers.

As a non-profit organization (we’re an “atelier de production”), we’re currently limited to short films and animated documentaries, but we collaborate extensively with various organizations in Belgium and beyond.

As of today, we have leads on some major projects that I can’t talk about yet, but things are slowly taking shape. Regarding our own productions, Camera-etc regularly partners with other organizations like Ozù Productions to raise funds through the Tax Shelter program. We are also co-producers (half of the animation and sound post-production) of Motherhood, an upcoming short film directed by Anca Damian, who had previously used our services for animation and character design on other projects such as Marona’s Fantastic Tale.

We also try our best to support emerging talent, notably through our Microfilm calls for projects and our annual residency. Finally, on our modest scale, we’re venturing into promoting the animated medium with the “Fête de l’Animation”, an evening dedicated to films produced by the Ateliers of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, which takes place in October and is now in its second year. In short, we try to be flexible, to adapt to the market while continuing our development.

Why was it important to you to offer this program to a local audience?

To start, it’s the tireless desire to introduce short films to the general public and on the big screen. It’s become such a difficult format to see outside of festivals or online... Introducing shorts like those to a new audience is a great way to showcase unique and original talents from our region. The event is also an extension of the Fête du Court, with a focus on animation. Furthermore, taking advantage of World Animation Day in October seemed like a good excuse during a period that’s perhaps quieter in terms of film events. Finally, organizing a screening like this outside of Brussels, in Liège, was a nice change of pace!

This week, you’re heading to Cartoon Business, a completely different setting. What are you expecting to take from this event?

The industry is facing difficult times, to say the least: reduced funding in many countries, television networks limiting co-productions and acquisitions, the uncontrolled rise of AI, a backlog of projects in review boards, not to mention rising costs... I don’t think anyone is truly at ease. And this is true in both Europe and North America. To me, the closure of a well-established studio like Nelvana was a bit of a personal shock. It seems important, therefore, to continue building networks and bridges between professionals to envision the future and examine our methods of operation and collaboration. Miracles like Flow won’t happen every year: there’s probably a need for reflection on the current ecosystem in terms of funding, co-productions, and distribution.

Personally, I’m paying close attention to what’s happening in Eastern Europe; CEE Animation is doing fantastic work. We need to keep discovering new cinemas, new opportunities, and an event like Cartoon Business plays this role of a unifying moment.

As part of the Belgian animation sector, what are your hopes and goals for the future?

Our mission is twofold: to guarantee (or, better yet, increase) the resources allocated to original creation, and to continue broadening the horizons of potential viewers. Don’t misunderstand me: animation suffers less from its “children’s” image today than it did before, that’s true, but there’s still a long way to go.

I like to think that films like Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco can help us overcome some hurdles. As for funding, well... it’s already not great considering our talent and potential, so we wouldn’t want it to decrease any further. I think we have all the necessary elements: our schools train excellent technicians and directors, the small size of our country facilitates travel between studios, regional funds and the Tax Shelter consistently show interest in the sector given the jobs it creates... The main issue remains with our entry point, the Centre du Cinéma, due to a lack of allocated resources. And this is a matter of politics. The most important thing today is therefore probably to continue fighting to tell our stories and offer them to the public, and to value our talents before they go elsewhere.

A recent study conducted by the French-Speaking Producers Guild showed that nearly 85 animation projects are currently underway within 22 different companies, with both short- and long-term goals. This includes short films as well as feature films, series, and TV specials. Production companies not traditionally involved in animation are now tackling it successfully, such as Les Films du Fleuve with The Most Precious of Cargoes. On the author side, Belgian live-action duo Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani have an animated feature project in development that has been progressing well for years.

Personally, I sense a growing interest in integrating animation into documentaries. The short film Autokar as been very well-received at festivals after winning an award in Berlin, while nWave Pictures continues to challenge the biggest American studios with its feature films such as the recent Chickenhare 2. And I’m only talking about the French-speaking side here, because in the north, studios like Animal Tank are going to the Oscars [last year, Beautiful Men by Nicolas Keppens received an Oscar nomination].

And let’s not forget that animation in Belgium represents a significant volume of employment, regardless of format, and therefore generates a large amount of work for a great many technicians.

In short, on both artistic and technical standpoints, animation is a pillar of contemporary Belgian cinema, and we must fight to keep it that way. When a country invests in animation, as Portugal has done in recent years for example, the entire industry is enhanced and revitalized, both nationally and internationally. We must dare to be curious and take a close look at what exists, before it disappears for lack of resources and audience.

Thank you Bastien for sharing all these insights on the Belgian animation landscape, and hopefully we see each other next week at Cartoon Business to celebrate the richness of animation once more!

In the meantime, I leave you readers with one of my favorite Camera-etc production, Orgesticulanismus by Mathieu Labaye. 2D animation at its best, and a great visual treat to end this Friday on a good note.

Have a great animated weekend <3

Kévin

So before we dive into this new edition of the Animation Belgian, I want to give you long-time and new readers (welcome!) a taste of what’s to come in the following weeks.

A Festival begins with its poster

A few weeks ago, I had an hour-long exchange with Anima Festival co-founder Philippe Moins, about his 32-year long run as head of this incredible event that started all the way back in 1982. In an upcoming newsletter, I’ll share this in-depth conversation with Moins, author of several French-speaking animation bible, an illustrator and novelist himself, and the author of “Anima à l’affiche”, a history of Anima festival told by its posters.

Animation means business in Brussels

For the second year, Cartoon Business will unfold in Brussels from November 12-14, and the industry is about to get down on business. Belgian studios from both Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia will be present at the event, and I’ll catch up with Animal Tank, Camera-etc, ThePack and Waooh hopefully by next Friday to see what Belgium can take from hosting such an event.

Last year, Silent Panorama was presented to the Cartoon Business audience by Zorobabel, and I’m looking forward to see how the 2025 attendees react to the Oscar-Nominated Beautiful Men by Nicolas Keppens and Magritte-Winner A Thousand Petals by Louise Bongartz, both very strong stop-motion shorts.

Belgian Animation: A State of the Union

Earlier this month, the wonderful team at European Animation Journal asked me if I could summarize Belgian animation in four pages. First of all, no of course, it’s not possible to summarize the richness of Belgian animation history and landscape in less than 10,000 characters.

But still I tried, and I’ll be happy to share this photographic view of today’s industry. Will it change over time? Most definitely. Is it complete? Definitely not. So, I hope this newsletter will spark a discussion about what’s missing. Because after all, the more the merrier.

But for now, let’s get back to our horror special, featuring one of the most known Belgian animated short, which also happened to win a small international prize called the Palme d’Or.

Harpya, by Raoul Servais

To present Raoul Servais is to present the most known face in Belgian animation history. I won’t dive too much into who Servais is, since I already introduced him to you back last November when I spoke about Chromophobia, one of my favorite work of his.

There are many animated shorts we could talk about, each of them iconic in its own approach, and we will definitely go back to Servais in the next months.

But Harpya is a very different short altogether, and one that got Servais the attention he had been deserving for many years.

Cannes’ jury was visibly seduced by this eerie, surrealist short about an unknowing man who ends up rescuing a rather aggressive and demanding harpy. With its deranged atmosphere, weird visuals and hypnotic soundtrack, Harpya is not a very pleasurable experience, but you that you will definitely remember.

Despite its questionable portrayal of a feminine voracious character, Harpya is most notable because the film introduced the world to Servaisgraphie, a process created by Servais himself blending animated backgrounds and characters with live actors, with striking results.

Per wikipedia, Servaisgraphie is a process that involves filming characters in a studio painted white, and on black and white film. The images are then printed on sheets of cellophane and colored on the back, as in a cartoon. They are then filmed again, this time in front of the appropriate scenery. Years before CG backgrounds, Servais used this technique to create the singular atmosphere of Harpya, before crafting Papillons de nuit in 1998, his only short made entirely with this technique.

Four years earlier, Servais wanted to use this technique for his feature film Taxandria (1994), but the rise of CG background technology made Servaisgraphie costly and obsolete.

Going back to Harpya, it’s interesting to see how much the film had an impact of on Belgian animation, with its (and I quote) “Partially horror, and partially surreal trip with pommes frites on the side” vibe.

Servais, who I had the chance to meet back in 2013 as part of a Masterclass he held in our Brussels Faculty, remained quite unknown to the public in Belgium (at least on the French side from what I know) but his legacy lives on with the Animation School of KASK, which he founded back in the 1980s.

Flemish animation, deeply influenced by Servais’ works, retains more often than not this kind of surrealism, and you can see Servais’ influence in many shorts still today.

In 2014, CINEMATEK (the Belgian Cinémathèque) restored 14 of his sorts, edited in one DVD that you can easily buy here on their website.

If you want to discover more about this film, and Servais’ work, I recommend browsing the Servais Foundation website, full of interesting bits and news about the artist’s career.

For those of you too eager to wait, the short is available online below. Support the artist’s legacy, and the restoration process by buying the dvd!

As for myself, I am heading now into the theaters for more animation, and I hope you are lucky enough to do the same on this wonderful Halloween.

As always, have a great animated weekend, and see you in November <3

Kevin

Last week also marked the second time I had the chance to discuss with nWave director Benjamin Mousquet, whose second feature, Chickenhare and the Secret of the Groundhog, is the subject of this week’s newsletter.

If you’re not familiar with Chickenhare, here’s a little trailer for the first film to refresh your memory.

In this first film, viewers from all around the world had the pleasure of meeting Chickenhare, a young adventurer half-chicken, half-hare. Mocked for being different, he disguises himself as a hare and hides his chicken-like features beneath an adventurer’s hat (yes, this is an Indiana Jones reference), a leather jacket and boots. To prove himself worthy, he embarks on a quest to find the Hamster of Darkness, along with his companions Abe (a sarcastic and cowardly turtle) and Meg (a skunk and martial arts expert). Along the way, he will find much more that this Hamster.

Mousquet’s first feature, which was also the last feature for co-founder Ben Stassen [read my interview of this Belgian animation veteran here], Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness was the project that the aspiring director was waiting for, as he explained to me back in 2022. “It’s an ambition I’ve had for years, and t’s thanks to the trust of Ben and Caroline [van Iseghem, producer at nWave] and my experience here that I was able to co-direct this film, with an energy and passion proportional to the challenge. The script was perfect for me. The structure was already there, the characters were endearing, all I had to do was discover this new aspect of production, and finding the vision to put things in motion, and to be able to lead the teams.”

Read the full interview here in French on Cinergie.be

Three years later, and after a global success, Mousquet is back in the director’s chair for Chickenhare and the Secret of the Groundhog. A film that, in many ways, hits a whole other level than the first one.

In this new adventure, the trio have become renowned adventurers. Meg’s former colleague, Crolloq, makes a return, seeking the key to unveiling the mysteries of the groundhog with the backward-facing face. While searching for clues on this artefact, Chickenhare meets his sister, Gina, who asks for his help in finding the Groundhog, in order to heal the Tree of Life and save their people. Accompanied by Meg and Abe, Chickenhare and his sister Gina set out on a new journey.

To be honest, I wasn’t always nWave’s biggest fans, as their first features tended to lack either the narrative depth of Pixar or the groundbreaking technique of Disney, while still claiming to have both with budgets ten times lower.

But as I learned to know the teams more and more, and as the studio grew, I have to say that the evolution both in terms of skills and story have been truly impressive, and this latest feature may very well be my new nWave favorite.

Between the film gorgeous settings, the level of grooming achieved on the characters, and the fast-paced adventure with heart, Chickenhare and the Secret of the Groundhog manages to bring back epic adventure on a child-level, something that — besides Moana — has been lacking in recent commercial animation. For a Treasure planet absolute fan like me, Chickenhare was a real nugget.

To go behind the scenes of this epic achievement, going wide in France next week (and in Belgium on October 22), I spoke with Benjamin about the challenges of this new feature, and how he felt about going back to these characters.

Can you take us back to where Chickenhare started?
Chickenhare is based on the eponymous comic book by Chris Grine, which we set out to adapt back in the late 2010s. The original tone was a bit darker, but we worked on a screenplay adapted by Family Guy alum Dave Collard, and aimed for a broader audience.

How did you feel going back — this time, alone — into the director’s chair?
It is a very different experience. In one hand, it meant that I had more creative freedom. But on the other, it was a tremendous amount of work. Luckily, I had a wonderful team, and I got a lot of help, especially for editing which I used to do myself. This time, I worked with a editor who allowed me to step back from the material, which was great.

How did you approach this new narrative, and going back to these characters?
For the first thing, we had a very established script, almost a shooting script. For this new adventure, we started working early on with Dave, and Matthieu Zeller (CEO and nWave producer) also had ideas and expectations about this new movie. So we worked as a trio to bring forth a new story. The key idea was to retain what made Chickenhare a fun and action-packed adventure, while building more in-depth characters and a stronger narrative. Our subtext is also more complex, and I hope these themes will resonate with many.

Going from script to storyboard, what were the challenges in your perspective?
We had a good version of the script when we started storyboarding the film, but they both evolved synchronously for several months. The storyboard allows us to envision the film, but also its flaws, or lack of balance. We went back to some scenes, fine-tuned narrative arcs, and worked for a long time in finding the right balance.

