My name is Dmitri Voloshin, they call me a director, although I don’t consider myself a director. I do, I do this activity out of necessity, because I can’t find directors in Moldova who are even better than me. There are people who are better than me. But they usually have a lot of work and there is no way to bring him into the studio and it is very expensive to bring in specialists from Russia from Ukraine. That is why this function is performed by me, the acting director, let’s say. I’m more of a producer and now I will tell you what path I have taken, what I have done, what I have encountered as a director and as a producer. That’s just what I wanted to say. Although many people tell me that you’re lying, that your work is not bad, you have 40 prizes at various festivals, but if I were a director I’d probably have not 44 but 400. So I think directing is a profession or something you have to do all the time. So I was born in Ukraine, near Odessa, in the village of Alexeevka, into a military family, my father is a military man. I did not finish secondary school there, I completed elementary school. Then my father was transferred to Floresti, Moldova. I grew up here, I graduated and went to study at the Polytechnic Institute, I got into engineering. I studied at the computer technology department, and there I got acquainted with the Internet, there I found partners with whom I made the Three Nines and all the other sites, but as for movies, as for animation, a very important thing I after the Institute, together with my friends I first saw what is computer graphics, computer 3D animation on Moldova film, I do not know there in a dive guys worked on some kind of pre-flash pentium and there was even an advanced yet It was running under dos. It worked on the DOS. So this is how it worked, I mean the interface was horrible, but when I saw the cube spinning on the screen, I was really shocked, because I was used to text commands in the terminal and suddenly a graphic cube was spinning right in front of me on the screen and by pushing a button it was trying to read and shadow create a pseudo volume. It was in ’97 and I realized that I wanted to do computer graphics, that was my thing. But it turned out that in order to do something sane in this terrible program, you need to spend a lot of time, effort, in particular to read 3D Studio for Dummies, a yellow book on other subjects. No one to turn to, there was no specialists, the Internet was in its infancy, it was impossible to find anything there. There were a couple of resources in English where very few people wrote, so we did everything ourselves. I decided that I would buy a computer and I will make commercials. ( Video ) It was my first job, an experiment, a computer version. I was wondering how you could put video over computer graphics and mix it into one, it was 97-98. I saw that you could move objects around on the screen, you could put them on video and that’s how I decided to do my first commercial. The background is what, my strategy was very simple, I will make a commercial and will walk around the city with him, looking for customers who need. That is, if I just come and say here I know how to do computer graphics, and give me orders, they will ask what can you do, show me, a video portfolio, there is some work, what is it? They will tell you what to talk to you about, young man. First go and do something and then come to us. So I decided to make myself a portfolio. Well, since no one gave any money, so you need to make a proper promotional product of any absolutely any product. I found this product, it was a TV set TVT, at the factory alpha, they put them just on the street, so that people look at the price, maybe immediately buy . At that time there was a period when the economy was in complete stagnation, and I saw a TV set and I said that I would advertise the TV set, I lived there not far away. I sat there for three months and made my first commercial. This is what it looks like. ( Video) There’s silence in the audience, nobody applauding. There’s no… If this had happened back in ’97, I would have just stood up and walked out of the auditorium in silence, because this is a masterpiece, this is Hollywood, because nobody in the country had seen anything like this. I was expecting such an effect, when I show people, they will ask how you did it . We have exactly the same situation in our studio right now. We’ve made a technological breakthrough not only for Moldova, but for Eastern Europe, we have guys in the studio. We have done something that has not been done even in the USSR, USSR, Russia. We made the first Vr cartoon in Eastern Europe, a serious 7 minute cartoon. And also when a person puts on VIP glasses, stands up and just says so what, I’ll just leave there and I will never communicate with this person. Everyone says wow, cool, this is fantastic, how did you do this, this is fantastic, the future. It was the same thing. I proudly recorded this clip on vhs tape, you know what it is, no, probably yes. and went to look for happiness. It was November, I had such a thin gray coat, I was not living richly, or rather very poorly living with his new wife, who hoped that everything will be with me, who believed that I will all work out and sent me to work every day. The work was that I took the tape under my arm, went into town, chose a district, this week I work in the center and just took some business offices and started walking on the floors, knocking on every door and saying that I do computer graphics, advertising, whether you need advertising, here’s my portfolio, you can look at. I usually met a perplexed look when people looked at the vhs tape, because it turned out not all offices have vhs tape, I did not want to give anyone. I realized that this is a serious marketing gaffe, that there was nowhere to put it, that’s it. But those who were interested in it, they said we do not do computer graphics, we do not believe in it, here if you can shoot, shoot. I say that I do not know how, but maybe someone can advise? I was given some business cards, but the result was nothing. In one office, in the second, third, in a month I changed areas. I went to the Botanic, I went to Ryshanovka and after about 4 months, when I was already desperate to find any adequate customer, and my wife has begun to howl with hunger, I accidentally at the TV center came across a company that was called san-tv. When I came in, I was dumbfounded. When I said the word “computer graphics” they took me by the hand, sat me down, gave me some