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.
I started browsing through my old sketchbooks in search for some drawings I could use. So far I choose those three. The last one is from my time in Dublin when I worked for Brown Bag Animation in 2007. Once again it rained….
Italien 2014
These are drawings from my sketchbook from my trip to the Bologna Children´s Book fair in march 2014. I first went to Ferrara, where I drew a lot, than to the fair in Bologna where I met with a friend, and then to Ravenna. We stayed for about a week.
What is sometimes tough is that after drawing for an hour you realize that your book was slightly canted on your knees. You can see this in the above picture with column. It is anyway hard to find a place where you can sit and draw and have a good view…
There was a lot of rain in the beginning that trip. I was driven away by the pouring rain while drawing the unfinished bw picture in the right lower corner…
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.
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
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.
These drawings are a byproduct of my unfortunately extensive summer slump. I hope I won´t have time for this kind of drawing very soon. Also when I draw there always phases when I work a lot on one thing, and I guess it will take some time anyway until I start on this kind of motif again. I didn´t scan the pictures but just photographed my sketchbook.
They are a little time travel because they remind me of the stuff I did in art school. They are based on my photographs of a Russian student and part time model I took some time ago. She is probably one of the most beautiful women I have met so far, so thanks to her. I would prefer to do actual live drawings, but that is a question about money and finding someone patient enough. I am kind of not finished with this, because it always seems like looking for one picture and I haven´t made this one yet. I would love to do some etchings based on these drawings….
Derek Roczen's Weblog 
