Theses are some old drawings from a failed project for a feature film friends of mine tried to make. This was just brainstorming. It was a film about Noah´s Arch, and some conflicts between the animals…. By the way I added a new life drawing category for my blog….
My new book which will be published in january 2015 but Amazon already shows it. It is full of stupid German puns, which can´t be translated properly I am afraid. It is about cute animals in love (moles, lions, goats, sheep, wolves, everything!)
“Pirat voraus, Käptn Klaus” has finally appeared:
I take this as an opportunity to show one more page and the sketches I did beforehand. Those are an exception because I did the initial sketch digitally, which is because the layout was rather complicated. Normally I prefer ordinary pencil sketches.
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.
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
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:
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.
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.
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. 
http://www.arena-verlag.de/helden/derek-roczen
I made 5 new films for Planet Wissen
Sozialversicherung (Social Insurance ), Vegetarismus (Vegetarianism, Risiko (risk taking), 2 for Existiert die Welt (Does the worl exist)
Risiko is probably the most funny one. I am gonna post a link as soon as it is online, although I am afraid you need to know some German to get some of the jokes. I will post a link as soon as it is online.
Vegetarianism:
Risk:
Social Insurance
Derek Roczen's Weblog 