tea, I asked for more cookies because I was hungry. When I showed them, they had a place to put it. When they looked at it, they said, WoW this one needs something, do you do that kind of 3D graphics? Yes. We are currently looking for a studio that can make us screensavers for Sun TV. How much does a product like that cost? I screwed them some unrealistic money, I think about 200 dollars.They said okay, but you can make us a one-minute cartoon, I do not know, it’s not here, if you want, then I’ll show you with the trains, but it’s long and complicated. I say yes, but it’s a very serious job, I will work for 2.5 – 3 months and will cost 800. I thought now we will haggle, they say okay, we agree. How happy I was then I had a lot of events where I could rejoice, but that happiness when I came out of the san tv, when I came home and told my wife , we felt like millionaires. It was a tremendous amount of money that I usually made in a year. And so I started working in the industry. I started doing commercials for different studios, for different partners, clients of firms, they found out about me. Then there was a company called pnp diver, which also does computer graphics. But it so happened, it was the late 90s, early 2000s, that I occupied a certain niche, people already knew about me, even though there was no studio. But I was doing, it was considered the coolest computer graphics and here is one of the videos that I now want to show, you will never believe that I did it. I thought you were okay then, now of course it looks a little funny. (Video). Well then they found me, they knew that I had already appeared 999 really there was only a year. But they did not take seriously, for them the main thing was the product. I made it for a long time and I was very happy with it. In 2001 I had three young people that I didn’t know. They called themselves the band Ozone and one of them is the main Dan, Dan Balan said he’d seen the work and wanted to make a video, to order the computer graphics from me. I pretended that it’s normal to do computer graphics, for music videos it’s easy. He showed me his first song, asked me to count. I realized that, and warned that the musicians are not rich, that it is more creativity, it is more culture, it is not commerce. And that he was counting on a normal price and I wanted to make a music video in computer graphics, that I realized that I had to put a price just to snag. We have different views on the price level, and when he sounded 300 Eur for a music video, he did well. He pretended that he expected a little cheaper, at Nu O’key. Although then when we talked, he said, Dimon, what 300 euros? You could understand the price is 4-5 times higher, but the main thing that they did not slip, they said go ahead, but we want a lot of computer graphics. So I said okay, I’ll nail it, I did. I took some more friends, we closed the house for three months, we went to the pavilion shot a clip. We shot this clip, we gave it away. They said wow cool and then there was another clip that we did for Ozone, then there was another clip that we shot on airplanes and then there was 4 more last ones. All 4 videos were made by us. The budget was small everywhere, but I did not care. I saw what was the effect. I got satisfaction from the process and I thought I was a great director. I know how to shoot. I’m just realizing now how I directed music videos. These are the guys I’ll tell you how I shot music videos back then. You tell me, check it out. The guys came to me, you already know, the popular guys. They came to me and said, “Dima, there’s a new song. We wrote it recently. So recently, that we don’t remember the words. We’ll read their papers. I say: Let’s stand on the rir, I called it a rir projection, I’ll take you off and to have an idea of the clip. They say, come on. That’s how it was. ( Video) They didn’t know then what they came up with. didn’t know what fate this song would have and how much money they would raise, how many fans and what a monument they had built for themselves with this song. Thank you This is the clip where it was filmed on the wing of an airplane. That’s how many 10 clips we have in our portfolio, and I said, guys, here’s the stage, you stand here and sing, we’re going to turn on the soundtrack and you stand there and wiggle. And I’ve got one camera, I’ll put the camera, and you just jam for three and a half minutes, as long as the clip is there. You got it so OK. So bring the camera, put it underneath and do the same thing again, the same thing we do. Five six points I shoot, then I come and all this shit and start editing. What better way to go here, there was no staging, no storyboarding. Just piles of material, you could pick something out of that pile. This clip with dragostea Din Tei was more complicated, there was a full-scale shooting, there were shots with an airplane. We also went out into the city and filmed. The song dragostea Din Tei, so we had a linden, and where’s the linden? So run to Komsomolskoye Lake, you’ll run there. So we’ve got a plane, We’ve got a plane at the airport, run to the airport, you’ll have to run there. They tell us: Boys, get out of here, don’t shoot. I thought I could, I already came with the musicians . Dan called someone, they brought us to some half-destroyed airplane, there will be filming. Here in a word a little video, about how our studio worked for 10-12 years and we did a bunch of advertising, music, animation, commercial products, on which we earned. And then what happened with our advertising department when the company opened and there were about 6 people working in the studio. Here’s our demoril, what 2000- up to and including 12. We stopped doing commercials in 2008 or 2009 that’s where some of our animation projects came in. Let’s take a look. (Video). Thank you. As of 2012, we had a good portfolio, we had a big portfolio already, by the Moldovan standards, we were probably the largest 3D animation studio in Moldova. But one thing was bothering me, make it quieter, as if this money that I earn from computer graphics, I give to the guys with my salary and partially cover the rent. That is, I did not have any additional finances, that is, the studio is working at zero. To say that I received besides this 0 any moral satisfaction or creative realization, I could not, because all the same work on demand, work with studios. who works with advertising agencies know how they can charge by the balls that you there even 5 kop. put it can not. And the farther it went, the more it happened. So I