Co-directors Marcin Kobylecki and Greg Jonkajtys pooled their different strengths to make Ark, which was honored as Best of Show by SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. All Ark images © 2007 Grzegorz Jonkajtys, Marcin Kobylecki.

The 34th Annual SIGGRAPH conference, a festival of all things computer graphics-related, is coming to San Diego in August, and of the many computer-animated films submitted to the Computer Animation Festival branch of this year's event there are three that have been singled out for special mention. Honored with Best of Show is Ark, directed by Grzegorz Jonkajtys and Marcin Kobylecki; taking the Jury Honors prize is Dreammaker from animator/director Leszek Plichta; and winning the SIGGRAPH Award of Excellence is En Tus Brazos from co-directors Francois-Xavier Goby, Edouard Jouret and Matthieu Landour.

For the first time in the history of SIGGRAPH, two of the award-winning films are student entries: Dreammaker, which was produced at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and En Tus Brazos, which was made at Supinfocom Valenciennes, France.

VFXWorld caught up with the filmmakers via email in late May. Representing Ark was Kobylecki. Ark is the latest from Platige Image, the Warsaw-based studio that's produced many commercials for the continent and a number of award-winning shorts, including The Cathedral and Fallen Art. Ark is a short story about a future plague that's forced a group of survivors to board a ship and seek out a new home on some safe and sterile faraway island. Taking in a number of exquisite vistas, both interiors and exteriors, we follow one man who's keeping a sharp eye on his own health as he holes up in his room on board the ark, and who finds to his horror that he's unwittingly carrying the dread disease. He leaves his quarters and walks through the cavernous interior of the ark, past other voyagers and miles of strung laundry in the massive main room of the ship, up a ladder to the roof --where sights both beautiful and terrible confront him.

Taylor Jessen: How long did the production take from start to finish?

Marcin Kobylecki: We spent about two years from first sketches to final compositing.

TJ: Talk about your scholastic background and your professional background. What led you to animation?

The design of the interiors in Ark has a look much akin to catacombs. The directors wanted the style of Ark to stray completely from a conventional picture associated with computer-animated films.

MK: Greg Jonkajtys has the "artistic" background -- he graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Also, he is working at CafeFX as lead animator [Pan's Labyrinth] so he is in touch with major Hollywood productions. I'm a master of science in computer-aided design, with a major in automatics and robotics. So, as you see, it is a long way from film.

I was interested in computer graphics during college and I had a good knowledge of it before I start working at Platige Image. I may say that I was lucky that my first project was The Cathedral, and this film let me gain huge experience in production of animated movies, especially after the Oscar nomination. So far I've produced a couple of shorts and if it won't spoil anything, now I'm gaining knowledge and preparing myself for our first feature.

TJ: Production was split between teams in Poland and in the U.S. I imagine having just that tiny window of common daytime hours in which to communicate must have been a challenge.

MK: If we take things like time zones into account, synchronizing the whole production required a lot of patience from us, especially if we mean communication between particular people from the team.

TJ: The design of the interiors has a look much akin to catacombs. Was it your intention to be super-realistic?

MK: We wanted the style of Ark to stray completely from a conventional picture associated with computer-animated films, and the visual side to be characteristically exaggerated. Artificiality, precisely assorted objects, details of set design and character animation highlighted certain features of the film and focused the viewer's attention on the story.