Among the films invited to be part of the Official Selection at the 60th Cannes Film
Festival was the Polish production called “Ark”. This short animated film is a joint
project of Grzegorz ‘Greg’ Jonkajtys (director, producer) and Marcin Kobylecki
(producer). Meanwhile, the film has just picked up an award of Distinction at the
Prix Ars International Competition of Cyberarts, and the jury at the Computer
Animation Festival of SIGGRAPH has granted it with the Best of Show award.
Grzegorz Jonkajtys is a graphic and animation artist, and director. He graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He even received an honourable mention from the Dean of the Academy. In 2000, he completed his first short animated film ‘Mantis’ which has won numerous festival awards in Poland and around the globe. “I was hired at Platige Image,” he says, “one of the best animation and postproduction studios in Poland, and continued my career as a digital artist and animator.”
He has now worked at CafeFX in the USA since 2003, creating animations and effects for feature film projects. He worked there, creating the effects in such films as “The League of Gentlemen”, “Gothika”, “Hellboy”, “Sin City” and “Pan's Labyrinth”.
Marcin Kobylecki is the executive producer at Platige Image in Poland. He is the executive producer of the short films “The Cathedral” and “Fallen Art” among others.
Over several weeks, I managed to catch up with Marcin and Greg to talk about the production of ‘Ark’. “The idea of the ‘Ark’ came to me back in 2001,” begins Grzegorz Jonkajtys, “closely after finishing my first film, ‘Mantis’.
I had a chance to see the Christian catacombs, during a visit to Rome. All those dark corridors, basically a maze, inspired me to create something new. The catacombs inspired me visually.”
They reminded Greg of the interior of the huge ship, carrying hundreds of fleeing fugitives. The common theme in these corridors was obviously ‘death’.
The film talks about a man trying to save the last remaining healthy humans from a deadly virus outbreak. He has arranged to gather the healthy few on these big ships, and travels the ocean in hope to find disease-free parts of the Earth.
Suddenly, he finds out that he himself is sick. The virus managed to come aboard the ship, but what he doesn't know though, is the true essence of the disease. This is the story.
Production turned out to be pretty uneasy due to the fact that the crew was very spread out, located in Poland and the US. Greg had to direct and supervise the production and do the whole film after, regular job at CafeFX.
Also Marcin Kobylecki has a regular job at Platige Image. Considering the distance and a different time zone, coordinating all needed tasks, communication, and putting everything together became pretty tedious.
The concept behind character design was simple. Greg wanted the inhabitants of the ‘Ark’ to resemble different animals. The story in the film evolved from a pretty simple SciFi story, into a more personal, psychological drama.
Personal experience had a lot to do with it too. “A short film is a great medium to tell a simple story,” says Greg. ”Everyone seeing this movie should have a chance to interpret it individually.”