decided that since we’re not making any money from the studio and it makes no sense to keep it, we should just let the guys go free and do something else. But since it was very interesting to me, I realized that I wanted to go to the next level. So I decided to do animation by cartoons. I closed the advertising business, I said we don’t do commercials in Moldova anymore, we will do our own product, by that time 999 had reached a financial level to give us money. If up to now we were feeding them with 3D graphics studios, we were feeding the programmers so that they could raise the 9’s. Then everything changed the other way around, there was some free money so that I could invest in a studio to do animation. This clip that you saw, it’s from about that time, when it really hit me and I was very inspired. It seemed very easy and simple to me, I even went to America. I went to Pixar, where I showed my first cartoon. Yes, this period, when we took this symbolic plate, broke it up so that when we finished the cartoon, we could glue it back together. So we found it a long time ago, now it’s a team that produces animation, back then there were a lot less people. What’s next for us and the first cartoon we decided to do cartoons about a gypsy. I wrote a script for a cartoon where a gypsy goes with his family in a tent to the market, but on the way he gets his horse stolen and he goes to look for the horse in the woods, he finds the bandit who stole the horse. They have a fight, he takes away this horse and in the morning, happy with the horse, he returns to his tent, approaches it and is weakened. When the fog recedes, he sees that her wheels are shot off. That was the story. After reading up on how long it would take to produce, and realized we didn’t have eight years. And we decided to do something shorter, so it appeared, the gypsy remained, the horse was not stolen, the horse died for him came death. And we decided to show death not just any kind of death, but death in some kind of shape or form. That’s how Dji came. The gypsy came and we made the first cartoon about how they met. ( Video) That’s how the cartoon turned out. Then everyone said Wow, it’s definitely a breakthrough for Moldova. That’s the bomb, no one has done cartoons here, such a quality you have class. We started a site called Gypsy. MD, where we started to tell in the process how we did, all the steps and how the work on the characters is done, how the bones and muscles appear I’ll tell you about it today too and we’re impressed and we started to move on. For example, this is not a storyboard – this is development of a character, that is, it’s not enough to draw it just once, you have to draw it in all possible emotional manifestations, in stress and in joy and in fear. And so the artist sits and draws how he acts, creates his how in English you know yes character. It’s the character that’s the most important thing to show, and what he’s like in general. not just in one pose, but what a character he is in life. That’s how we got G, our character that you can see now even on the logo in the studio. His braid is wonderful. And on New Year’s Eve we made the next cartoon, another cartoon, which has already taken more time to create. First one we did very quickly, 3 – 4 months, very quickly, then on this one it took us probably 7 – 8 months. On New Year’s Eve we made a short film like this, which is very popular on the Internet right now. There’s, I don’t know, several tens of millions of views, especially on New Year’s Eve there are such peaks in views. Turn it on . (Video) Thank you! Man, I’m so pleased that you guys are clapping for me, as if I’m watching this cartoon for the first time myself. The Russian version said: Don’t give me crap. This is much funnier, I do not know why they put the English version, we puzzled over how to say funny in English, got this … And in Russian straight – Do not give me crap, it was a hint relatives if you give, then give normally. What so, it was then there was a little boy, this little gypsy -Tagar, such a crazy guy who is constantly causing discomfort to everyone around him and whom everyone loves very much. Here’s how it looked storyboard for our next cartoon about the grandfather and the kid, not all honestly understand what the joke here. This is a New Year’s, not New Year’s, and April Fool’s Day video, congratulations on April 1, and I’m here as the director screwed up and did not bring to the end of the idea. I just voiced it to you, in the storyboard it’s normally done, but here it’s not. That is, the little dude sits on the fire and pipes up his grandfather. It’s just that in the 3D version for some reason you can’t see it very well. Well come on maybe maybe I’m wrong, maybe the attentive. ( Video) This is an April 1 prank. The tube turned out to have a secret. That is how the small form ended, we realized that we are able to make cartoons, but have not yet figured out how to make money on them. As it turned out now it is impossible to make money on them in principle, they are not sold. You can earn on YouTube, here’s $1000, which you usually spend there for a week on production, but it’s impossible to buy a short film project. But nevertheless it seemed to us, and what we do cartoons do on 1 minute, on 2, and we will make 5-6 minutes, we will swing for a year on 2. And we began to do a series, the next series, which consists of three cartoons, too. There were three that were like postcards . The next three were dji death sails, dji death fails dji death tales. and the next slide we have what? And we have a little video here about how we work in the studio, how we make cartoons. Let’s see what it looks like from the inside. ( Video). By that time in the studio had about 10 people, it has expanded, began to chew more money, more resources, more of my time, but I liked what I get and accordingly there were growing problems from the departments that make money in the company. They said: Dmitriy would understand that the cartoon is art and culture, but we would like those departments which work and earn money to raise salaries, but there’s no money. Where do you go, are you going to earn something? I mean, it is so brazen, but I understand them. That’s logical, but I say that guys are also part of our business, these are social projects for Moldova, very important. Perhaps one day these cartoons will be converted into something more. So I had to convince and drag this cartoon explaining that this is the period. And now I want to tell by the example of the next cartoon, about