comic

Affe Wilhelm

Animation, comic, film, illustration, Uncategorized

affewilhelm

 

This is a rather stupid drawing I found in one of my old sketchbooks. Those are elements for cutout drawings, and the ape is one of the bad (and stupid) ghosts of German history, Wilhelm II. I probably chose it because the media is full of stories about 1914. My ancestors fought on both sides and one of my English relatives is buried here in Cologne in one of the soldier´s cemetaries.

The drawing is from a film about the brave soldier Schweijk by Natasa von Kopp, a documentary with some animated sequences. I am not really content with my work here, but I learned a lot. For the brave here is a link to the film…..

Captain Bligh Sketches

Animation, comic, film, fun, illustration, television
Preliminary sketches for shortfilm Captain Bligh by Derek Roczen
Preliminary sketches for shortfilm Captain Bligh by Derek Roczen

These are preliminary sketches for my short film Captain Bligh from 2003. There a lots of small ideas that had to be left out of the film (…what a pity). The drawings were exhibited at the Filmakademie for quite some time.

New Book, Pirat voraus Käptn Klaus….

comic, fun, illustration, science

Piraten_cover_13

A new book I have illustrated about pirates will be available in august. I have just found the announcement on the Arena homepage. Work on this project proved to be more difficult than I thought, because the more I read about pirates the less I liked them. The thing is that you start realizing that our image of pirates is 3oies Hollywood Kitsch.

http://www.arena-verlag.de/artikel/pirat-voraus-kaepten-klaus-978-3-401-60016-1

But on the other hand I had fun. I love drawing ships and reading Patrick O´Brian novels is one of my great guilty pleasures ever since I have finished my animated short Captain Bligh in 2003. (For those who haven´t seen that:

Imagefilm

Animation, comic, film, fun, illustration, Uncategorized

asseco_stillsImagefilm

An Imagefilm I did for Asseco Germany. Most of the work was spent on the design. I like it. Music by Frank Schreiber, script Susanne Decker, voice artist Christian Deutsch.

Here is the youtube link:

Christmas Cards

comic, fun, illustration, Uncategorized

I normally do a Christmas card every year. This year there very little time because I am working on another book from the same series like the Dinosaur one. So this year´s illustration is actually a christmas card I did for Heipha Pharmaceutical, and was used as a wrapping paper for chocolate bars, which might explain the format.

When I still had more time to spend I used to do two Christmas cards every year. A nice one and politically incorrect one. This is I think 3 or 4 years old, and I like it, although reactions were varied. My own interpretation was that the way we celebrate Christmas is very uniform, but a lot of people saw very different thins in this card.

And yes, perhaps I watched to many parades celebrating the anniversary of the October revolution, and Santa does look like Brezhnev on this one.

Weihnachtspostkarte_vorne_neu Nordkoreanischeweihnachten

Cookies

Animation, comic, film, fun, science, television

 

Another Film for Planet Wissen, this time about Cookies. I did a variation on the simplified style I normally do, because I was starting to get bored. This was done in about 5 days which was only made possible by the help of Cologne based animator Kerstin Unger (http://kerstinunger.com/). Thanks to her. It is a little rough but it works quite well.

Cookies_final_20_11_01  Cookies_final_20_11_01-2

Cookies_final_20_11_01-4

Baff Wissen:Zicke Zacke Dinokacke, Mensch Mammut

comic, film, fun, illustration, science

Here are two book I have illustrated in 2011/2012 for Arena. I like the sidekicks especially- the small mammoth and the dinosaur. The cooperation with Volker präkelt and Bärbel Müller was very pleasant. I am working at another volume of this series about pirates at the moment.   07_Dinotitelseitevignetten_arena 08_zickezackedinokacke 09_vignetten_arena_2http://www.arena-verlag.de/helden/derek-roczen

Landtag 2011

Animation, comic, film, fun, illustration, Uncategorized

 

 

This is a project from 2011 I did for the Landtag Baden Württemberg for Taks Film and director Dorothea Künzel. The process was a little protracted, because I had participated in pitch the year before. In retrospect the design I did back then was a little to lame, so I lost to Angela Steffen, but got the job when she decided to work on Andreas Hykades Tom. I was first supposed to use her design, which I didn´t like. I am a great fan of Angela but this case was different. So I did a complete redesign, which I like a lot.

The film explains the mechanics of the regional parliament and is often used in schools. It is a pity, that I haven´t found another use for this style so far. By the way thanks to Annette Schneider of Taks Film and Dorothea Künzig for her advice….

I uploaded an edit of the animated scenes. I don´t have the sound files so they are without sound, but I hope you will get the idea.

These are some drawings from the first pitch and a link to the animation test I did back then.

 

Entwurf für Film Landtag Baden Württemberg 2010. Derek Roczen