What were the biggest technical challenges on this new production?
There were many, as we set out for a new level of high-quality cg animation. The hardest part of the film was definitely the third act, in which both Chickenhare and Gina enter a magical and wondrous world. We had to create this background from scratch, and use it for extremely complex shots.
Besides this specific sequence, I think what proved the most difficult for me was juggling with different arcs and finding the right balance between all three, Chickenhare and Gina, Crolloq and Meg, and Abe and his new friend. It took a lot of editing to create a smooth feeling of adventure without losing the audience.

What striked me the most between the two films is the level of grooming on Gina’s character, can you elaborate on that?
Thank you for noticing! Gina is one of the character we worked the most on, as she reveals three different shapes during the film, as we discover more about her origin story. Compared to the previous feature, we had to mix feathers and fur in a much more complex pattern.
While we’re on technical challenges, the opening sequence was also extremely complex. Our FX team did wonders in creating this giant bowl of soup with floating elements in it, and then turning it into a giant whirlpool in which our characters get trapped. Overall, I was amazed by the team, a mix of seasoned animators and fresh talents. They managed to create something that went beyond my wildest dreams.

How many artists did work on the project?
At the height of production, 120 artists were working on the project, which started back three years ago.

Do you have scenes that stick with you still?
One of the things I absolutely wanted to put in this film was a fight scene. And I’m very happy we got to create this beautiful showdown between Meg and Crolloq in the marble quarry. The backgrounds artists outdid themselves on this one.
To create a believable and riveting fight, we dove into Jackie Chan movies and martial arts classics, and we were lucky that one of our animators had a real knack for tackling fight sequences. It turned about beautifully.

What do you hope the audience get out of this new feature?
I do believe in crafting an adventure with heart. The message rooted in our story is meaningful and, and I hope it resonates with children and parents alike. The conflicts that arise in this story can definitely be found in the real world, and I think Chickenhare could be the starter of interesting and powerful conversations between generations.

What is animation for you as a medium?
I was love at first sight for me. Before discovering Toy Story, which blew me away, I discovered The Little Mermaid as a child, and it stuck with me. I’ve always wanted to do animation, and I feel very lucky to live my passion today.

That’s it for today!

If you do have the opportunity to discover Chickenhare and the Secret of the Groundhog on a big screen, I urge you to do so! It’s a wonderful film that works both on animation buffs and children. I mean, aren’t every animation buffs children at heart?

I leave you with this topic to discuss over with your animation friends! And of course, have a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

Today, I’m very happy to share the conversation I had in late August with William Henne, producer and co-founder of the “ Centre d’Expression et de Créativité / Atelier de production” Zorobabel, one of the three animated “ateliers” currently active in Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (along with Camera-etc and Graphoui).

To be honest, I don’t know if such a structure exists anywhere else in the world. Combining both author-driven productions and “éducation permanente”, which in the French-Belgian way of defining continuous learning and extracurricular activities for adults and children alike, Zorobabel has been active for more than 30 years.

Co-founded by Delphine Renard and William Henne in 1994, Zorobabel has been producing animated short films and organizing animation workshops for adults, children and young people for years. Both collective films and author-driven ones have been featured in international festivals, as was the case for Silent Panorama by Nicolas Piret, presented at Annecy last year.

As we near the last call for Zorobabel’s “Résidence au carré”, a writing/development residency for artists who are in development of an animated short, it felt timely to put forward the atelier and its rich history today.

For those who might be interested in applying, the deadline is September 30.

More info here

Continuity in the midst of change

For Henne, who has been involved in the workshops since the beginning, it is still the same energy that drives him into new projects. “Our public is never the same, so we have been multiplying experiences both in terms of public, techniques and approach. It makes for very varied projects and, as a social worker, it is also knowing how to collaborate with vulnerable or disadvantaged groups. We’ve conducted workshops in prison, but also with people with disabilities, people following literacy courses, newcomers, etc. All this provides for a wide variety of content and worldviews, and that permeates in our films.”

Continuity in Zorobabel’s activities was also built on the authors’ side, as Henne and Renard developed quite early the production arm of their association. Even today, as he works less in the workshops and more on the production side, he still puts a lot of work and energy in the “ateliers”.

“Those two sides of our project have always worked together, and they connect often. Collective works have traveled around in festivals, and having professional means to create these projects is very rewarding for our participants.”

At this point, I am switching to a Q&A format, which fits the rest of the interview best in my opinion.

William, you’ve mentioned that these two sides of your activity often connect, do you have an example to share with our readers?

I think one of the best examples of that is our collaboration with the Créahmbxl‍. Our participants are in a workshop situation, accompanied by artists, and the works they craft is then showcased in a gallery exhibition, turning our participants into artists themselves beyond the “atelier”. The clips that we create in this context are in-between an author’s film and a collective work.

Diving more into the author-driven films, how did you build this side of Zorobabel?

A few years ago, we created a call for proposals under the label “Start”. At that time, we promoted this initiative by going to every school, talking to students and teachers alike. “Start” is a label for debut shorts, so it was obviously aimed at students and aspiring professionals. People who start their project with us can benefit from our studio facilities, animation stand, computers and everything they need to complete their film. We also handle production and budget aspects of the film, as well as looking for public funding.

For this year, we’ve refined our approach, without any deadlines. It matches our reality better, and we can now receive applications at any time. They will be reviewed by a reading committee, and depending on our interest in the project and the slots we have available, we can select the project.

At the same time, our call for proposals with a deadline has transformed into what we call “Résidence au carré” (previously knowned as “Carré des auteurs”), which focuses solely on writing/visual development of an animated project. This does not necessarily lead to us producing the film, but it allows the artist to build his project within our studio, along with a €1,000 grant from the SCAM/SACD.

We can accept any types of project, but the candidate has to be living in Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles to be eligible.

Beyond production, how does Zorobabel accompany its films and authors?

Ours is a classic strategy. Films are usually unavailable online during their festival run, which can be quite long depending on the film’s success. But eventually, authors come back to us either to put the film online themselves, or we put it through our own channel. Vimeo Staff Pick were also one of the reasons authors wanted to get back their film, as this could provide great visibility a real career boost.

Even so, everyone who knows short films is used to having little visibility, compared to feature films.

Aral, a 2009 short by Delphine Renard and Delphine Cousin, is now streaming on Vimeo. More info here.

You’ve been working in Belgian animation for more than 30 years, how has it evolved for you?

Technology has had a big impact of the medium. When we started working, we used film, editing benches and sound editing tables. The transition to digital, at first through sound and then image, was a true evolution to our workflow. I think our very last short shot on film was Blue Beard.

From then on, we used a digital monitoring system which helps us track our animation, but I remember that before this, we had to be very careful because everything had to go the lab and be developed before we even could notice our mistakes. Now, we use both TVPaint and Blender, and the ways of working have changed. It allowed us to do new types of film, and we even have tried to create a workshop built on a game engine. Overall, I think what we try to with our digital-yet-traditional techniques is always think of new things, combining both to create new shorts and innovative art. Luna Park, a 2018 stop-motion short created by a group of 10 adults, is one of the very first films using electric wire as material for animation. And it originated as a simple idea, in one of our workshops.

What do you think about the state of animation in Belgium, and how it is perceived by the industry and public funds in general?

I have to say it’s not something that interests me a lot. That being said, we had a case when we went to present an adult animated short film project at the FWB, a project that had received funding in France, and someone asked me what was our target audience. Even though it was quite clear, that person was still thinking about animation as a children’s medium.

But to be honest, it’s not a battle of mine. I think it is more about fighting ignorance about the medium rather than legitimating its use.

And what about the Belgian animation industry?

Again, I wouldn’t be the best person to ask, since we are not really involved in some kind of industry. Which is funny because a few blocks from here, you can find nWave Pictures, a big international studio. We’ve already went a few times to visit them for our workshops, and they’re really nice!

You’ve recently celebrated Zorobabel’s 30th birthday. What will it look like in 5 years?

Right now, we’re in the middle of consolidating and structuring our activity, in terms of data management. We have installed a new server, and there are cables running through the whole building connecting everything to our database. Besides that, we also have an off-site server in Wallonia, and we use both for our coproductions, our workshops and our artists on-site. Our short term goal is to complete this setup, and from that point, continuing to create both new author films and collective works.

Both work on a very different timelines and, as I mentioned before, working on both is a very good combination for us at Zorobabel.

Simbiosis Carnal, a 2017 short by Rocío Álvarez produced by Zorobabel, traveled to many festivals.

Thank you for reading through this interview! Remember, if you want to apply for Zorobabel “Résidence au carré”, you have until September 30, and you can find all info here.

In the meantime, you can browse Zorobabel’s extensive catalog, there are many short films I do recommend such as De longues vacances, Autour du lac, or Yin by Nicolas Fong and many more.

I’ll probably dive into the catalog in the next few days, since I still have many to discover!

In the meantime, I wish you, as always, a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

In Belgium, where — as everywhere else — networking, cooperation, coproduction and the ability to reinvent oneself is ever part of each producer’s mindset, it’s great to see these efforts pay off.

For Ghent-based Creative Conspiracy (CC), this was mostly acknowledged this year when the company received the Cartoon Tribute - Producer of the Year award.

An award-winning company that produces commercials, TV series, short films and feature films (both CGI and 2D), CC also received the award for EBU Co-Development Initiative at Cartoon Forum two years ago for their tv series project Ray & Ruby, a 26x11’ children adventure with two mice experimenting new inventions and toys in a real human house.

This year, CC was presenting their new tv series project Terry and Olivia, in addition to participating as co-producer in This Moose Belongs to Me, an Irish-backed project by award-winning company Sixteen South ranking top 2 in the most attended EU coproductions pitches.

While I did not have the chance to catch CC’s pitches (nor attend the Forum for that matter, as I was in Budapest attending FIPRESCI’s General Assembly), I was happy to chat with Tom Van Gestel, Founder and Managing Director of the Belgian animation power-house Fabrique Fantastique.

Born in 1985 and a RITCS alum, Van Gestel previously worked as an animator, director, and art director for various animation studios until 2013. Since then, he has been managing his own production house and animation studio, Fabrique Fantastique. He remains creatively involved in each project and has contributed to notable works such as animated features Brendan and the Secret of Kells, Jack et la mécanique du cœur as well as directing series Picnic with Cake, Fox and Hare, Sir Mouse and Interstellar Ella.

Presenting Olga, a Belgian-Canadian coproduction I already introduced last week, he was kind enough to answer my questions prior to the Forum. You can read the interview below, and discover the trailer as well (among many others).

Tom, thank you for doing this with me today. For starters, what drove you to launch La Fabrique Fantastique, back then?

Fabrique Fantastique was born out of my own creative itch. Back then, I was working every day in Brussels at an acclaimed production studio, on big international co-productions where Belgium was usually the minority partner. Even so, I found myself having the most fun on the train ride to work, sketching and scribbling ideas for shows of my own. At a certain point, I decided to turn that dream into reality and start my own company.

With Fabrique Fantastique (FF), our focus is on creating original IP for a wide audience, with a strong emphasis on children. We want our animation to be meaningful: entertaining, of course, but also offering something that helps our viewers grow. We try not to be too niche, our goal is to tell stories that feel accessible, valuable, and lasting. Sometimes we start from original ideas, sometimes from book properties, but the drive is always the same.

Now, ten years in, we’ve experienced highs and lows, but I’m still surrounded by largely the same crew of “fantastique” people I started with, and I hope to continue working with them for many more years.

What are the challenges of managing an animation studio in Belgium, and what are the obstacles you face most often when producing animation in Belgium?

It’s tough. An animation studio has four main avenues of work: producing your own shows, co-producing as a minority partner, doing service work, or creating other forms of digital content with the talent and infrastructure you have in-house. All four of these have become more challenging in recent years.

Internationally, buyers are more cautious, distributors are less willing to advance sales money, and there’s a strong preference for already established IP. That makes introducing new properties increasingly difficult. Belgium’s tax shelter system works well, but wages here are high compared to other countries. Our public funding bodies are reliable, but their budgets have remained static for years. The promise of extra funding from big tech contributions is currently locked in legal disputes, so for now, those much-needed resources are out of reach.

At Studio Fantastique, we employ around 40 people, most of them on open-ended contracts. I believe in offering stability to artists, which has built a very close-knit, agile, multi-talented team. The upside is that we can start projects quickly and our people can contribute across departments. The downside is the constant need to “feed the beast”, to keep bringing in enough work to sustain the team. That’s not easy, especially when competing with regions like the Canary Islands, where low wages and powerful tax incentives allow studios to produce at much lower cost, while steadily improving quality.

That said, Belgium still has real strengths: experienced crews, a strong work ethic, and a distinctive way of doing things. For many projects, producing here is still an excellent choice.

What do you think of the state of the industry right now?

Looking specifically at kids’ content, I think we desperately need to rethink how children are consuming media. It makes no sense to give kids unlimited access to uncurated, digital-first content without considering what’s ethical, social, or psychologically appropriate. It hurts me every time I see a child in a stroller with a phone strapped in front of their face, blasting endless streams of Cocomelon, at a time in their development when they’re capable of learning so much more. We need to make sure their eyes are on screens that truly give them something to grow from.