a pirate and about death, which took us a year, this cartoon took us 2 years. That is, it became even longer also about 6 minutes – 7 and these lines more and more. If earlier we could produce 2-3 cartoons a year, now there are a lot of people, a lot of work, now we want to make the quality in general, Hollywood, Pixar, and we kept this bar, but at the expense of the fact that time was growing. And so where does the cartoon begin? Let’s go through all the steps so we can roughly understand how hard and complicated everything is. But first the script is written, which is not here. This is one of the most important things, because if you have an uninteresting story is boring, no matter what kind of graphics you use, the cartoon will not be interesting to watch. And the work on the script goes at least at us, even when we do the final animation. If there is a storyboard, write the script, write the storyboard, look, all the crap, and begin to move these things, begin to add new ones, storyboards when the storyboard is ready more or less script is more, not less understandable. Let’s go further. begins to draw worked out in more detail shots, made animatik, that is, from the drawn pictures going here is a very rough cartoon in compose that was roughly understandable that for what goes. here goes even more work on the script, because some things should be funny, they’re not funny, some boring, they are cut, new giga. this product is considered basic, imposed approximately music, considered basic, after which the creative work comes to the end you have decided all the directors. After this is done three-dimensional animation, that is, very rough draft objects, very rough animation, but it is already clear what the camera, what angle, where something is located. here’s how the title, the name of the cartoon, did not know what it is called. That is, everything is very conditional, the main thing is to assemble as quickly as possible. Everything appears youtz, youtz, youtz, all twitchy. But this is already standing real 3D objects . Yes, here are the inserts, but unfortunately the presentation was not helped by a man far from animation and put for some reason the characters after the finished animation with the characters. Characters of course before. About the characters, we just watched how they are created here, I’ll tell you how to create these in a nutshell. I mean, these first three last cartoons were an introduction to the characters. In general, who are they, then the second three cartoons – it’s more about G, death loser, that is, death, which is not like other deaths, which is catastrophically unlucky, going on their missions, it comes to earth, encountered with some confusion and returns with nothing. here but no luck. And this time we decided to do an adventure with a pirate who was shipwrecked and left alone in the open ocean to die of thirst and death came for him. Well, here’s what happens next, I’ll show you. And here’s the pirate. We had a lot of sketches, various experiments. It’s a very difficult stage, a very painful stage, because the artists draw and draw and draw. They draw, they draw, I reject, I reject. They start to swear, they start to draw some shit to get away from me. I say here. Could it be like this? All right, that’s where we should start next time. Then comes painting, different styles, different faces, different shapes, and then when you have decided on the shape of the face, make different emotions, how he looks. This is a sketch for a 3D modeler, who makes 3D models of faces according to sketches artist, in three-dimensional space. Here are the emotions, then the body as it looks. Then a sketch is drawn so that it is clear where to place the muscles. How does the skeleton look like inside, that is usually goes to work for 3-4 months on one character to understand it for a very long time. Of course there is also another parallel work on another character but it’s not easy. That’s the result is such a thing, such a dummy. It’s a 3D model that the modeler made in 3D space. It’s not exactly like what the artists drew, it’s impossible to repeat. Sometimes it’s better than what the artists drew, sometimes it’s worse. The second character we had was a big fish. We spoiled it a little bit, so this is what she looks like, a huge fish that lives in the ocean with a gold tooth and lives under the water. When I said “I want a fish like that, first it’s small, and then it becomes huge, the painters’ brains exploded too. When I saw it, I said, “I want a fish like that. We began to paint, there were a lot of coloristic choices. It was green and gold. It was poo-poo, and then it got all kinds of algae and coral and all sorts of things, you can see that they’ve been hanging out underwater for a long time. Define the shape, started again from all sides we look at it to be clear and makes the 3D model final. This is how it already looks in the cartoon. And we already had Gee, we don’t have to make it. It’s very convenient. Why is it not profitable to make a new cartoon every time, because every cartoon, even if it’s three minutes, you have to go through the whole stage of creating the characters all over again. That’s why it’s advantageous to make a character and do a TV series or a full movie on it, because this stage is eliminated. Well, besides this, we needed more various objects, so-called asets, that is not the characters, but things that should be in the cartoon, here’s raft for example, all sorts of things that float after the shipwreck in it. That is, as if you watch a cartoon and do not really notice, and it takes weeks, weeks of work to work out all the details. There’s a little star in the frame for a second, but look, I don’t know why they did it, but they worked so hard with love, they worked on all the details. You see, that’s it and it’s not even there. It wasn’t visible in my opinion. Here are the locations . It’s also very complex, it’s a very big stage of work with the creation of locations where the action takes place. You have to think about the landscape, you have to read historical documents, pictures. What was going on at the time. How the houses look like in Haiti for example. What the taverns look like. Panoramas like this were made to understand where the action takes place. Here’s an example of a tavern where a cartoon ends, and it’s also viewed through different drawings. In the medieval ones, these old buildings, the tavern, behind the models first. That’s also what it looks like first the artists drew it, then modeled it, that’s what