Pear Tree Bears Fruit: Best Animated Short, International at New York Film Festival!
Congratulations to MyToons member Jeroen Zijlstra, whose stop motion animation The Miraculous Pear Tree was just awarded "Best Animated Short, International" at the New York International Film Festival! A major fan of stop motion, Jeroen Zijlstra finds inspiration in Ray Harryhausen’s creatures and movies; especially The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts. Jeroen began drawing, filming and animating at an early age, and went on to study animation and media design at the Minerva Academy of Visual Arts and Design in the Netherlands. In 2004, Jeroen established his studio, Raspberry Animation, and two years later he animated and produced several leaders and bumpers for MTV-Networks. His work has now been included in more than a dozen exhibits.
Jeroen experimented with cell animation and CG animation as a means of returning to his great passion, stop motion. He prefers building real sets, props, armatures and characters, and physically building up the animation frame by frame.
His amazing digitally shot stop motion animation, Awareness, was inspired by his fascination with old expressionistic films from 1920s, German movies, and by artists like Tim Burton.
For Jeroen’s moving animation, The Miraculous Pear Tree, he pioneered the usage of digital SLR cameras in combination with real-time video preview. This ended up in an animation shot in 2K RAW format and was later scaled down to 1080p HD.
The New York Film Festival contacted him after seeing his Tibetan fairy tale animation, The Miraculous Pear Tree, on atomfilms.com. Suddenly an avalanche of interest descended on Jeroen.
“More and more people contacted me about the screenings and about my work. Everybody in New York was very enthusiastic about the screening and impressed with the time it took for me to create this Tibetan fairytale,” he said.
So impressed, in fact, that the New York International Film Festival awarded The Miraculous Pear Tree "Best Animated Short, International" - Congratulations, Jeroen!
Currently, Jeroen and his studio are working on two educational animations for young children. “We’re making a stop-motion animation about the letter ‘A’ and a combined 3D, Flash, stop-motion one about the letter ‘F.’ And we’re working on a series of informative animations for a house corporation on DVD, and on a DVD with special animated menus for a Dutch folk-pop band.
In addition, the studio gives presentations about animation (the next one is in The Hague on April 12) and participates in animation exhibitions. The exhibition in Groningen (NL) will also feature renowned Dutch animators Michael Dudok de Wit, Paul Driessen, Han Hoogerbrugge and Adriaan Lokman.
In the near future, Jeroen hopes to make a longer stop-motion animation, and says he’s in the conceptual phase for the storyline. “This will also will be a fairytale. And we’ll keep working on commercials, video clips, kid’s animations and more."
Stop by and congratulate Jeroen on his win at the New York International Film Festival, and be sure to see The Miraculous Pear Tree for yourself!
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