The Story lab is a residential meeting with a professional screenwriter, each director per day, to ensure the existing synopsis has all requirements to tell a story in 500 words. The collaborative session renders the necessary planning for each director for the following intensive labs.

Lab includes

• Storytelling lectures by an accomplished animation professional writer
• Professional supervision and consulting of your projects
• Team collaboration with your colleagues and the mentor
• Follow-up online project consulting with a supervisor after the residential lab
• Follow-up presentation to an international expert panel (distributors, producers…)

At a glance

• Length: 2-week residential
• Dates: August 13 – 25, 2023
• Location: Cesky Krumlov

You will start with characters based on your project from the Story Lab, and explore and develop their visual personalities, refining how they look individually and as an ensemble.

You will explore, refine and ultimately enhance the unique flavors of your characters and how they will best support and reinforce the stories they are telling.

Lesson plan

Lab Includes

• Character design and development of min of 2 key characters
• Design and how-to design for animation lectures by an accomplished animation professional
• Lectures and one-on-one consultations with the guest supervisor
• Professional supervision, consulting, and art direction of your project
• Team collaboration between your colleagues and the mentor as the essential learning experience
• Gain valuable feedback from top design and animation artist

At a glance

• Length: 2 weeks residential
• Date: August 25 – September 8, 2023
• Location: Cesky Krumlov

You will take a chunk of your story, a scene, which is scripted in the Story labs, and touch upon all the same things they would do to create the design packages necessary for production: storyboards, prop designs, environment designs, FX design, and shot plans.

At the end of the lab, you will have several art pieces showing your understanding of how to break down a portion of a film and design all the elements necessary to be able to move into production. The preference is to structure the experience as a pre-production of a small part of a big feature film, where you get to experience designing all aspects of production (props, sets, environments, characters, FX, etc.)

Lesson plan

In the first week, you will focus on designing a key environment within your narrative. You will create supplemental material that clearly shows your process and design choices. Everything from style and design to props, graphics, staging, composition, lighting, and color will be discussed.

The focus during the second week will be on using one of the design ideas to create a complete piece, which informs the following 3D artists on how to turn your vision into a production asset. At the end of the two weeks, you should have everything you need to finish an impressive pitch presentation of the project on your own.

Lab includes

• develop images based on the concept prompts brought to the lab
• create at least one pitch-ready portfolio image
• discuss how designs will affect budgets and schedules and how other departments will use your designs in production.
• enhance your visual art skills for storytelling
• improve your team-development processes and workflow
• gain valuable feedback from top concept artist

At a glance

• Length: 2 weeks residential
• Date: August 25 – September 8, 2023
• Location: Cesky Krumlov

Directors, writers, art directors, concept artists.

• Presentation of a project idea
• Motivational letter
• Emphasis on career motivation and vision for a project

Fee

• 1 300 EUR per participating artist in one selected lab

Price includes

• Participation fee for residential and online
• Accommodation

General conditions

• Possibility to pay in instalments.
• We advise participants to apply for scholarships for participation fees and/or travel costs in their countries, as many public film funding bodies are usually supporting such training costs.
• The fee covers the fee of the course. The fee does NOT include board and travel.

Funding for Czech employees and freelancers

Czech Labour Office (Úřad práce) offers to cover up to 85% of the course fee within the so-called POVEZ II project (Support of Vocational Training for Employees II). See the details and conditions here.

Cancellation Policy

The fee of 30% off the course price applies when canceling 45 days before the start of the course, into which one gets accepted.