the interior looks like. There’s the model, and then finally the animation stage, which everybody loves, because you’re starting to bring the characters to life, and the story begins to work. These are the bones of the fish – this is not how you imagine a herring fish, but this is what the bone looks like in computer graphics, so that you can control it, so it’s not stationary, and so you can open its mouth and move its fins and eyes, and then the bones are put inside. This is what it looks like before the rendering. There are animators who move the bones and change the shape of the fish. And this is how a pirate is built. In this pirate, we used new muscle technology, it’s a very complicated thing, but it allows us to create realistic body movement, like skin moving on muscles. This system works very slowly, but it’s the only way to convey the right sense of volume and reality. You see the controller on the right to control the emotions on the face, there’s a special profession of ruger, which is a person who inserts the bones, to adjust the skeleton of the character so that the animators can control it comfortably. A dancing skeleton for example. That’s what it looks like, then the muscles appear, then comes the skin, later the clothes. Yes there are characters like jellyfish, they also need to be animated, you also need to make them a skeleton, oddly enough. You probably didn’t know that jellyfish have a skeleton, well there it is, in 3D space . animation tests start, simulation fabric, the process also we spent a year developing the technology. How to make the fabric look like a fabric because you can’t animate it, it evolves because of the physical laws of gravity and wind, we used a physical simulator, the engine but it’s very difficult to adjust. As you see, you have to do special cutting, separately sleeves, separately some pieces that are strongly rippled and slightly rippled. Creases. it also takes a certain amount of time, that is a specialist has put the fabric and puts on the bill, you have to wait several hours so she read the fabric before rendering. Here initially on the left you see it like this, so then how the muscle looks like and what you get in the end. The threads ripple and creases appear and look like, like fabric. It helps to achieve a sense of reality of the character, it brightens up some of the shortcomings of animation, the more fabric the more realistic it looks. Thanks Dimon, Very nice. We should get you in the studio. We need such specialists. VFX-visual special effects, that is a specialist who deals with explosions of smoke, water and sand, fire. Here’s an example, once again, thank you, very nice. and you do not think, let’s clap for Dimon’s elegant presentation. He tried his best, I think he prepared it for a month and a half. That’s how long it took us to simulate the fluid, disassemble the engine. Actually, more. This cartoon when I started to get nervous because the money was going like a furnace, I came up red with anger and said why we are not moving, for the second cartoon a lot. yy why so slow? They said, “Dima, you wanted water, we make you water… So, make you some water. – If you want, come tomorrow and show me water, where it’s just a rectangle, and a balloon goes through it, and there remains a hole in the water. Is that the kind of water you want? I said no. I want it like Pixar. – So pay like Pixar. – That’s it. Okay, I’m not bothering you. Let’s get to work. We spent a year on the development to understand how the water to make it look as realistic as possible. It was quite complicated and time-consuming, but the result is quite good. It takes a very long time to calculate, because I calculate every drop of water separately, it’s such a huge machine resource. You see, it’s all particles , although it looks just like water and to deal with it … woah. It’s scary to remember. We later cursed why we got into this water … Why did we have to do, why he is not in the desert dying. Why did we have to do it, but on the other hand it’s a good thing. There you go. Well, here’s water, just like the real thing. When they showed us these clips in Russia or wherever, they asked: “Why do you make such water? It’s so beautiful… Do you know how much it cost…? -Yeah… Why? – To make it look nice. – I see, Moldovans… They make such water there, because they pay huge money for it, it’s been torturing for ten years for a movie, then I understand. Just to be beautiful it doesn’t work there. Probably right. compositing is a stage of work on the cartoon, when there is already rendered material, it is collected in layers in a special program to make it look, that is, collects all the layers, all the pieces and goes final material. Lighting, water separately, effects separately, randr separately, all sorts of masks separately, everything separately, shadows separately, and finally it all comes together and the final cartoon comes out. This is also a painful stage, but you’ll see a finished cartoon after that comes out. Then the voiceover is true. Sometimes the number of layers reaches 30 in one shot, separately, separately beard, bandage separately, foam flowing. I remember a month of agonizing to make something like foam. In the beginning some incomprehensible balls were falling, I did not understand what it was like. Yes, and at the end we finally finished the work after 2 years, we published the cartoon, which collected about 20 awards around the world. ( Video) Thank you . There’s a little story involved with those credits, that’s the way the dance is catchy. We, I wanted the credits to have an Irish character dance and we found a video on the internet where two dudes are dancing a lickety-split Russian dance. When we released a cartoon, six months later we got a call from the lumineers and said you were stealing, we have not seen this, okay, took the video, you stole the dance. I said Yes, I’m sorry, sorry to handle such things, they apologized 10 times and told us, okay, but do not do that again. These are the awards that our first two cartoons received. And then there’s this bit. That is a lot, about 40 pieces around the world and the first and second, the audience sympathy, it certainly warmed everything, not monetized, but ochen very nice when we so and for the country. Now we are working on 3 cartoons in this series. dji death tales-it’s G’s tales. It tells the story of the first meeting of death and the baby Gozhik, which took place in the woods and the boy had to be eaten by wolves, but since it came for him our wonderful character, of