Calling All Interns

"Cockroaches are just the insect we love to hate."

-Joshua in 'Q&A'

Rauch Bros. Animation is looking for interns to help on our new short, Q&A.  Anyone interested please get in touch with me by email at timothyrauch@gmail.com.

Looking forward to hearing from some of you!

Rauch Bros. & DoubleTriple @ AENY

Rauch Bros. & DoubleTriple : quite a combination

Thursday, August 28th, Mike and I will be joining Phillip Niemeyer of DoubleTriple to speak at a meeting of AfterEffects NY, "an association for professionals and enthusiasts using Adobe After Effects and related software to create imagery for video, film, and other media".

We're going to be showing Germans in the Woods and explaining how the backgrounds, effects and hand drawn animation were layered together in AfterEffects.  There will be a Q&A and a little preview of our next film.

Phillip will be discussing his work with Ryan Junnell.  Together, they created a fresh, fun 2D stop motion music video for Spoon's hit song "You Got Your Cherry Bomb".

Thursday, Aug. 28th

6:45 - 9 pm

P.S. 41

116 W. 11th

(corner of 11th and 6th ave)

ALSO: Special thanks to Brett Thompson and ASIFA-Atlanta for awarding "Germans in the Woods" Best Dramatic Animated Short at this year's Animation Attack!  Sounds like a great event, one that I'd love to make it to next year...

Interview with Mike and Tim

two knuckleheads and a fish

Mike and I recently did an interview with Toni Pennacchia of Spoiler Alert Radio (88.1 in Providence).  We talked mostly about our work with StoryCorps, and Germans in the Woods in particular. Toni had some great questions!  The show aired on August 3rd, but you can find the podcast here. Listen to learn more about what we've been up to, how we got involved with StoryCorps and where we're hoping to go from here.

Rauch Bros. Web Update

Hello all!  Mike and I have recently updated the Rauch Bros. Animation website.  Go check out Rauchbrothers.com to see more on our next StoryCorps film, Q & A.  From the site:

"In February 2006, then 12-year-old Joshua Littman and his mother, Sarah, took a day-trip to New York City.  In addition to eating at a Martian-themed restaurant and visiting Nintendo World, the pair recorded an interview at StoryCorps... (Joshua) interviewed his mother on everything from animals to her feelings about him as a son."

Reactions to the animatic for Q&A have been overwhelmingly positive thus far and Mike and I are really looking forward to kicking it into full production.

As for our first film, Germans in the Woods (also created in association with StoryCorps), you can catch it this weekend playing at the Animation Block Party, one of New York's biggest annual animation festivals which will take over the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Habana Outpost for what promises to be a great party.  Tickets are available here.  

Designing Our New Film

Concept art from the next Rauch Brothers film

In designing our new film, a humorous but sincere conversation between mother and son, I looked to the two films posted below and the beautiful artwork in Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff's Babar.  The first film comes from Russia's Soyuzmultfilm studio, the second from Rembrandt Films, and Babar is the beloved series of children's books featuring a family of elephants.  More on Babar in another post; for now, the two films that best match what we would like to do with our new project.

The first film is "About Sidorov Vova" (1985) by the great Russian director Eduard Nazarov whose incredible touch with humor I first discovered in "There Once Was a Dog".  Nazarov's humor in these two films comes from characters suffering the follies of interdependence.  Visually, the look of our film will very closely resemble "Vova", which is the story of a pampered young man drafted into the Russian army.  See the Youtube version:

About Sidorov Vova (1985)

"Munro", the second film, is about a 4 year old drafted into the US Army (how's that for a crazy parallel?). This film was directed by Gene Dietch and adapted from the story by Jules Feiffer. They won an Oscar in 1960.  The humor here is also soft but strong, thanks in large part to Feiffer's extraordinary talent with dialogue and narration.  Deitch did an amazing balancing act as the director: maintaining the humor of the original drawings with a very spartan approach to the animation.

  

Munro (1960)

..and to whet your whistle when it comes to Babar, I posted a few images from those lovely books.  We're hoping to acheive the light touches of line and color you see here.

pen and watercolor spread from Babar Comes to America (1965)

watercolor study from Babar's Visit to Bird Island (1951)

Rome Sketchbook

Three years ago I was studying abroad in Rome.  It was a chance to get away from New York and my professors at St. John's and see what kind of work I would do with that new freedom.  One of the things I did was continue to keep a sketchbook that I drew in several hours a day.  In Rome, that meant drawing people on the subways and trains as it had in New York (post) but I also drew churches, museums and public parks.  The following images are just a few pages from one of those sketchbooks.

Looking Ahead

Concept art from the next Rauch Brothers film

Every morning I wake up around 11 am on a futon that nearly fills up my tiny bedroom and roll over toward the curtain to see what kind of a day it is outside.  Life becomes quite mushy when you work only part time because there's very little in the way of a daily schedule.  Somehow, the world keeps on turning.

Mike and I are continuing to hear from festivals:  Germans in the Woods, our collaboration with StoryCorps, will be playing a few good ones in July and August.  First, we will be a part of Rooftop Film Festival's big event July 4th. The night will feature "Food, drinks, live music, fireworks and film...using artfully-told personal stories and carefully-crafted craziness to address the breadth of the American experience."  The party will be on the pier at Solar One, right down by the East River where I'm sure the view of the fireworks will be spectacular.

Then, in August, we will be playing two great festivals: Rhode Island International Film Festival (Aug 5-10) and Palm Springs International Shortfest (Aug 21-27).  Looking forward to both!

Still, the event I am looking forward to the most is this coming Monday when Mike and I will have a chance to meet the mother and son who are the subject of our next film.  We were never able to meet Joseph Robertson, the soldier who shared his memory from the Battle of the Bulge for Germans in the Woods.  Hopefully, meeting the subjects this time will add to our ability to tell their story.  The image at the top of this post is a design for the boy.  Despite how glum this image may look, it promises to be a very funny and lighthearted piece that I can't wait to animate.