As for the industry at large, the picture is difficult. Many studios are struggling, and in the past five years we’ve seen a significant number close their doors. Change is needed, both in how we approach children’s content and in how the industry sustains itself.

From what your shows share in terms of values and content, it makes a lot of sense. Was it what also drove you to Olga as a source material for your new project?

The first spark came from the quirky charm of Elise Gravel’s original books. They’re wonderfully fun, filled with bold, slightly mischievous humor that really resonates with audiences here in Belgium. At the same time, the stories have a mainstream appeal that aligns perfectly with where we want FF to be positioned: quirky but accessible.

What really excites me about Olga is how smartly the concept integrates visuals and storytelling. The characters are drawn through Olga’s perspective, she’s a shy, socially awkward girl who encounters a sociable alien that looks like a mix between a shaved hamster and a potato. Beneath the humor, the series has an important message: it validates children who might struggle socially, showing them it’s okay to be who they are, while gently encouraging them to step into human connections. That combination of fun, heart, and depth is exactly why we wanted to bring Olga to the screen.

What techniques have you chosen to tell this story, and what challenges does it mean for both director and producer?

We’re working in 2D, using Toon Boom, with visual references to shows like Hilda and Hey Arnold. The big challenge is translating Elise Gravel’s illustrations into an animation style that can be produced efficiently while staying true to the spirit of her work. Fans of the books have high expectations, and we want to honor them.

That means developing a style that’s both distinctive and practical, built on 2D rigs that allow flexibility without losing the original charm. It’s a balancing act, but one we’re very excited about.

How does this project fit into the history of your studio?

In Belgium, we’ve already found success with Sir Mouse, and Interstellar Ella has reached audiences around the world. Both have been renewed for second seasons, and Olga follows the same trajectory we hope to continue: building series with staying power. In fact, we already have concepts outlined for a second and third season of Olga.

This project also allows us to strengthen our expertise in 2D production. Until now, we’ve focused mainly on 3D. Our aim is to run at least two large productions simultaneously, which is essential to support a studio of our size. Finally, Olga deepens our partnership with Apartment11 in Canada, a trusted collaborator we’re eager to continue developing projects with.

What are you looking for at Cartoon Forum 2025, and what stage of the project are you at?

At Cartoon Forum, we want to see how the market reacts to Olga and, importantly, spark broadcaster interest that can strengthen our European funding applications. Beyond the business side, we’re simply excited to share the project and be part of an event that celebrates the creativity and magic of animation.

The Olga trailer presented at Cartoon Forum 2025 can be found in the trailer roundup below (around 14’45’’). Interest seems to have been quite sparked by the project, as Olga was among the top 10 projects most attended for EU coproductions.

You can find more info on the project here, and on Fabrique Fantastique here.

That’s it for today!

Next week, we will dive in the history of another Belgian company, Zorobabel. The indie non-profit studio recently celebrated its 30th birthday, and continues to build an approach mixed between education, collective animation and author-driven projects.

In the meantime, as always, have a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

I mean, look at this color palette:

As I unfortunately won’t be there this year, I’ll try and dive deeper in the projects in this introduction piece, and catch up later with the producers to get their feedback from the Forum.

I hope you enjoy this piece, and the event if you’re lucky enough to attend! In the meantime, I will be heading to Budapest for the FIPRESCI’s general assembly, where I’ll represent Belgium (and animation) as we address the future of film critics.

And now, let’s discover the projects.

Gnomes

Gnomes follows the adventures of Doetzen and Linus, two twin gnome children who learn the ropes of gnome life through trial and error. Their parents David and Lisa - whom you may remember from the 1980s series David the Gnome - teach them everything a gnome needs to know, but believe that children learn more when they experience it for themselves. The young gnomes explore the do's and don'ts of life in the forest until they know it like the back of their hand. Everything they need, they can find or make there. But above all, the young gnomes learn to co-exist in harmony with each other and the forest.

First published in 1976, Gnomes (Leven en werken van de kabouter in its original Dutch title, lit. Life and work of the gnomes) is a illustrated book written by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet. Translated to English in 1977, it sold millions of copies worldwide, inspired many written spin-offs, toys and games, a US tv special in 1980 and a Spanish tv series in 1985.

Forty years later, it makes sense that Flanders is bringing the beloved Dutch characters to the screen, for the first time in 3D animation.

Produced by De Argonauten and VRT-Ketnet, Gnomes is a 26x11’ tv series aimed at children from 5 to 7. Freek Quartier (Richard the Stork 2, Interstellar Ella) directs, with a script by Ilka De Bisschop (Fox and Hare).

From what we can tell by the visuals, the series aim to retain the close link to nature that is the core of Gnomes, with a distinct artistic direction inspired by figurines and the beautiful-turned-classic drawings created by Rien Poortvliet.

More info here.

Hol­ly & Luna Go Woof!

After Holly wishes for a dog under a shooting star, she and her big sister Luna wake up with an unexpected twist: every time anyone says the word “dog,” they both transform: Holly in a tiny, hyper Papillon, Luna into a giant, shaggy Bobtail. No warning, no control, and definitely no personal space. Between school, secrets, and squirrel-fueled chaos in Barkwood Grove, the sisters bicker, bond, and get into magical messes. With fast-paced storytelling, quirky characters, and a universe built for laughter, the series celebrates big emotions in small moments and reminds kids that being different isn’t just okay… it’s woof-tastic.

Helmed by MITS PROD in Belgium, a sister company to French-based STIM Studio and co-producing with French power-house PGS Studios, Holly and Luna Go Woof! is a magical comedy about sisterhood and identity crafted in what looks like high-end 3D animation.

A project driven by graphic author (and art director) Christophe Fossard (Mini Smiley) animator with directors Rémi Guerin (My Dad the Bounty Hunter) and Simon Nicholson (PJ Masks), Holly and Luna Go Woof! is a 52x11’ ambitious series, aimed at children from 5 to 7.

A project that may well interest broadcasters from Europe and beyond, but looks to be a very expensive one as well. I’m curious to see the feedback from buyers, who might fall for those cutie-cute doggy-dogs.

More info here.

Olga

Olga, an 11-year-old quirky young scientist, discovers a strange alien creature named Meh. As she tries to learn everything about Meh, her curiosity about people and social interactions begins to grow. Along the way, she learns important life lessons, makes new friends, and takes bold steps outside her comfort zone. A hilarious and heartwarming adventure filled with humor and science.

Olga is a lively animated series for children aged 6 to 9, based on the popular graphic novels by Elise Gravel. If you don’t know the Canadian author, she is a hilarious human-being, as well a very driven author and illustrator whose goal is to promote diversity, tolerance, respect and empathy through books, printables and “other cool things”, as she puts herself on her website. My favorite so far: The Worst Book Ever, a book my youngest can’t seem to get enough of.

Back to the series. An adaptation from Olga and the Smelly Thing from Nowhere, the 52x11’ project is presented by Belgian studio Fabrique Fantastique and co-produced with Canadian apartment11. 2D animation veteran Sarah Menheere (The Polar Bear King, Funan, Phantom Boy) directs, with a script by Lienne Sawatsky (The Guava Juice Show, Pinecone & Pony).

A powerful team drawing from a hit source material, and what may be one of the most interesting projects from this forum. I will definitely talk with Tom Van Gestel after the Forum, who — as it happens — is also an Animation Belgian reader. So, thanks Tom, and looking forward to learning more about this project!

More info here.

Prout

Every day, the little Proutians are threatened by waste dumped on their planet by flying dustbin lorries from Earth. Forced to come to terms with this pollution, they transform these old objects into playful or useful accessories.

Bringing his claymation short film to tv-series format, Belgian live-action director/producer Marc-Henri Wajnberg makes his (to my knowledge) first appearance at Cartoon Forum, for a 52x7’ project backed by French co-producers Mediawan and ARTEM.

Blending live action, stop-motion and claymation, the series is aimed for kids 6 to 9, with what promises to be full of fart jokes, but with heart and an eco-conscious angle. Can farts win over the audiences of Cartoon Forum? We’ll see…

More info here.

Terry and Olivia

Terry and Olivia are - quite literally - two inseparable friends. And they have a fantastic power: they can talk to anything in nature. To animals and insects, but also to plants, water, and stones... All it takes is a magical tap from Olivia and a loud HELLO! from Terry. Then, things sort of “wake up.” Ever talked to a tree? It’s very noisy. Every little leaf in its canopy has something to say. And stones, they talk very slooowly... Well, they do have time... There's always something going on in nature, and Terry and Olivia can’t wait to take their young viewers on tiny wonderful adventures.

Created, directed and written by Kim Claeys (Ninja Express), Terry and Olivia is the latest project by Belgian studio Creative Conspiracy. One the biggest Flemish animation studios, based in Ghent, CC has been at the heart of Quentin Blake’s Box of Treasures, and is currently developing a brand new original tv-series called Ray and Ruby, which has already many European broadcasters on board, thanks to Cartoon Forum.

Terry and Olivia, a 52x5’ project in 3D animation crafted for pre-schoolers looks like another winning bet for Creative Conspiracy. The 3D is very smooth, and kids will no doubt dig this cute and unique duo.

More info here, and fingers crossed for Creative Conspiracy, which is nominated this year for the Producer of the Year Cartoon Tributes Awards. Last Belgian producer to win this award was Panique!, back in 2019.

Zebracat

Last but not least, Belgian studio VlinVlin is bringing a combo of tv special and series project to Cartoon Forum, in coproduction with Swiss studio Little Monster.

Zebracat tells the adventures of two friends who live together in a caravan on an island in the middle of the great ocean. The island with its unusual inhabitants is their entire world. Every day Ms Sun rises to work, while Mr Moon comes home to sleep. Then Zebracat and Pebble come out to play.

While the tv special tells the story of the four seasons on the island, the series will expand on the whole year with a more in depth approach to the lives of these loveable characters. The style is directly inspired by its source material : the works of Swiss ilustrator and artist Ted Sieger, poetic, whimsical and funny.

In Zebracat, there are no villains, just answers to life’s big philosophical questions a child can ask himself, such as “What will we have for breakfast? Why is Mr Mollusc so narky? What will we do today?”

Directed by Nino Christen and Wouter Dierickx with a script by John Chambers and Ted Sieger, the project has a strong visual identity that might charm the Cartoon Forum audience with its 2d style.

More info here.

And that’s it!

This year, Cartoon Forum will showcase 75 projects hailing from 27 countries. Discover more on those project on the Cartoon Forum website.

I hope you enjoyed this quick presentation of the projects, and all the best to all Belgian producers, artists, broadcasters and animation people heading to Cartoon Forum next week!

And, as a special treat, I’m happy to close this newsletter with the teaser of A Town Called Panic: The Christmas Log, a tv special by Vincent Patar & Stéphanie Aubier, who received the Cartoon d’Or for this production at Cartoon Forum, eleven years ago.

Have a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

Released 60 years ago, Pinocchio in Outer Space is definitely one of these milestones. First hand-drawn Belgian animated feature and only second1 Belgian animated feature ever made, Pinocchio opened the golden era of Brussels-based studio Belvision. A decade of creativity during which the teams brought Tintin, Asterix and the Smurfs to the big screen, leaving a rich legacy of Belgian animated gems.

This week, we’ll dive into the makings of this peculiar animated feature, its impact on Belgian animation, and —as a special treat— dive into the film itself. For Pinocchio is now available only in second-hand DVD stores and a few public libraries, but also —thanks to internet archive wizards— online. If you don’t have the opportunity to rent or buy it, you can discover the full film at the end of this post.

But first, a quick side-note: The Animation Belgian just turned 1 year old! And I’m truly happy that this project has been able to gather a community around Belgian animation. A community of readers that keep on growing, thanks to you.

As always, feel free to share this content by clicking the button below, and subscribe if you haven’t done it yet.

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Belvision, a comic-book infused animation studio

Created in 1954 by Raymond Leblanc —who launched both Le journal de Tintin with comic book artist Hergé and the Editions Le Lombard eight years before that— Belvision was intended as the animated arm of this growing comic book publishing house. A studio set up next to Brussels South Station, in a building that still features Tintin’s figure on top.

Comic book characters were indeed —as they still are now— a very good source material for animated shorts, tv series and features. The connection between those worlds was embedded deep into Belvision’s DNA, thanks to Raymond Leblanc and his knack for finding talents among the already thriving Belgian comic book scenery.

Belvision started with shorts and tv series, adapting the strips of authors such as Willy Vandersteen (Suske en Wiske, Thyl Ulenspiegel) before tackling the first Tintin animated tv specials.

In the late 1950s, as Leblanc strives to enter the lucrative yet hard-to-reach US animated market, he recruits more and more animators and brings in veteran animator/comic book artist Ray Goossens as Belvision’s artistic director.

Goossens, who started animating when he was 10, was deeply influenced by both Walt Disney and the Fleischer Brothers. He studied drawing at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts, where he met with Jules Luyckx, who had the same passion for animated cartoons. Together, they came in contact with Belgian animation pioneers Henri Winkeler and Edmond Roex and created the Antwerpse Filmmaatschappij (AFIM) back in 19392. After the Second World War, Goossens and other artists such as Bob de Moor started collaborating with Belvision, and brought their passion and talent to the evergrowing studio.