course, could not allow the wolves just eat the child. He intervened on his own misfortune and spun such a story, over which you can then make a whole feature-length story. Our guys and the studio, I want to give the animators a pat on the back because they’re sitting there smiling . It’s very nice, because I’m not gonna lie, the guys aren’t working for money, because we can’t pay a lot of money, I honestly understand this, because our country isn’t rich, our studio just works for a product and so I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the employees of our studio, because they do a great job, learn to create such products, they make the world that so small country do such unique products, such as Arip, about which I will now tell you. It’s about a Moldovan astronaut Nelu, who was forgotten in orbit and in a very strange way realizes his childhood dream. This story is dedicated to my friend, Yuri Borodai, a pilot who disappeared 2 years ago, so the story is sad, but it has a message and idea, I highly recommend you to watch it. It’s our Moldovan cosmonaut, his first sketches, the way we imagined him, didn’t quite turn out to be Moldovan. Here it’s more. our history has changed very many times . It’s a story, it has a very long way to go, until we realized what we needed . We also had a dog in space, we had a sunflower that he was always with, saving it everywhere. As a result we had, appeared Nelu, a man who always dreamed of flying on a hang glider, that is, it was a childhood dream, but it turned out that fate threw him to guard one abandoned space station, on which he has lived for years, still dreaming of flying. This is what the character looks like, and now you can see a little teaser. The cartoon, I want to tell you that the cartoon is ready, it’s already there. He’s in the vr glasses looking. On April 1 we will tell you how it will be presented. There will be a private screening. If anybody wants to come to the private screening, which will probably be on April 12 – the day of astronautics, to look at it and we will send it to festivals, to make it known in our small country. ( Video) Thank you, did you pay attention to Summer 2018? Yes I mean I was sure that summer , definitely a year ago we will release it for sure , but then it turned out that vr cartoon is not the same as the usual cartoon . And it’s so complicated, you know, there’s no editing in VR, so you can’t put a camera like that, like that, like that. There’s one camera – it’s your eyes, and you have to set up the story so that you can just watch it unfold in front of you. Because everything happens in real time, it’s like a game, you can’t read at high speed, if you have a lot of objects, they’ll stop. That’s a separate story, I’ll tell you. Probably can do a separate meeting when I can show it, there in six months maybe. How it all happened, but at this stage the product is ready. We like what we get. This is our studio, well how not all of it, this is the whole Simpals, which works with all of our projects, but here of course there is a studio. So that’s it, that’s it, I’m ready to answer your questions.
-Say please, you’ve never tried to work as a director with other scripts, I understand you’ve always worked only with your own scripts?
-Thank you for your excellent question. -Why do I say I’m not a director. What is a professional director? A professional director is a craftsman who earns his living by this work, and when they say to him, “Dear Director, there’s a script you have to shoot. He says how much money will you give him? That’s how much money I’ll give him. He says okay, I agree. He takes it and begins to make it. I’m a little different. I don’t direct for the money, I’m not a professional. I direct projects that interest me personally, not for the money, but to do something interesting, something that interests me personally, not the client. Did I answer your question?
-Yes and in continuation of it, do you have plans to work with external scripts, liked some book …
-I take this opportunity, I want to announce that now we want to make a small division in our studio, such microscopic on two or three people who will draw not in 3D and simply a pencil classic animation, cartoons short, nano cartoons – is a cartoon no more than 1 minute, that is 40 – 50 – 60 seconds and I am ready to accept your scripts if some will catch me, which I will be interesting, funny, bright, we on it can make a short animated film, just here such, short, to make it quickly, not to wait another 3 years. So, here, so welcome, my contacts are with the organizers, you can send me, if it will be interesting, we can meet, if it will be interesting, we will do.
-What we have seen now, it is clear it was written in the script. The script is born in the process, or you write out everything beforehand, and then you change it a little bit? Who writes the script?
-This burden falls on me in the company. I usually bring some blank idea, I want, let’s shoot about the Moldovan astronaut. Then it begins, I say, “He’s in orbit, death comes after him.” That was the original idea. In two years, it transforms into something that we don’t want to do about death, let’s leave death alone. Let’s make a movie about a dog that goes into outer space and gets lost there, and then he goes looking for it. Then my friend goes missing, and I understand that this is all nonsense. So hang gliders appear, so another story appears, That is, he lives, he breathes the script, until the animatic appears. So the script for me, again as a non-professional screenwriter, as well as a director is a breathing form which is created the whole production, you finish it little by little, the further it goes, of course, but at first it’s very rough strokes.
-Why VR? Why not classic animation for this project?
-Do you have kids? We just wanted to fuck up, do something that no one had done before, like people have done, but now it’s a global trend and very few cartoons in vp is and wanted to do as I did a TVT commercial a long time ago, when everyone was shooting and drawing with a pencil, I did in 3D. You wanted to do something, a technological breakthrough to show that this is the future of cinema, when you will be inside the cartoon, inside the film and be part of the script. I wanted to try this experiment, we liked it very much and we will develop it, but I like the classical animation more, it is the most soulful, it is the cartoons drawn by a pencil, therefore I want now to open a direction where we will rivet exactly small short soulful cartoons.
