What is the film about?

Through a twist of fate, clumsy seagull Manfred unwillingly joins the Air Force on a highly dangerous mission.

What influenced it?

The feeling that most concept art has was the starting point for the visual point of reference for this film. The team found that sometimes, concept art gets a bit lost in translation when the final designs are made. We tried to implement that approach and feeling into our film to make it stand out visually.

A little background information...

It was made as part of the Dutch Ultrashort innitiative, which allows for animators to make an animated short around 2 minutes in length. It got screened in front of blockbuster film ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ in Dutch Pathé cinemas and afterwards went to animation festivals worldwide.

How was the film made?

After I graduated as an animator, I got together with two former classmates and we decided to immediately try to make our own short film. We found a producer in Jiek Weishut and submitted our pitch to the Dutch Film Fund. We got the funding, but because we were all just starting out as freelancers, we had to improvise. The attic of our art director, who was still living with her parents, was transformed into a studio, and we sometimes sat next to a rotating washing machine while working. It added to the charm of the whole experience and really felt like I was making something with friends as a hobby project. I would have never traded that attic for a clean studio at that stage.