In the early 1960s, Belvision was ready to go from shorts and tv series to the next level. In this context, Pinocchio in Outer Space appears as a sort of test-run for the studio, now employing more than fifty people. In a tradition that would —for better or worse— turn into the Belgian animation industry’s standards, it’s interesting to see that this film is also a coproduction, even if Belvision handled most of the film.

Crafting Pinocchio with a twist

It was Filmation co-founder Norm Prescott who provided this new take on Carlo Collodi’s well-known fairy tale. Roughly twenty years after Disney’s take on the adventures of this peculiar wooden boy, Prescott takes this story to a literal new level, bringing the space race into the mix.

If you haven’t heard of the film yet, it is best described below:

Yes. You read right. And there’s more, as you’ll soon discover in this trailer below:

A film crafted in Brussels by the Belvision teams, as the american producers were looking to outsource animation to a country where animation labor was cheaper. Raymond Leblanc, seduced by this peculiar story, took this as an opportunity to bring Belvision to feature animation level.

In order to avoid any legal issues, several experts were hired to monitor elements that could lead to potential debate. Disney’s Pinocchio was still very fresh in the audience memory, and both Filmation and Belvision wanted to avoid any copyright infringement accusations.

At the peak of production, 150 people worked on Pinocchio, hailing from Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and even Hungary. But as the budget remained quite small, animation department was mostly handled by the duo Willy Lateste - Vivian Miessen.

The result is a singular and uneven film to look at, ranging from depictions of a Martian lost civilization to interstellar whale-fighting. But in many aspects, Pinocchio showcased what would be Belvision’s signature style : comic-book style characters animated in lush backgrounds created by Claude Lambert.

In 2012, Lambert recalled: “I was just finishing my art studies, and I had done a few TV series background. But this was a whole other level. For the first parts of the film, I drew inspiration from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Crafting space landscapes, I was finally able to unleash my own imagination. Looking back, this was a tremendously long and hard project, and in some aspects it’s not our greatest artistic achievement. But considering that we were all rookies at the time, I think the film still holds pretty well.”3

Re-discovering Pinocchio in 2025

Sixty years ago, the film received mixed support from the press and Belgian institutions. Belvision’s strategy, trying to mirror Disney’s approach on licensing, must not have been to the taste of every Belgian journalist. Notably, Belgium refused to submit the film to Venice Intl. Film Festival, but the film managed to find its way to the young audience section thanks to Luigi Chiarini, film critic and the festival’s president at the time.

Did it deserve to be shunned by Belgian authorities at the time, and is it worth watching today?

Of course, one can see the similarities between this take and the much better known Disney version. Yet from the beginning, there is a kind of playfulness to the script that may appeal to adults rediscovering the film as part of their animation journey.

A tale of its times, Pinocchio in outer space takes the viewer on an interplanetary journey as Pinocchio himself longs to be an astronaut but doesn’t want to study for it. The addition of Nurtle the Twurtle adds a goofy dimension to the adventure that still manages to bring a few thrills, and a few smiles at very derivative jokes.

As many films of this Cold War era, Pinocchio also features some bleak and cynical sci-fi standpoints, involving nuclear explosions, bizarre monsters and deserted cities. And if you think being swallowed by a whale a nearly drowned is a harsh fate, wait until you get barbecued by a roaring rocket engine and mourned by a space turtle.

In my opinion, rediscovering Pinocchio in Outer Space today sheds light on much of Belvision’s history, and is more often than not beautiful to look at.

I highly recommend that you take the time to enjoy its silly yet touching seventy-ish minutes. The whole film, if you cannot find it elsewhere, is available below.

In the meantime, as always,
Have a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

Such was the case back in 2022, when I did those profiles for Cinergie, but Nicolas Fong proved to be a wonderful guest and very interesting one. It was a real pleasure to conduct this thorough interview on his career, focusing on his short film Yin, and many other aspects of his numerous works.

For five years already, Nicolas Fong had been deploying his psychedelic images on the screens of the Anima festival, for which he created the poster back in 2017. As he continued to develop his projects between inspirations from the past and modern techniques of animation, we met him for a look back on his career.

For the French speakers, you can discover the original interview below, edited by the wonderful Vinnie Ky-Maka.

The full interview in English can be found below, along with video clips and images from Nicolas Fong’s contributions to the Belgian animation industry.

Enjoy!

What made you want to become an animator and filmmaker in the first place?

At the time, I was studying graphic design in Paris, and I had the opportunity to visit the Forum des Images, and their animation rendez-vous. Dedicated presentations, led by a director, showcasing their favorite films while talking about their own career and ways of working. This is where my passion was born. Graphic design is mostly about frozen images, which left me with a certain frustration. I wanted to tell stories, and it was in animated cinema that I found this possibility. After my graphic design studies, I enrolled at La Cambre, here in Brussels.

What drove you to animation, in terms of artists? What were your inspirations?

It was with Paul Driessen’s films that I convinced myself that doing animation was possible for me. Not that they were simple, on the contrary, but his approach seemed within my reach, and corresponded to what I was looking for.

In terms of influence, I would also cite his work on Yellow Submarine, and this whole vein of psychedelic animation from the 70s. Akira is also one of my inspirations, as much the film as the manga for that matter.

In terms of comics, the work of Patrice Killoffer and Chris Ware are also major influences. Of course, this list is not exhaustive and it is still evolving today as I discover more.

Your first steps as a professionnal were on strong films and series such as Le Tableau or Les mystérieuses cités d’or, how did you feel about joining the industry at that moment?

Just after my studies, I was approached by a French animation company to work in Flash. It was an experience that I had already had as a student on the film Peur(s) du noir (2007) and this company - Blue Spirit - therefore hired me as a cut-out animator. We were then trained with my colleagues in 3D animation to work on season 2 of the 2012 version of Les mystérieuses cités d'or, and on certain parts of the feature Le Tableau by Jean-François Laguionie.

Afterwards, the company relocated to Montreal, and I did not accompany them. Mainly because working on series no longer interested me, or at least did not justify moving so far away. But I also made this choice because I wanted to develop my own projects. Working on a series - even if it a very good ways to learn the tricks of the trade - there was a need for production and a repetitive way of working which no longer suited me at the time. I am happy to have been able to get out of it to test other things.

Your first projects had a lot to do with music…

Quite. It started my career as an independent animator with commissions for clips, and I still like working with music to add my visual universe. To be honest, I still suffer from the blank page anxiety, and starting from nothing can be complicated. Having a sound dimension which already provides raw material, it is easier for me to integrate my images and try to create a match, a new world.

And I have been trusted several times in such projects, which is always very motivating when you start out as an independent animator.

Back in 2017, you directed your first short film Yin. Can you tell me more about this project?

As a teenager, I wrote a comic strip about characters who were behind the creation of the world as we know it. They each lived in universes derived from different religious imagery, and two of them, Yin and Yang, were inspired by Shintoism.

This story stayed in my closet until I left Blue Spirit, and it seemed to me that it was the right time to propose this project to producers and transform it into an animated film. Things led to another, and among the different people I met, it was atelier Zorobabel who suggested that I submit an application to their START grant, intended to finance a first auteur film.

They liked the project, and we started collaborating.

Between my teenage comic book and the final film, the story has changed somewhat to talk about the couple and their questions, but we remain on a framework of world creation, with an aesthetic inspired by numerous religious and mythologies. Regarding technique, the film is entirely animated in 2D with Flash, a software to which I have remained faithful.

Discover the full film at the end of the interview.

And at the same time, you developed a certain fascination for visual games, and especially the phenakistiscope?

When I was working on Yin, I also had another storyline in the works. This one was centered around reincarnation, where the character met a whole series of haloed deities in the style of Russian icons, with large golden circles on their backs. This is where the idea came from to animate them using the phenakistiscope process, one of the ancestors of animated cinema invented by the Belgian Joseph Plateau in the 1832.

It’s fascinating to me how an entire animation can be present in a single still image, which comes to life when it is set in motion.

It has almost become a fad. Back when I started doing these experiments, the Anima Festival asked me to create their poster, so I submitted a phénakistiscope project which they accepted. Since then, I have adapted their posters every year using this same technique.

Adapting someone else's graphic universe, as far as I'm concerned, is really part of the job of an animator. Being able to be a chameleon, and adapt to the graphics given for a particular feature film or short film, is an integral part of our job.

And I do that by putting my added value as an animator, but erasing — for that purpose — the specificity that characterizes me as an author.

Since then, you’ve expanded this technique to other collaborations, most notably with koRn.

Indeed. For this project, koRn’s video manager contacted me after discovering Yin, whose universe he really liked. It seemed to him that it could match the DNA of the group.

For my part, I was quite surprised, I didn't think the group still existed!

Having been a fan during my adolescence, it was a bit of an unspoken dream, so I accepted and it was a great project. Quite trying, due to very tight deadlines, but a great experience. On the other hand, I saw little of the sun that summer!

What projects are you currently developing?

I am creating a small film, self-produced, without really a script. More like a succession of shots where each shot is a different hug. A project that has taken on even more meaning with the pandemic we have just experienced. Besides that, I am working on my project around reincarnation, which I would like to put into images but this time using a giant phenakistiscope. More to follow.

You can discover more of Nicolas Fong’s work on his Instagram, and Yin is available below.

It as impressive film with striking aesthetics, and deserves every second of your time.

On my part, I’ll go back on working on next week’s article, which will mark this project’s first anniversary! A special treat is in order, and I’ll make sure to provide a very unique article.

If you have any requests / topics that might interest you and the readers, feel free to share them! Animation is about community, and that means you as well.

Have a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

For the upcoming weeks, we will discuss new tv series featured in Cartoon Forum 2025, and the history of Anima Festival through its posters. Diving into the “ateliers”, a crucial structure for Belgian animated cinema, we will learn how those indie production companies bring life to some of the most renowned works of Belgian animation, at the same time allowing children and non-professional alike to create their own stories.

As FilmFestGent, Belgian’s biggest film festival unveils its selection, we will try to understand how animation connects with this specific event.

And, with professional associations, studios and individuals alike, I look forward to showcasing more of the beautiful world of Belgian animation to you, dear readers.

But first, what better way to restart than with a full short, available on YouTube thanks to Les Films du Nord?

Virginie Bourdin’s La Femme Papillon (or De Vlindervrouw in its Flemish title) is an impressive 2003 film, beautifully blending stop-motion and CG animation to tell the tale of a string puppet butterfly performer and her fascinated string puppet audience.

Suddenly, under the strength of his applause, the strings holding one of the spectators break. Now free, he runs to join the butterfly woman in the hope of winning her over by also freeing her from her destiny.

But what does it mean to be free, in such a structured world? As the film unveils, Bourdin questions the meaning of this very freedom, allowing us to wonder if freedom is actually the ultimate desire everyone longs for.

In this theatre filled with forgotten puppets and broken machinery, the spectator’s quest turns into an obsession, one in which he seems to forget that freedom is not something you can impose on anyone but yourself.

Bourdin, who told Cinergie back in 2003 that Tim Burton’s cinema had a huge influence on her, blended her own style and inspiration with the expertise of young talents who are now key to the Belgian animation landscape.

Arnaud Demuynck (La Boite… Productions, Les Films du Nord) produces, along with S.O.I.L.’s Geert Van Goethem (Nayola), while Steven De Beul and Ben Tesseur, who co-founded Beast Animation studios, are both part of the art and animation department. Marijke van Kets, DOP for The Inventor, can also be spotted in the credits, as well as a young trainee at the time : Christine Polis, who now creates puppets for the likes of Claude Barras and many more.

Bourdin herself, director/writer/artistic director and matte painting artist on this production, joined VFX studio MPC after this production and became one of the leading concept art supervisors in the industry.

Back in 2003, little did she know herself that her career would take that path. But animation was a medium she already loved :

For me, animation is about distancing myself from reality, playing only with metaphor. I really like visual poetry, and animation is an easy way to express that. In fiction, what fascinates me is the actors' performances, and at the moment I don't feel ready to guide them so that they can reproduce the emotions I expect from them. For now, animation suits me so well that I don't need to look elsewhere. I make films because I need to express myself. If I need to go out and see things for myself and bear witness to them, I'll make a documentary. If I ever have a script where the human emotions are strong enough, I think fiction will be more appropriate. Animation allows you to maintain a certain distance and stylize things more. So you have to choose the medium based on what you want to say.

I myself was familiar with The Butterfly Woman before this research, but I had no idea that a Belgian animator/concept artist was part of production such as the ones below.

Animation is everywhere. Animation lives in every form of entertainment.

And sometimes, all it takes is a little Belgian spark to ignite a career.

The Butterfly Woman traveled to more than 60 festivals in 2003, gathering many prize including the Prix RTBF at the Anima Festival.

Today, as the film is fully accessible on YouTube, I’m happy to be able to share it with you. Feel free to share it with your animation colleagues, it’s still a beautiful piece of art to discover.

As for myself, I’ll get back into the rich past, present and future of the Belgian animation industry. I wish you all the best for the year to come, and to all students and teachers, have a nice back to school session !

Have a great animated weekend <3

Kevin

Last year, it was around that time that I decided to create The Animation Belgian, a (allegedly) weekly newsletter about the wonders of animation in our small country at the heart of Europe. Since this journey started, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many amazing Belgians, interviewing some, discovering others’ works and careers, and learning so much about this industry.