-In human creativity there is always a dilemma. How to make money so that the family would not go hungry, and how to bring to life what you like. You, too, probably have such a dilemma, how do you solve this problem?
-In my case, the answer to this question, very simple. I just come to the department of three nines and I say, so 10 percent of the profits here to me on the cartoon and that’s it. That is, I have a place to come and demand money. I understand that this is not always the case, if I did not have the additional resource, of course I could not do it, of course if I had a hungry family, I said, Yes it’s all fine. At most I would write, just wrote cartoons, but I could not do. Well, thank God the universe has given me the opportunity to create through other projects, which brings money.
-To support creativity, it is necessary to launch a project that will finance and please…
– Normal creativity brings money, that is normal, professional creativity brings money. And the pure creativity – I think to engage in pure art, can afford only wealthy people, because you have a lot of time, have a lot of money yes you can, if not, no.
-Our TV channels don’t buy your cartoons?
-Yes, I was offered to buy, I did not tell them that guys than will pay 50 dollars there, to get a headache with taxes, take away so, show them just. I mean, the pennies are so low that I’m not talking about profit. I may have made a few thousand dollars from all those cartoons. And I can’t tell you how much I spent, so no, it’s not profitable.
-Are these cartoons for sale anywhere at all?
-No, it is not monetizable model in principle, you can monetize the script, oh script, soap operas and full-length animated films. These short, funny, funny is the maximum to throw on YouTube and hope that it will be a few million. views and make money on advertising. Usually it’s a few thousand dollars. So, usually these things are created to advertise the studio, to show what the studio’s capable of, what its capabilities are, to find investors, to find a producer, to make something big or to attract clients, just to do craftsmanship.
-Say, over the years that this studio has existed, have the people in it changed and where have they migrated to, maybe moved to other companies. within the country or maybe abroad.
-Thank you, that’s an excellent question. -Through Simpals have passed, I don’t know, most of the people who are now doing serious computer graphics in Moldova. You know their names, I don’t want to list them, but many have gone abroad, that is, unfortunately, we are losing staff, people gain experience, they understand that they have the power to earn more, to do larger projects, I can’t blame them. This is a normal, natural process, and people go to New Zealand, to Canada, and to Moscow. And those who stay here, what is interesting, there is such a small training, then stay, start, try to earn on freelance, but come back and say that we did our job, yes OK, we can earn the same amount of money, even more, but again, as I did with advertising, it just passes by and nothing is left after me. Titles with my last name are nowhere, I want to work on that. Those who leave stay to work, yes in this industry. Here for example Maxim, also Baralyuk, also a fine, talented guy, but what can you say, he has an interest, let all be well.
– What plans for the studio in the near future? When the period comes, when you say that all filmed, I do not want any more.
-I don’t know, it’s complicated, maybe tomorrow, maybe never. I still have plans, not so fast, I hope that I have plans what , creative I’m writing now a story about gypsies and death a full-length cartoon, I hope that … I write a long time ago in fact I already have 5 or 6 options, but none of them completely satisfies me and . But I expect that I will finish this script and will look for producers who will see this script, see the cartoons about these characters which are in this script and all this together as a package, can take to make the real full-length film which will be shown all over the world.
-Another question about cartoons. Were there any offers from the government or any other businessmen to help finance future cartoons or which are now in production?
– No, we even approached our government and were politely turned down. I even understand why, that is, when Simpals comes and asks there 50,000 dollars for a cartoon, well next comes some guy with a buoyukan and asks for money for a cartoon, well, it’s clear who needs to help. Simpals, Simpals has no money… It is necessary to raise the youth, in principle they do the right thing. We have money. I’m not gonna lie. Well, we have the money, but we’re not talking about a business model.
-Why are they calling it Simples?
-Good question. It was March 30, 2002 and my partner and I were drinking, because tomorrow we had an appointment for April 1, 2002 we had to register the company, we did not know the name We were drinking with grief, because we had some stupid options . I remember what I was voicing, I said Sanya let’s do something simple, Let’s do something simple. Simple Let’s do something simple. He says, let’s do Simple okay, but Simple is a weird name, just Simple. And I remembered that a long time ago, I my first studio in 98 called Pals Production. Pals, because buddies and friends, comrades and we combined and got Simpals, just friends, pleasant company, which tries not to complicate life and themselves, or this world.
-Dmitry that’s the question I wanted to ask you. I’m here from afar. What’s your favorite cartoon?
-Pixar’s Rapunzel, I clearly know the answer to that question. Have you seen it?
-I love it too.
