Due to a lot of paid work I haven't had enough time to animate over the last weeks. And yet I used every spare minute to work on other aspects of my film, especially its name.

I called it Orpheus film project for a long time, because I first had no idea for a proper title, and then I couldn't decide which one I'd like to use.

Finding a suitable title was a long process full of endless piles of lists, huge amount of ideas on whiteboards or in sketchbooks and I don't know what.

Now I had this idea for three days, and I still like it, so herewith I proudly present you the final title for my film:

And here is the version which is translated into English:

The German title is the official film title, the English title is rather a simple translation for when I'm going to apply to international film festivals later.

I also designed a poster layout today, and I'm thinking of printing one of those images as postcards:

There's a larger poster version on my flickr photo stream

The decision for the title was a big relief.

Ins Dunkel | Into the Darkness

According to the ancient Greek tale, Orpheus is trying to bring his beloved Eurydice back from death, and he descends to the Underworld.

Wikipedia says,

The descent to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world, up to and including Christianity. The hero or upper-world deity journeys to the underworld or to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened knowledge.

(page version from 13 May 2011 at 18:59)

Descending into the dark is the subject that is most interesting to me here. Orpheus is doing this literally in the tale, but also does it metaphorically. He's going into the dark, to face the darkest parts of his soul where fear and grief and loneliness live.

At this point the story becomes archetypical: every human being faces darkness at some point of their life. The question is, how we deal with it.

Have a good week!

Love,
Jessica

Things are changing constantly. And the more I grow and learn, the more I’d get the feeling that einfachanimation.de requires some refurbishment to do my current state of development justice. Today, I’m going to start with the website’s logo design. If you’re reading this post via RSS feed you may also want to see the new header live! and in Color on the website.

I really can’t put into words what has changed, since I am still Me. But I guess the pictures tell the story themselves. Here are the three header designs of the last two years:

I used that very first one when I launched this website in January 2008. Back then, I didn’t see the need for pictures and thought typography would be enough. I also used that specific font type for the credits of my first animated short. I really loved it for a long time, and I still like its simlicity even the font implies playfulness, too.

The one above was created in July 2008, when I just started my three month animation training in Bristol. Everything in my life was changing and I thought this should be reflected in the appearance of my website. I took representive pictures of everything I did so far in the field of animation and just put them together to some kind of collage.

Holy crap, it’s just crowded. I don’t like the font anymore and today I’m wondering how I could have ever liked it in a header illustration for my website. But nevermind. Everything has it’s own time and space, and for heaven’s sake this one lasted only for three months.

The next one is basically the same but yet totally different. It’s drawn by hand with black ink in October 2008 when I had already been studying in Vienna for a month. I still wanted to show as much as possible of what I did. But I also wanted a graphic style and handwriting as I used it on my website jessica-koppe.de. But the header picture still was filled to capacity and I wanted to redesign it for more than a year now.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen! And today I proudly present the new logo or header for einfachanimation.de as it appears in March 2010:

What an improvement! And what a relief as well. It’s absolutely decluttered and clear now, and I also find it much more timeless and versatile than any of the others before.

You see a hand-drawn arc as I use them to plan my next movements when I’m animating. This drawing is all what’s left as a visual animation reference. Else, you’ll find a small tagline and the website’s name in huge letters. If you read it off the reel, it means something like "Jessica Koppe simply does, loves and teaches animation" in English. And there’s now a link to my art portfolio in there. That’s all I need I guess... I’m quite curious about how long this one will last.

What do you think about the new header? Which one of them do you like best and why?