Among these talents and delightful people is Pascal Vermeersch, who I met last year in Annecy at the place where everyone meets everyone during the festival, the infamous Café des Arts.

Little did I know I would end up conducting his interview a year later for one my favorite outlets, The European Animation Journal (cheers to Serena, Cristina, and all their wonderful team!)

So, before this summer break, which I will use to catch up with the family, relax and probably cook some new things for this very newsletter, I’m very happy to share this interview here. You can discover it in print as well, in the latest issue of the Journal, also available online for free here.

Pascal, with more than twenty years in the European animation industry, you’ve played a key role in numerous features, most recently Valemon. How did you start your own journey?

As a small kid, me and my family laughed our socks off to TV cartoons such as Tom and Jerry or Droopy. I studied graphic design, followed up by a master in animation at KASK School of Arts in Ghent, and my graduation film La Muse Malade was selected in Annecy back in 1999.
I thought that would skyrocket my career, unfortunately it wasn’t that easy. I spent a couple of years in the Netherlands as an artist in residence programme at the now-defunct Netherlands Institute of Animation Film. During this time I met a lot of established filmmakers like Michaël Dudok De Wit, Mark Baker, Wendy Tilby, Amanda Forbis, and Arjan Wilschut, whom I’ve worked with on almost all of his shorts since then. Around 2004, I got the opportunity to animate Tomm Moore’s The Secret of Kells, co-produced with Belgian producer Vivifilm and partially animated in Belgium by Walking the Dog. That was my first experience with an animated feature film.

From Belgium, you've worked on many European independent feature films, how does one build such a career?

Soon after Kells, Lunanime studio contacted me to animate on Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli’s A cat in Paris. As both features got a lot of attention because of their Oscar nominations, it helped to make Belgium get recognition as a reliable co-production country, and I felt kind of lucky for that.

Around that period, I also switched from traditional to tradigital animation, which is now common but wasn’t at the time.
I could then combine feature film work with animation on short films and illustration. On Phantom Boy, Gagnol and Felicioli’s second feature, I became animation supervisor for the Belgian team, a position that I had also on Kajsa Næss’s first feature, Titina, co-produced with Mikrofilm. Each project has its own fond memories, but the fondest are the animation friends that came into my life throughout these productions.

Below, you can see a making of featurette of Phantom Boy, courtesy of Folimage. The French subtitled commentary emphasizes the role of depth in this shot, but also the choice of a fixed framing, allowing the character to navigate the background and bring the audience with him on this journey in a poetic manner. The character himself is animated “like a piece of cloth in the wind”, flowing lightly above the city.

Recently, you've switched to animation director for the Norwegian-Belgian coproduction The Polar Bear Prince, what were the main challenges of this production?

The Polar Bear Prince was challenging on many levels. The Belgian team was responsible for the whole image work of the film, from layout to compositing. So we had a lot, and we needed to keep our two main characters consistent in design and acting throughout the film, with many animators working on both. To be in charge of that was quite heavy, especially since it was made in three different studios in Belgium (Creature Studio in Ghent, Studio Souza in Brussels and Dreamwall in Charleroi).
Luckily I could count on wonderful supervisors in every studio, on great teams, and on Mikkel Bræne Sandemose, the director, who was fantastic to work with. This was his first animated feature, but he quickly understood the pipeline, and got along very well with everyone.

As the Norwegian release date was set quite early in the production, we had a hard deadline. This could only work with a mutual understanding between production and artists in the different departments.
At the peak of the production, we had a team of around 40 animators, and around a hundred artists involved. There are around 1300 shots in the movie, and we spent 6 months posing and around 12 months animating the film. It was all manageable thanks to a robust pipeline, with an in-house artist tool and ShotGrid as software production manager.

You can discover the trailer here.

Today, you’re also a teacher, and a veteran animation artist. How has animation evolved for you, and what type of advice do you give your students trying to start their own career today?

Animation is a very broad medium which can range from the most abstract VR experience to family entertainment, from provocative or charming little short films to spectacular 3D adventure rides. I love the art form in all its diversity. Even more than live action films, it pushes the boundaries of what is possible. To quote Steven Spielberg: “I think all directors should be animators first.”

Today, I think opportunities are greater than ever but so are the challenges in the industry. So on a personal level I would say to students: work hard, work on your skills, work on the networking but don’t ever forget to live your life.
Inspiration is everywhere. Good animation starts with good observation.

Thank you for your support to the Animation Belgian!

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Have a great animated weekend, and see you all at the end of August, with lots of other Belgian animation wonders <3

Kevin

Because even if we boast one of the tiniest and most densely populated country in Europe, it’s still in Annecy that the Belgian animation industry manage to meet, and where I get to have informal chats with Belgian producers and artists alike.

Annecy is also the reason why I first connected with Hugo Deghilage, producer at Panique! Between my piece on Cinergie about financing animated cinema in Belgium, and the first Animation Magazine piece I wrote, he has been a big help and a very interesting person to hang with!

This year, between two screenings, I had the pleasure to meet with Hugo, who has now been with Panique since 2019 and helps perpetuate the legacy of founder and producer Vincent Tavier, along with bringing new and exciting talents on board. Here’s what we talked about.

Sidenote: I hope I get to the bottom of this newsletter without losing my sanity, as Substack seems to experience a refreshing issue, and keeps reloading this page. Technical failures, beware!

Standing on the shoulders of acclaimed global yet very Belgian successes

Panique!’s story started back in 1992 with Man Bites Dog, an infamous live-action student-made feature which brought fame — and for some, like Belgian star actor Benoit Poelvoorde, fortune— to all who had a hand in it, including soon-to-be producer Vincent Tavier.

With a knack for surrounding himself with many talented artists, Tavier started collaborating with Belgian duo Vincent Patar & Stéphane Aubier on their series Pic Pic André and A Town Called Panic, the latter’s success allowing them to produce a full-blown feature film in the same universe back in 2009.

Since then, Panique!’s ties with animation have always been strong, and the Town Called Panic franchise has thrived through beautifully animated and extremely silly-yet-funny short films and specials.

Moreover, the production company also developed ties with French TV and feature producers, and has worked on Benjamin Renner’s Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, as well as TV hits such Jean-Michel Caribou, Chien Pourri, and Flippé.

Last year, Panique! co-produced Sauvages, Claude Barras’ stop-motion feature. An impressive achievement for Panique and for first assistant director Dorien Schetz, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing back in 2022, when she was working at Beast Animation.

Here’s an excerpt of what I already published on that film for Skwigly Magazine, as coverage of the Anima 2024 Making of session:

“European animators, puppeteers, French and Belgian puppets designers and French set builders all gathered in Martigny, Switzerland, for a 4-month shoot in a 2000-square meters empty storage unit, fully redesigned to fit the needs of this unique production. Sixteen full sets, two test sets and one demo-set were built, with 40 to 50 crew members working on site at the peak of production. Shooting took place from March 6 to late September, 2023. A 6-month period which, multiplied by the number of animators ranging from 2 to 10, represents a whopping 225 weeks of animation, according to Head of Production Ludovic Delbecq (Panique! Productions).

How was such a feat accomplished? Thanks to an amazing team, supervised by first assistant director Dorien Schetz, who had previously been working as Studio Production Manager at Belgian Beast Animation studio for more than a decade. With a delightful cheery tone, she took a captivated audience through her breaking sheets and full shooting schedule. “There are more than 800 shots in Sauvages, and it was essential to know, for each, how many puppets were to be used, how many animators, for how long, etc”, explained Schetz while taking us around her 80-columns wide Excel sheet, a both mesmerizing and nightmarish journey.

“But even with all this preparation”, she added, “there’s always a big difference between theory and reality. When you go into shoot, you have to know that there will be some changes along the way. What’s important to keep in mind is that every production is unique, and that everybody stays motivated and on board during the whole process. We had weekly meetings with the whole crew, daily meetings with Claude and second assistant director Clémence Pun, and many other meetings to make sure everything ran smoothly. And in the end, we pulled through! Thanks to a wonderful crew, and permanent communication through every department.”

A Packed Annecy Slate

And now, what’s next for Panique? This year, Panique had several co-productions up its sleeve in the Official Annecy Selection. Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake, by Irene Iborra, was selected in the Feature Competition and took away the GAN Foundation Award. A well-deserved prize for this lovely stop-motion feature telling the tale of Olivia and her little brother, who are forced to leave their home in the midst of their mom’s dismissal. Tackling meaningful topics with honesty and heart, this anticapitalistic stop-motion wonder deserves every praise, and I look forward to sharing it with Belgian audiences in January 2026.

Meanwhile, episodes for both Jean-Michel Caribou and Flippé were also selected in the TV categories, making Panique’s slate quite impressive among Belgian companies represented this year in Annecy.

In the WIP program, Panique! also was present as co-producer of In Waves, with Silex, Anonymous Content, and Charades. An adaptation of the eponymous graphic novel directed by Gobelins/La Poudrière alumni Phuong Mai Nguyen, this 2D feature film looks truly beautiful, and I can’t wait to see it next year in Anima or Annecy.

And beyond that?

Deghilage went on teasing me a sneak peek of Panique’s upcoming schedule. “Les Minus”, a cg-animated series helmed by French studio Miam! Animation, is among 2025’s biggest projects for Panique. A 50x11’ + 22’ + 52x4’ series that tells the tale of old toys living in an attic, “Les Minus” is also coproduced by Belgian company Lunanime, and will feature 52 short episodes encouraging children to craft their own toys and objects in today’s world.

Panique! is also starting a new Town Called Panic Special in October, with 10 weeks preparation and 10 weeks shooting already planned.

Finally, the production company is also aiming to be part of the New Claude Barras movie “Ce n’est pas toi que j’attendais”, adapted from eponymous graphic novel by French author Fabien Toulmé. Per Deghilage, the idea is to build yet another French-Belgian-Swiss coproduction, modeled after what brought Sauvages to the big screen.

Yet for all these great projects, things are not all happy and merry in Brussels, where Panique! has its headquarters. Sauvages, which sadly failed to attract big family crowds in Belgium, was a project in which Panique! was deeply involved, yet only weighed in for 15% of the production overall budget.

“The animation feature business still struggles in Belgium, and there is not much perspective for a majority-financed Belgian feature film in the near future”, concluded Deghilage, recalling what he discussed with me last year about the state of Belgian animation finances. “Yet with every project we board, we put the same energy and heart, and consider them as our own.”

I honestly have no doubt about that, and I look forward to seeing those projects come to life, along with Petite Casbah, another series Panique! is involved in which was presented at Cartoon Forum some years ago.

In the meantime, I leave you with several animated treats, as Substack keeps on being unstable.

First, the trailer to Sauvages, where you can witness the quality and beauty of the stop-motion created by the teams:

Second: a Town Called Panic trailer (bear in mind, the film was released in 2009)

Last but not least: a making of dating back from the same movie! Weirdly mesmerizing…

Have a great animated weekend!

Kevin

We’ve already discussed why with members of the industry, yet there are a few adventurers who dare to cross the bridge between shorts and feature.

In 2022, producer/director/author Arnaud Demuynck and animator/director/studio founder Rémi Durin made that leap with Yuku and the Flower of the Himalayas, and the success of the film exceeded their very own dreams.

But first, hello everyone and welcome to the Animation Belgian!

As I came back from Annecy with still stars in my eyes, bringing back a consistent weekly newsletter about Belgian animation has been on the top of my mind. And then, life happened.

We had to wrap-up our 24th issue of Surimpressions, the publication I manage here in Belgium, and production week is always kind of maëlstrom. And just as I was about to dive back into this animated project, a new client — 3DVF — offered me the opportunity to write not one, not two, but forty papers on animation in the upcoming month.

Needless to say I’m ecstatic, and a little bit stressed. But I do cherish that chance to write that much about animation, in a Belgian setting where culture gets less and less slots in the press.

Recently, many of my freelance colleagues were let go by L’Avenir, and the upcoming fusion between media giants Rossel and IPM will create a never-before-seen monopoly in the French-speaking Belgian press. With — you guessed it — even less space for culture, and I’m not even talking about animated cinema.

It’s because of these few possibilities that I started this project, and this dire situation fuels me with the will to push it further.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into the makings of Yuku and the Flower of the Himalayas, with co-director Rémi Durin, who welcomed me and my colleague from Cinergie back in 2022 for a lovely interview.

To begin this interview, could you tell us a little about your animated journey so far?

My name is Rémi Durin, I am the co-founder of Studio l’Enclume along with Jérémie Mazurek and Paul Jadoul. Studio l’Enclume started as a collective to support each other.
Little by little, we became a real studio, and we were able to develop our own projects in turn, working on each other shorts. With Yuku, we are releasing our first feature film, and it so happens that it was my turn.

What drives you in your work as a filmmaker?

What I really like are drawings. I'm quite instinctive, and I love everything to do with graphics and illustration. Children's books and comics are worlds that speak to me, and I love seeing them move, hear them through sounds, and be told in animated form. Of course, good stories are important, but above all, I love the idea of crafting a shot and making images move. There's something so simple and yet magical about it at the same time.

How did you became involved in this project?