-You like it too? Amazing cartoon, where everything is balanced, all neatly done So, that just can not get it, I have 3-4 cartoons that I can re-watch many times, and Rapunzel one of them. And with Pixar, I went to Pixar, I showed him this first cartoon where they met Gypsy and Death, you remember Yes, that I brought a masterpiece of some kind of world scale. They looked at it, you know Americans are very polite, they say very interesting work, very cool. I said: I would like to work with you, if it’s interesting, so let’s work. They said out of politeness, yes okay, I’ll discuss in my board there, myself with my guys, and it’s quite possible we’ll get in touch with you. I was given a business card, which is framed in the office. True it is the only contact Pixar, which I had left I went away proud, came as if with a victory, but they did not call me and did not write, and just polite Americans . I don’t know.
-What kind of rendering equipment do you have?
-And we have a render farm, on these on Shift video cards, We render to GPUs and blades, blade servers, a lot of these things. Probably can, but now what is going on with bitcoin, probably pointless, the electricity will burn more, but such thoughts were not, although the station is idle, why not .
-Dmitry, what inspires you to create a project? For example, about the astronaut – you have one idea, with your friend, this is how the story happened. Slightly changed the concept. what inspires, what gives impetus to create a project?
-Anxiety usually pushes, a terrible longing when you realize that life passes after you nothing is left and you want to leave some trace and this motivates you to sit down and come up with some story, because this scenario, which for 5 years I have been writing, well drop it already, but it does not work normally but here no, and here no I cannot drop it, then that on it already worked. The Gestalt should be closed, you need to do something normal, because it’s close, because if you stop everything, depression begins to attack, you think, what the hell is this, something good can be done in this life besides eating and sleeping. It moves you to keep creating.
-Dyma, do you have any obligations to people, here you have announced a project and do you keep it, not to leave some project?
-There’s no deadline for me, I could lie, I could say in 2008.
OK, and then, I changed my mind, I’ll launch it in six months. I do not owe anyone anything, thank God, I do not have any obligations, but the fact that people are waiting and expect that someone will come out, well, how can I tell you. I’m actually more motivated by my team personally. That’s much more important than the world’s opinion. So if we decide to close the project, we’ll close it without hesitation. If we get together and decide to move on, we will. Because now the guys came in with the last project, that’s the story. We don’t have a teaser, you probably saw about this boy funny, I don’t know where we have it … Well look while I tell you. He’s there on Vimeo, that channel. Write it down. What was I talking about? Remind me again. And some people came in, came from the studio, the managers came in and said, promise you won’t get nervous, hide the sharp objects. Well wait, put it on the screen… We calculated how much the whole cartoon would cost you, it’s 13 minutes. That is, to understand, here we have done only 25 minutes of animation for the entire period of work, 20 cartoons that is, not all promotional products, Here it is cartoons about 25 minutes. That I do not know, a quarter of a feature-length movie just.And when I was told the amount of how much it would cost me a 13-minute cartoon with this teaser, I thought hard. I said, am I ready to pay that kind of money for the product, which, well, won 30 festivals. But that’s about it. Even if it was one, here I made a cartoon. And I’ve already made cartoons and the studio already has expiries, they are also in the credits, also enough. And now I’m going to get together , Studio, we’re going to decide how to cut the Casts , How to reduce the budget, because the budget, it just blows the roof off. Well let’s see how it… Lights out. ( Video) I when I realized that the date just does not work, I wrote this year, it always works.
-And the music is zdob shi zdub?
-I don’t remember anymore, it was written a long time ago, but we’re working on the first cartoon with Zdubs. Now we are working with him as a composer with Ilyusha, on Arip, we are very satisfied. We finally found it. There are people who write, voice films and animation for us professionally and maybe we will soon open a new line of work which will do just that…
-Dima, have you ever thought about creating a fund to finance some young talents, creative in Moldova?
– I’m ready, I’ve already written that I’m looking for a script for a short film, which I’m ready to participate as a producer. I don’t have time to get creatively involved, to direct, to write scripts for other projects, I can financially participate in some projects, to make them happen. That’s why I announced a contest for a short film. Unfortunately nothing interesting came. And I don’t have the resources to write my own. So I am ready and open to cooperation, not in the form of a fund, but if there is an interesting idea, ready to participate in it . That is why I did not help your film.
– I wanted to ask, How has your life changed after your name has already become a brand, I mean like .
– You wouldn’t believe it, no way. I’ve always been a happy person I’ve never lacked the inner me, I had big fat cockroaches in me. I always felt like I was great at everything, so to say that something has changed a lot, well probably not. I have more opportunities. That’s what’s important. Not even money, but opportunities. In addition to the fact that there is a company that helps me do projects, there are other partners who just trust my name and it’s easier for me. And everything was good inside, and it is good now, and God willing, it will continue to be good.
-Dima, can you give some advice or guidance to young creative people who want to achieve something in life, to create something?
-Yes, the advice is very simple, no need to wait for a miracle, no need to wait for money, no need to wait for help from nowhere, you just have to take it and do it. You want to make movies, get a camera or a phone and start making movies. All the great directors started out that way, they didn’t go to classes. They didn’t go to classes, they weren’t waiting for some projects. You just have some bullshit in your head. Just start making films. This is the most important thing, if you want to be a writer, start writing, just start writing – it’s very important. All guys, thank you very much for the great company.
