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Dikkie Dik en de Verdwenen Knuffel (Tommy Tom)

ROLE

Art Director

DESCRIPTION

Dikkie Dik en de verdwenen knuffel (2024) is a feature length 2D animation film based on the popular Dutch illustrated children books by Jet Boeke, about Dikkie Dik who loses his favourite toy and tries to find it back with the help of its friends.

 

For this film I was first tasked the challenge to adapt the original style of the children’s book to make it work for a feature film. Then there was the challenge to flesh out and enrich the world of Dikkie Dik consistently for the whole journey the characters undertake in the story. The final challenge was to lead a great design team in the creation of all the backgrounds as if all made by the hand of the creator, Jet Boeke. 

PROJECT DURATION

2020-2023 (pre)production,

June 2024 Dutch cinema release

CREDITS

Directed by Joost van de Bosch and Erik Verkerk,

Produced by Phanta Animation and BosBros

FORM

2D animated feature film, 60 minutes

LINK TO FILM

Link to the trailer here (2 min)

Filling in the blanks

The creative development of the movie started with with filling in the blanks to make it fit for the wide screen form of a cinema screen, and add perspective and shadows. I needed to analyse the original drawing style thoroughly to see how much I could add without losing the feel of the original illustrations, which was a lot of fun to do

Finding perspective

Another aspect of the original illustrations that needed an shift in perspective, was actually the perspective. For the film direction to work well we needed to be close to the ground along with the cats. This meant that we cannot see on top of things like in the books, and a lot of mis-en-scene really close to the camera, like grass and flowers.

Fleshing out the world

Where does Dikkie Dik live? Well, in a house. But what kind of house? How rural is the surrounding area? What is Dikkie Dik’s owner like? I needed to know for the interior decoration choices. I’ve spend quite some time in pre-production making this kind of decisions for all the set design to make logical sense. This was great fun.

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