Arnaud Demuynck is the one behind this film. We had been working together for almost fifteen years, and he produced my first short film So Close, back in 2009. I’d say we're kind of traveling companions.
He's also the one who came up with this musical project, with his universe and his ideas. Studio L'Enclume and our team came along later to respond to something he had thought of, imagined, and proposed to us.
From there, we created a trio with Paul Jadoul, who took on the role of artistic director, and we were able to compare our vision to Arnaud's, exchange ideas, and agree to create a joint work. It wasn't always without disagreement, but that's also what collaboration is all about.

As a director, how did you go from short to feature film?

Actually, you don't really go there. At that time, we had only made medium-length or short films up, and for Yuku we approached the project as a very ambitious short film.
Looking back, I think it was both out of amateurism and a desire not to put too much pressure on ourselves, but we chose to maintain an artisanal process, a very personal way of working.
When the film grew and we began collaborating with the Swiss and French teams, we had to get organized, but all the while trying to maintain a relaxed attitude.
In my experience, one does not really prepare for making a feature film, it’s a bit like having children [laughs]. You learn on the job, with bad but also good surprises.

In Yuku, you use both 2D and 3D animation, what drove you to this aesthetic choice?

It was first and foremost a technical decision. Paul, whose universe is more drawn from illustration, works in two dimensions. He uses very particular colors, flat tints, paint projections, in short, something very graphic.
At the same time, for the feasibility of the film, we wanted to experiment with ways of working that would allow us to have a good balance between quality and budget. Paul developed a technique that allowed him to integrate his universe and his colors into 3D animation, with this idea of ​​pushing the software to its limits, aiming to always return more to an illustrative graphic design.
We achieved that by working around shadows, characters, without letting the 3D “take over”. This was a long process, with many experiments.

As I understand it, you acted as sort of a conductor between those different teams?

That's where you learn a lot. My responsibility was initially the staging, but the entire film actually flows from there. It's not just about translating a script into a storyboard, it's also about coming up with ideas that will give meaning and interest to the scenes.It's not a job you do alone, and I was lucky to have a team of a few people around me who helped me carry out this important, and sometimes exhausting, work. At that level and in that position, you have to be able to admit that you're not great all the time, and sharing the work allows you to test ideas, respond to each other, and achieve an optimal result.
For the musical sequences, for example, we collaborated with the Breton studio Vivement Lundi! and a director specialized in this type of scene, where I felt a little less comfortable.
For a story to be well told, you have to find a way to tell each scene with real interest, with a context that also tells something about the film. And not just a simple shot-reverse shot. In what setting will it take place? With what color palettes? The job of directing is to draw on good ideas to find the best ways to tell the story. That's what creates the whole.

What does it mean to make animated films in Belgium today?

If you want to make a film of a certain scale in 2022, you have to share the work and the budgets. Working in synergy with other national and international actors is an almost structural aspect of our way of working.
There simply isn't enough funding in Belgium to produce solo, which leads us from the very beginning of the project to think about who we're going to share the project with, and how. That’s when collaborations are born.
With our experience, we had the advantage of already having privileged contacts, studios with whom we'd been able to build a relationship of trust. This was the case with Nadasdy Film in Switzerland. But this search for funding also allowed us to collaborate with new partners like Vivement Lundi!, and to meet great people.
In this process, we mustn't be afraid to be curious, and to approach companies that speak to us, that inspire us. Working this way helps avoid frustrations from the outset, and everything went very well, in the interest of the film.

A beautiful result, tackling a hard subject in a very touching way.

That's true, but I think it's important to talk to children about things that aren't always joyful. In fact, they're already thinking about them without us. The idea of ​​death, the loss of a loved one, the idea of ​​mourning, it's a bit abstract when you're four, six, eight years old.
Proposing a film that takes the lead, that explains that, whatever happens, we will all die in the end, is also about preparing the child rather than lying to them to protect them. We wanted to be able to deal with death without hiding it, to be able to talk about it. All children have these questions, and it's good to discuss them. There is no miracle flower in Yuku, because there isn't one in life.
But it's not a fatalistic observation; we're not hiding anything from the audience. Death is something sad, certainly, but also natural. And it was important for us that the film reflect this reality.

Even three years after this interview, I was still very touched by Rémi’s honesty, and it does make me want to go back to that piece.

You can rent or buy Yuku and the Flower of the Himalayas on Arte.tv here, and I leave with you with the films’ trailer, a joyous and feel good experience perfect to start your Friday.

Have a great animated weekend,

Kevin

And I’m not the only one saying it. From legendary actor Andy Serkis to DisneyPixar’s CCO Pete Docter and Academy Award Winner Guillermo Del Toro, everyone who comes to Annecy falls in love with the festival.

It has proven to be another incredible week, which I’ve spent running around Annecy between captivating work-in-progress, exclusive studio showcases and delightful interviews. Which also explains why my daily coverage project faltered as soon as I reached the lakeside city.

Annecy is also all about connections, and catching up with what’s been trending in the animation industry. Especially in Belgium, since we rarely have the occasion to meet one another, except in such big gatherings.

So, what have the Belgians been up to this Annecy? Let’s wrap things up, as everyone tries to acclimate back home, still coming out of this one-of-a-kind animation bubble.

Panique! Packs a Punch

From Official selection to the MIFA and WIP sessions, Panique! was all over Annecy this week. Between two screenings, I had the pleasure to meet with producer Hugo Deghilage, who has been with Panique since 2019 and helps perpetuate the legacy of founder and producer Vincent Tavier, along with bringing new and exciting talents on board. We will dive deeper in upcoming newsletters about what made Annecy 2025 so special for Panique, but also about the challenges that the Belgian production still faces today, creating animation in Belgium.

I was very happy to discover Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake thanks to Hugo on the very last day of the festival.

It’s a beautiful film with a deeply moving story, and seeing the crowd react to it so well must have been amazing for Irene Iborra Rizo and her team who also attended this screening.

The film, co-produced by Panique!, will release early 2026 in Belgian theaters. Can’t wait to talk about it in our Belgian magazine Surimpressions or on other media!

A — Belgian — Polar Bear Prince

I had briefly met Pascal Vermeersch last year in Annecy at the Café des Arts, THE place for thirsty animators roaming the festival-lit city.

This year, as Pascal was heading to Annecy, we spoke briefly about his collaboration on The Polar Bear Prince, a Belgian-Norwegian coproduction we already discussed around Cartoon Movie.

This article, which I will relay in a summer newsletter, is already available in the European Animation Journal, and you can read it here right now.

Sidenote : Vermeersch’s first short film is not — as I mention in this article — Hold me Tight, which is an impressive film by talented filmmaker Léoluna Robert-Tourneur. Vermeersch’s short, co-directed with fellow KASK-student Davy Sabbé, is called “La Muse Malade” and was selected in the Student Shorts competition in Annecy, back in 1999.

Today, Vermeersch boasts a decades-spanning career and has worked from Belgium on many European productions including The Secret of Kells, Titina and Phantom Boy. He teaches also at KASK, his alma mater, and I was very happy to chat with him during the students’ picnic this year.

I’ll definitely ask him if we can showcase his first short in an upcoming newsletter, providing a digital copy sits somewhere on the internet or an old shelf.

And for people not in Belgium, Hold me Tight — a great film as well — is available on VOD through Miyu Distribution. You can also watch the trailer below.

Fan meets Fan : finally running into Belgian artist and animator Maï Calon

Also a teacher at KASK, animator, visual artist and filmmaker Maï Calon had been on my radar for a long time. So I was very happy to learn that she was an Animation Belgian fan!

We had a wonderful chat with her and Britt Raes, who also teaches animation among many other things, and Calon introduced me to many KASK students, as well as to Belgian producer and filmmaker Bert Lesaffer from Animal Tank.

I hope we’ll get to talk more soon, as Calon brought a new film to the festival this year. It is only beginning its festival career, so I won’t dive to much into it today, but I really look forward to showcasing Ce que je vois here very soon! It looks incredible, and here’s what the director has to say about it:

Have you ever gone wandering through a landscape, and all of a sudden, there was a tree. Were you moved? Maybe by its architecture, dynamics and aesthetics?
With this short film I want to create an homage to the tree. A tree in all its glory.

Also, we should have taken a selfie, from fan to fan.

Showcasing Belgium on the International Stage

This has always been what this newsletter is about. But to me, it’s only as powerful as its reach. So I’m always happy to be able to put Belgian animation forward on bigger stages, with the hope that this gets more and more people interested in what our country has to offer.

Which is why I was delighted to include Dreamwalker as part of my MIFA Features Pitches round-up for Variety earlier this month.

A big shout-out to my editor Jamie Lang and to John Hopewell as well, to which I owe the pleasure of working with this world-class media. And congratulations to Veerle Appelmans and Rudi Mertens for this very good pitch!

You can learn more about the project here, and watch the teaser on ViviFilm’s website.

Wrapping up with three shorts

As mentioned above, Annecy had so much to offer for all Belgians present there this year.

To wrap up things, I managed to catch up with three Belgian shorts selected this year. They are touring festivals right now, but one is already available on Youtube, so there’s a little animation nugget for you at the end of this newsletter.

The reviews below were first published on Cinergie.be, feel free to check out their work.

The Carp and the Child – Morgane Simon, Arnaud Demuynck, 2024

Arnaud Demuynck, a veteran and one-man band who has carved out the lion's share of French-speaking Belgian animation, returned to Annecy this year with numerous projects. Among these, The Carp and the Child does not deviate from the rules that have made the producer-writer-director so successful: a story aimed at children that also resonates with adults and their inner-children, and a high-quality animation with powerful visuals.

Arnaud Demuynck co-wrote The Carp and the Child as a screenwriter, and directed with French director Morgane Simon, who holds a bachelor's degree from the Haute Ecole Albert Jacquard (HEAJ) and a master's degree from La Cambre. A winning combination that allowed her to join Studio L’enclume in Brussels, and collaborate with Arnaud Demuynck and Rémi Durin on the little gem that is Yuku and the Flower of the Himalayas.

In this new short film, already presented in February at the Anima festival, the Demuynck-Simon duo meet around a mischievous and cheerful story/soundtrack, the perfect companion to a sparkling animation with bucolic settings.

The film, selected in the children's section of the Official Competition, takes us fishing alongside a young child in search of carp. But between the dog, a noisy frog, and a boisterous duck, catching fish is no easy task.

A film – to quote its co-author – ‘like a haiku, a sweet moment of poetry and humor.’

It would be difficult to describe this lively little delicacy better, one that we would still like to bite into with gusto or contemplate like a delicate flower.

The Night Tunnel - Annechien Strouven, 2024

Offering a twist on the age-old tradition of sand tunnels that bored children dig to keep themselves occupied on the beach, The Night Tunnel unfolds as a tale of encounters, mutual aid and adventures, over the course of a well-paced day.

Indeed, it is after digging a tunnel on the beach that two children from different parts of the world meet, overjoyed to have each finally found a playmate. A story that we owe to Annechien Strouven for her short directorial debut, in association with screenwriter Bert Lesaffer, also a producer – with Brech Van Elslande – for the renowned Belgian animation studio Animal Tank.

Together, the author duo team up to bring to life these two toddlers armed with shovels and buckets, who dig their way through the sand to the North Pole where new encounters and new adventures await them.

In round and pleasant colors, The Night Tunnel unfolds like a tale of tolerance and curiosity, playing with tones to create universes that are sometimes diurnal, sometimes nocturnal, but always visually striking.

The humor nicely complements this sweet story told by a promising filmmaker who — through her previous collaborations on animated features The Siren and Le Parfum d’Irak — has been able to forge her character and create her style. We hope to see her continue this journey, and to find her again in a future edition of Annecy.

Vader Ademt, Juliette Pons, 2024

Last but not least, Vader Ademt was presented in the official selection — Off-limits category — at the Annecy Animation Festival. It is as much a sensory experience as it is a film, a journey into an infinitely small and infinitely complex world with astonishing sounds and equally astonishing beauty.

Set to atmospheric jazz music by the Flemish-Norwegian band Donder, Juliette Pons creates a ceramic film, bringing to life sculptures of great finesse through the magic of animated cinema. A microcosm inspired by swirls, marine creatures or deep-sea corals, reminiscences of the primordial times of creation.

Rarely seen on screen, this technique gives the film a unique aesthetic and a rich universe that evokes the ocean floor like the human body, mimicking breathing and plunging its audience into a mysterious world.

Juliette Pons is an animation student based in Brussels, Belgium. After exploring Numeric Arts at L'ESA st Luc, she gratuated in 2023 from a master degree at KASK. Her graduation film like drops on a bed of embers is currently showcased on KASK’s website, which means —you guessed it— more animation for you guys!

Per her socials, she a self-described material softener and mixed media animator fond of movement, giving life to straight and solid lines and creating immersive atmospheres with influences by 2d animators such as Michel Ocelot, Paul Grimault, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Norman MacLaren, Raoul Servais, Jean-François Laguionie and many others.

Pons creates with this film a work at the intersection of the arts, where we feel the powerful energy and delicate life that she breathes into these fascinating polyps and creatures. Worlds that definitely inspire animation and cinema through their mystery and their beauty, as complex as it is fragile, ranging from the recent features Dandelion’s Odyssey by filmmaker Momoko Seto —also a Belgian co-production —to Pixar's colorful Elio, which just released globally after premiering 25 minutes of footage in Annecy.

Vader Ademt is also powerful because of the relationship it creates between the piano's sounds and the ceramic's vibrations. Tinkling in unison, these two pieces create a hypnotic chorus and an experience we'd like to relive endlessly on the big screen.

This clip is available for free on Youtube, and you can watch it below.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter, I hope you found it interesting. I can’t wait to share more, and I'll make sure to keep you updated on Belgian animation summer in the upcoming weeks.

I also want to thank all the beautiful people I met at Annecy, be them Belgian or not. It’s such a joy to meet with fellow colleagues and dedicated animation lovers who came all the way from all over the world (I mean, Indiana, right?) to attend this impressive event. I can’t wait to meet you there next year, and to immerse myself more into the wonderful community that is the animation world.

Have a wonderful animated weekend y’all,

Kevin

Already yesterday animation students and professionals were roaming the charming streets of the medieval city center. Today, as the sun shines on the Paquier, I can't wait to dive in all the beautiful projects presented this year!

But first, a quick glimpse of Annecy, taken from my morning ride around the lake 📸

Idyllic, isn't it? Welcome to most beautiful film festival there is!

What’s up with the Belgians today?

Right before diving into Michel Gondry’s Masterclass, here’s what Belgians are up to on this first day of the festival.

Dominique Seutin, Anima Festival co-director and programmer, takes part in two Annecy juries this year, selecting the best out of TV & Commissioned Films as well as VR Works. I have already exchanged extensively with Dominique, and it’s always with delight that I meet all Anima team here in Annecy.

If you want to know more about her career, and how Anima has shaped her as much as she has shaped Anima herself, you can discover her interview (in French) on Les Visages de l’animation, the podcast about Belgian animation I recorded for Cinergie last year, with beautiful portraits by Brussels-based Rocio Alvarez!

In Young Audiences section, two Belgian films are making their premiere today, both brought forth by veteran producer-director Arnaud Demuynck. La carpe et l’enfant and Tunnel de la nuit are both wonderful shorts with soft, tender animation and heartwarming stories. I’ve been able to watch both beforehand, and I can already say that Annecy’s audience is in for a treat.

I’ll also reach out to the directors, and to Arnaud —who co-directs La carpe et l’enfant —about his strategy. His vision and his production choices make for an instantly recognizable editorial approach, and I would love to know more about how he has built this distinct identity.

Prepping for MIFA —which opens on Tuesday— are also many studios and production companies hailing from Belgium.

Among them is Synk, founded by Belgian industry veteran Jan Hameeuw. I met Jan last year at Cartoon Business, and although I’m not that well-versed —yet— in the technical aspects of bringing an animated project to the screen, Synk looks like a very promising initiative. I mean, who wouldn’t wish for “an all-in-one solution to manage your pipeline”?

Finally, before wrapping up this first daily —I hope you find them interesting— I want to give a real shout-out to German animator, illustrator and visual artist Raman Djafari.

After creating Anima’s 2025 poster, Raman went on to create the whole identity for Annecy as well! An impressive back-to-back feat, for an artists that is so wonderful, so good and represents so well the energy that fills the animation community.

That’s it for today, time to go to Bonlieu and drink up on Michel Gondry’s impressive career achievements!

Have a great animated Sunday

Kevin

Yet I could not go without a specific post regarding the big Belgian presence at this year’s edition!

So, as many lucky professionals are now making their last preparations before heading to the idyllic lakeside city, here’s a non-exhaustive overview of what Belgium will bring to Annecy this year.

Belgian-backed gems

In the Official feature competition, no less than four films are co-produced with Belgium. Here’s a quick line-up:

Allah is not Obliged

Zaven Najjar’s feature directorial debut makes it premiere Monday in Annecy, and this powerful story — adapted from eponymous novel by Ahmadou Kourouma — is an impressive piece of art, co-produced with Belgian studio Lunanime and co-producer Need Productions.

I was already on board with the project after last year’s WIP, and my interview with Najjar for Cinergie. But discovering the finished film today is a truly moving experience, one I was very happy to discuss with the director.

I will share this second interview in an upcoming note, and in the meantime I very much recommend that you secure a spot to one of the numerous Annecy screenings next week. Full program here.

Dandelion’s Odyssey

Miyu never cease to amaze me with their bold, weird, one-of-a-kind projects. The studio/distribution company heads to Annecy with 12 projects selected throughout various categories, and Dandelion’s Odyssey is one of the most unique. Backed by Umedia in Belgium, the feature by visual artist and animator Momoko Seto is a non-dialogue interplanetary adventure following the journey of four dandelion seeds. What more do you need to be on board?

Mixing real footage and live creatures with 3d animation, time-lapse and slow-motion cutting edge techniques, Dandelion’s Odyssey is a voyage into the wonders of our own nature transcended by a sci-fi setting.

A Magnificent Life

I have to admit, Sylvain Chomet’s work is little-known to me, on account that I don’t completely connect with his aesthetics. Yet it’s undeniable how much Chomet has had an influence on European animation in the past decades. With A Magnificent Life, Chomet returns to Annecy fifteen years after The Illusionist, this time focusing on French author Marcel Pagnol as he turns 60. An acclaimed playwright, novelist and filmmaker, Pagnol is visited by a vision of his childhood self, allowing him to look back on his own life and his connection to cinema.

Flemish renowned studio Walking the Dog co-produces the film, which was also featured in Cannes. I’m looking forward to discovering it, and will definitely try to catch up with the Belgian team to understand more about their involvement in this feature.

Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake

Stop-motion! Belgium! Panique Productions! I’m actually really looking forward to this one, being a big stop-motion fan. So I hope I’ll be able to cover it here or for other outlets very soon. The feature’s approach on film intertwined within the narrative also appeals to me, so I really can’t wait to see it in Annecy with the festival’s amazing audience.

What’s it about?

Olivia, 12, her little brother Tim and their mother are forced to leave their apartment and move to a new neighborhood. To shield Tim from this upsetting situation, Olivia has him believe that this is all part of a film in which he's the main character. Through laughter, tears, magic and the solidarity of new friends, they will find out that they are the heroes of their own life.

The Songbird’s Secret premieres at Annecy

As part of the Special Screenings, Antoine Lanciaux’s cut-out animated wonder The Songird’s Secret premieres next Saturday in Annecy, a very good reason to stay even longer at the festival! The French-Belgian co-production (with both Lunanime and Stéphane Lhoest Dragons Films on the Belgian side) as a lot to offer, and its heartfelt story in a real warm happy cuddle. Aline Quertain also animated on this feature, so feel free to re-discover our article about her short Wild Tale!

Daring shorts

Belgium’s representation is the shorts section is also very strong this year, congratulations to all artists. Here’s a quick round-up, as I unfortunately haven’t had the time to discover any of these yet.

Vader Ademt

Visual artist and material softener Juliette Pons presents Vader Ademt in the Off-Limits section. Drawing the viewer in the jazz world of Flemish-Norwegian band Donder, Pons takes us in a mysterious and visceral world where textures, shapes and notes all breathe in unison. A fusion of sculpture and animated narrative. You can already discover the clip on Youtube, treat yourself with that journey right now.

Murmuration

A Dutch-Belgian coproduction, Murmuration by Janneke Swinkels and Tim Frijsinger tells the story of Piet, an elderly man in a nursing home who finds himself limited in his actions when he suddenly begins to transform into a bird. Although he is still accepted within the group, he feels that it's time to join a new flock. Contrary to what the vignette below might lead you to believe, the film appears to be a luminous story, and the animation is beautiful. Miyu Distribution has already picked up this one, and that’s saying something.

The film is part of this year’s Official short selection.

Signal

Also in the Official competition, Signal —also a puppets short— follows Claudie, a scientist with a peculiar job: probing space for signs of extraterrestrial life in the hope of making contact. Absorbed by her mission, she gradually loses touch with those around her... and with reality.

Helmed by duo Emma Carré and Mathilde Parquet, with the collaboration of Belgian talents such as Iris Alexandre, the 16-minute short is a sci-fi musical that promises a lot of great animation. In this project and many other, we find Annemie Degryse (Lunanime) as producer, and I definetely want to have a long conversation with her decade-spanning career in the Belgian animation industry.

The Carp and the Child

Arnaud Demuynck returns to Annecy with many and more projects in his bag, precisely and brilliantly woven to conquer the hearts of children and parents alike.

Among these is The Carp and the Child, which Demuynck also signs as a writer, and co-directs with Morgane Simon. The film —part of the Young audiences selection— is a joyful daily-life adventure of a child who goes carp fishing, but he has the bad idea of bringing his little dog with him. Between the puppy, a frog and a duck, catching a fish isn’t easy. You can discover this very cute short and its awe-inspiring visuals through a teaser below.

The Night Tunnel

Also produced by Arnaud Demuynck’s La Boîte… Productions is The Night Tunnel, that will compete as well in the Young Audiences section of Annecy’s competition. Directed by Annechien Strouven, The Night Tunnel is a non-dialogue 2d animated short about two kids from different sides of the world, who meet each other while digging a tunnel on the beach. Together, they dig their way to the North Pole, where they discover a magical way to go back home. Co-produced with Belgian animation studio Animal Tank, Maantunnel (its original Dutch title) will delight Annecy. A festival Strouven is very familiar with, having worked on features such as The Siren and Le Parfum d’Irak, along with many shorts.

And three graduation shorts!

Pillow talks by Amandine Vautrin (Atelier de la Cambre), Lights, Haze by Tata Managadze (a short produced by the RE:ANIMA - EUROPEAN JOINT MASTER IN ANIMATION initiative) and Sphere Supreme by Hasan Pastaci (KASK Gent) are all competing in this year’s student selection. I’ll try to catch up with those creators on site, on later after Annecy, as discussing the art form with students is always very refreshing and insightful.

TV productions a-plenty

Among the 30 projects selected in this competition category, at least five have Belgian DNA in them. From Dandelooo’s The Upside Down River (co-produced by Vivi Film) to Goat Girl (co-produced by Thuristar and co-created by Belgian animator Lauri Saunders), there’s a lot of Belgian talent infused in those many productions, in which I hope to dive in later this year.
Belgian producer Olivier Nomen (Bardaf Productions) is also on board of Big Lizard, a Belgian-British-French preschool TV series partly available on Youtube, and we find Panique! production company also in Flippé — a funny and witty 2d-animated series created by French comic book author Théo Grosjean — and Jeremy Super Caribou, aimed at a younger audience but as funny as Flippé. Both series are coproductions with French production company Autour de Minuit.

And at the MIFA…

Dreamwalker, a feature-film project we’ve already talked about, has been selected for MIFA feature pitching this year. Helmed by Vivi Film, this feature is a 2d animated fantastic and thrilling adventure into the world of dreams, aimed at children audiences. Vivi Film’s expertise on projects such as Ewilan’s Quest, The Polar Bear Prince or Titina seem to shine in this dreamspace, and I’m very looking forward to covering this session for Variety this year. More to come.

Also pitching at MIFA is the French-US-Slovakian-Belgian coproduction Erased, a A historical series that tells the story of the invisibilization of oppressed communities’ struggles in Europe since the late 18th century, using archive footage, animation and European hip-hop artists. Squarefish is the Belgian coproducer on that one, a studio with which I also want to discuss their feature film project Rudy, the Flying Boy Prophecy, presented at Cartoon Movie last year.

To wrap up because one still has to pack its own suitcase, and there’s still a lot of preparations to make, Belgian artists and producers will swarm towards Annecy in a few days!

Also, apologies if I have missed out on some Belgian projects, I know there are some projects (Chickenhare 2) and some production companies (Take Five) I couldn’t include here, so if you see something missing, please do tell me about it in Annecy of before!

Feel free to join the Belgians at MIFA or in front of the big screen, and let’s meet each other at the Benelux party on Wednesday or before, if we bump into each other around Bonlieu or the Impérial.

As always, it’s a pleasure to share such beautiful projects with the readers. Thank you for your interest in Belgian animation, and have a great animated Annecy!

Kevin (who probably won’t be looking as fresh as this portrait below when we meet in person)

Anne Verbeure, whose previous film Red Giant received critical acclaim during its long festival run, was back this year at Anima with her latest short, The Golden Donkey. A tender and captivating tale risen from the past to tackle modern feelings of displacement and loneliness, the film received the Author Award, provided by the SACD.

During the same night, a dazzled Eleni Aerts got called on stage to receive her Best Animation Award, provided by Sabam for Culture. Her film Red Meat, which already won the Best Student Film Award at Turku Animated Festival (Finland) conquered the jury with its raw, lively and punchy style, bathed in red tones and grim visual humor.

Speaking with the two directors, I wanted to know more about how these shorts came to life. In this newsletter, I’m happy to share those two interviews, which you will find below.

“I wanted to bring the poem’s strong emotions to screen” - interview with Eleni Aerts

What compelled you to share this story?

Eleni Aerts: During my third bachelor year, we had to choose a poem and translate it to animation. The one I chose, Fragments of Stesichorus, is an excerpt from Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. In that part Anne Carson took existing fragments about Geryon (a Greek myth) written by Greek poet Stesichorus, translated it and added her own twist to it.

I think the strength of a good book is that it can articulate emotions, feelings and experiences you couldn’t articulate on your own beforehand. And that is exactly what Anne Carson did for me, the poem was so honest, raw and visual that it spoke to me on such a personal level. So I had to use this poem to make an animation film.

At first it was scary because it felt like I was showing my soul to everyone. I had to convince myself that it was ok, to draw my raw emotion in a very graphical way. But then I started to realize that if the text spoke to me so deeply, other people could also benefit from hearing and seeing it in my film. It may sound cliché, but the text came to me at the right time and made me mentally more stable and reflect on my inner working. Even so, sending it to festivals to let a lot of people judge it was terrifying.

In Anima festival it was actually the first time I enjoyed watching it. I am so grateful I could tell this story, I call it more of a visualisation of emotions. And I hope other people can also benefit from it.

What were the challenges of bringing this poem to screen?

I didn’t want to make a literal translation of the poem to the screen, but I also didn’t want to stray too far away from it. For me the essence in the text was the strong emotions it evokes, so I started out with a literal translation to set the connection between the text and the images. The more the film progresses, the more I stray away from the literal poem and visualize more and more the emotions. That was not always easy because the text is written very visually.

A big challenge was finding the right voice actor. I first used drama students but their voice timbre didn’t blend with the music and the animation. Then my mother suggested that I use my father, Kim Aerts, and it worked perfectly. Luckily, my father is very patient, because I had a very specific vision for the way the voice over should sound, so we did a lot of recordings.

Another challenge was to make the film feel coherent and bring a tension arc in it. The poem exists out of different chapters that on their own have a little beginning and end, and I also didn’t want to lose those. That is why I kept the different chapters in there, without using them all due to a lack of time. I got a lot of feedback from other students and teachers that really helped me create a coherent story. I knew what I wanted to show in the film, and through talking to other people the film got more understandable. Even though it’s not a clear narrative and more of a visual feeling.

Can you elaborate on the technique you chose to create this short film?

I learned that I love using warped perspectives on characters during our model drawing lessons. During those lessons I liked to experiment with materials and how the body was positioned on the paper. The speed with which we had to make drawings, and get everything you wanted on paper, taught me to not hesitate and to just try it. So I implemented that when I was figuring out the technique of this film.

If you look closely at every scene, Geryon changes a lot. Not only through the perspectives, but also in the way I drew him. But because I used similar materials and colours, and implemented them in somewhat the same technique, it feels coherent. In the extreme perspectives there is also a lot of emotion, and I used them to emphasize different parts of the words. The messy materials also have an emphasizing effect on the painful emotions in the film.

A very important discovery in this film was through the edit. The very greasy textures of the materials were not moving on the screen the way I wanted to, so I just started trying different things out. I ended up placing the film a second time on top of itself but 2 frames further, and then putting it on 80% multiply. So all the colours and textures and movement blended more together. I think it’s also important to mention that the whole film (except for one shot) was made on one layer on paper.

How about the music and sounds, which play a big role in your project?

The whole film is centred around the rhythm I found in the poem. Everyday when I was walking to school, brushing my teeth, trying to sleep, I was reciting the poem aloud in my head trying to find the exact rhythm that felt right. I was very set on this rhythm, and my voice actor did a great job bringing my vision alive. On almost every word, I had a specific rhythm so it would portray the right emotion. On the rhythm of the text I also based the movement of the animation and my edit. And on the edit was the music made.

The music is composed by Frédérique Le Duc-Moreau, I met her at school. She brought the uncanny, painful feeling from the text to life through her music. I first animated and edited scenes and then I sent them to her, along with some notes on specific time codes that I wanted there, because I had given myself the rhythm of the poem as a starting point, and I wanted to keep that in the music. And it worked out perfectly. Frédérique made a masterpiece of a soundtrack.

What is “red” to you as an artist? What does this color represent?

In the first place, I chose red because of the title of the book and the film. Then I started using it, and next to the grey tones it was so powerful and it caught the eye. The color also has a powerful connotation of love, danger/pain. The two seem far from one another but through getting a grip on the poem and the rest of the book from Anne Carson, they seem so close to one another. So for me it’s an important color that signifies these opposites that lay so close together, and that is also felt in the book.

Altough I could not find a trailer for Red Meat, the film is still touring in festivals, and has been selected for Animafest Zagreb. Catch it there, or send a ping to Eleni on Instagram here if you’d like to discover this film.

“I love to write small characters with lots of insecurities against the magic of life” - interview with Anne Verbeure

What compelled you to write The Golden Donkey?

Three years ago during the summer months I immersed myself in the stories of medieval Bruges (my hometown) and the local book illuminations of around the 14th, 15th centuries.

I became obsessed with the beautiful compositions, use of color and humorous characters in these book illuminations, and almost immediately wanted to adopt them in my short film. It is during that time that I stumbled upon the story of ‘The golden donkey’ by Apuleius and multiple other variations of the medieval prince-turned-donkey stories, and also really wanted to incorporate them in the film.

These stories were so charming to me in their simplicity and at the same time their existential character. I love to write small characters with lots of insecurities and fears in contrast to the grandeur and the magic of life.

What were the challenges of bringing these aesthetics to screen?

I manually draw and paint the frames, which is a bit counter intuitive in our digital world. But I love the painted, “artisanal” effect of hand-drawn animations immensely. It adds an extra dimension of vibrancy to my previously flat figures. Each figure is scanned after painting, cut out frame by frame digitally and finally composed with the painted background.

The challenge of course was to paint all of these frames, especially the king, because I designed his outfit with several tints of red, which meant I had more to paint.

How did you approach the musical aspect of the film?

I initially wanted to make a musical, but it was too much work, so I had to drop this idea quickly.

But I still held on to the idea of having a lot of music, more specifically music dated from the Middle Ages. There are several medieval songs incorporated: ‘Aloeette, voghel clein’ from the 'Gruuthuse handschrift (14th century), or several songs from Guillaume de Machault (14th century). I wanted to create a separate feeling for the moment of crisis of the Glass King, so there composer Matthias Dewilde made a contemporary composition to evoke a beautiful, yet dangerous and emotional moment.

Your film is modern in its themes, yet draws from classic paintings. What did you want to convey with this dual perspective?

I love to work from reference material, make some historically correct decisions to depict a certain time period, but mainly my goal is to show how we, as people with all our existential complexities and funny mental quirks, are not that different from our medieval ancestors.

How has this film connected with audiences so far?

I’ve had some super nice comments on the film, especially during Anima!

I recognize that there’s a lot happening in the film, a lot to take on as a viewer, so I’m very happy when people just grab on to some elements in the film that make them happy or sad or weird.

If you want to discover Anne’s work, you can learn more on her website here and reach out to her on Instagram here.

Thank you for reading both interviews, I hope you enjoyed them and that you can’t wait to discover both films, and thank you Eleni and Anne for your time and captivating answers! Congratulations again!

I’ll keep you posted on where you can see them online in the future, and in the meantime, I hope you get the chance to catch up with them on a big screen.

Have a wonderful animated weekend,

Kevin

A Dry Monday for Culture…

On Monday, March 31, hundreds gathered in front of La Monnaie/De Munt, Brussels’ Opera House to protest against the new measures from what is now known as the ‘Arizona’ Government in Belgium. According to the workers’ union, it had been long since such a crowd fought together, be them Flemish or French speaking artists and cultural workers.

An omen for change? 195 years ago, it was right in this very opera house that the spark for Belgian revolution ignited. Precisely on August 25, 1830, at a show of La muette de Portici, an Opera written by French composer, director and artist Daniel Auber.

An artist that would not be able to thrive under the new conditions of our Federal government, which threaten to undo the entire system of ‘Kunstwerkuitkering / Statut d’artiste’. A specific Belgian social welfare system where artists who have been recognised as “kunstwerker / travailleur.euse dans les arts” (artists/working within the arts sector) can apply for temporary unemployment benefits in the event of unemployment. A status that is now under scrutiny, in the context of a nation-wide limitation of unemployment benefits to a maximum of two years.

This safety net is important. Hell, it is crucial for artists — and animators — who struggle more often than not to find regular income and stability in a tumultuous market. How can creativity thrive if one has to worry inconsistent income, with dire consequences?

I was there on Monday to support those claims, standing aside those who drive our creative animation landscape. Because what would I write about, if there are no more animators?

Getting out there, for what was one my first real protest gathering, was truly inspiring and filled me with energy and happiness. ‘United we stand’ is Belgium’s motto. And on Monday, that’s what I witnessed. Hopefully, as She-Ra, we’re gonna win in the end.

If you want to support Belgian artists, you can sign this petition here, launched by Flanders’ Green Party.

…but a Bright (And Also Tiny Bit Weird) Future Ahead

Protecting animation artists and their status also means letting creativity flow freely. And sometimes, it takes the weirdest shapes.

In Pubert Jimbob, KASK-student Quirijn Dees brings us into a short that is as inventive as it is eccentric, enough to charm fans of gore and dark humor while also being an impressive visual and artistic offering. The short, which received the Award for Best Belgian Student Short at Anima 2025, was also saluted last year in Annecy, and has proven to be a real crowd-pleaser in festivals.

After Anima, I spoke with Quirijn about this wonderful quirky film. In the upcoming weeks, other interviews from the other Anima winners will follow!

In the meantime, you can discover the interview below, along with the short’s trailer.

What compelled you to write this story?

Quirijn Dees: For the story, I wanted to combine and concatenate a variety of ideas into one linear narrative that was both simple and absurd. These ideas could be situations, jokes, dialogue, imagery, cinematography, sounds, you name it.

By the time that I made this film, I had already been gathering these ideas for a while, so there was a substantial library to choose from. I was quite passionate about most ideas, and it is the expression of these ideas that initially motivated me to create this film.

How does one write such a film?

So building upon the previous answer, the film is structured as a journey that brings forth of an amalgamation of absurd ideas and bizarre situations. Through the process, I have changed and altered the story quite a bit. At some point the film would have been about somebody who is surprised to find their own face on a poster for a new film, it had a much stronger meta-narrative at that point. It was when I did a test recording of the dialogue that I discovered that the dialogue, by itself, already took up 17 minutes. Naturally, I was urged to radically change the story and I am very happy that I decided to strip it back to its initial core concept, which is a very simple, linear narrative that harbors a sequence of absurd situations.

Creating the general outline of the story then also brought about new ideas and possibilities of what could happen in between the pre-established situations.

In the end, I would argue that the film is more 'idea-driven' then character-driven. Nevertheless, I did try to play a bit with the characters in their humanity and their absurdity as well.

What were the challenges of bringing these aesthetics to screen? Can you elaborate on the techniques you chose to create this short film?

The film is mainly created in Blender. The characters were created by applying two simple drawings, one of the front and one the back of the character, onto a low-poly 3D-model. The facial animations were created by rotoscoping over video-footage of the voice recordings. I used a software called EbSynth to morph between the drawn keyframes. This alleviated some of the effort as I did not have to draw every single frame, but it also introduced artefacts to the animation, which then again needed to be corrected if they were too disruptive. Overall, the technical process was relatively 'cheap' for animation-standards. I don't think the film would have been feasible for me to make within one semester if I would have gone for almost any other stylistic direction in 3d.

The visual aspect of the film is, like the story, composed of a bit of a frantic mixture: realistic objects, flat characters and buildings made from (low-res) photographs… I fully understand how it does not appeal to everybody. To me, however, the weirdness of the story and the weirdness of the visual aesthetics are somewhat in relation to one another.

As for the largest challenges, they were mainly of a very technical nature. I had some trouble in Blender with the physics simulations I used, or tried to use. There are only a few liquid simulations and one rigid body simulation throughout the whole film, but they ended up delaying my schedule quite a bit.

And on the music and sound aspects of the film?

Having a background in sound and music, this project did not necessarily bring me too many surprises or obstacles. The sound design was quite a smooth process for the most part.

For the music, I only knew I wanted to have some specific type of music on the sequence where Pubert returns home. For this, I initially planned on using the beginning of an old track I had made myself. However, when I was listening to some music of a good friend of mine (Miro Bollen aka Creax/ZINK), I realized that his track 'Marine Resurrection' would fit this sequence much better instead. As it is such a beautiful piece of music, it very quickly became the main theme of the film.

For a film as this one, I am somewhat cautious in the implementation of music. As one of my pet-peeves in film is a cinematic score that is overtly present in its direction of the audience toward one particular emotion, I preferred to keep the music somewhat scarce throughout the whole film.

Apart from Miro's music, the film has one other piece of music that is, indeed, much more emotionally steering. The expectations it creates, however, are then subverted into a silly joke.

How do you feel about your film's success so far?

It has been very surprising for me, honestly. When I made this bizarre student film, or after I had finished it for that matter, I never imagined that it would go to all of the festivals it has screened at, let alone that it would win awards at some. Nor did I ever believe that it would be picked up by the great Miyu Distribution.

The attention has left me very flattered and grateful and it is a bit overwhelming at times as well. In the end, I think it is also important to realize that a great amount of luck is involved in these things too.

Thank you Quirijn for this wonderful interview, and for this unique short. The film is still touring festivals, but it should be available soon through VoD channels, thanks to Miyu.

In the meantime, feel free to create without boundaries, be driven by ideas, and united against those who think art and culture are irrelevant.

And, of course, have a great animated weekend.

Kevin