Harry and his huge, oblivious son run a moving company together. When they help a girl move apartments, their dull, tiny lives are disrupted.

When first watching Gracht I was stunned by the style of animation and wondered how on earth did they create a stop-motion animation using hard-plastic figurines in such a vast Dutch landscape. After talking with lead animator Joost de Jong, he clarified that Gracht was entirely made in 3D. And stunned I was ever more.

A team of 4 students, Michael Koning, Joost de Jong, Nick Groeneveld and Jeroen Hoolmans, created Gracht as a graduation film at HKU Utrecht school of arts, where they studied “Master of arts in creative design for digital cultures” and “bachelor 3d animation and visual effects”.

Our goal was to create a pure dutch movie, with a miniature render style, and through that giving the viewers another perspective in 3d animation and the ways of using looks in 3d animated movie.

Using high contrasts and faking the tilt-shift gives the film the immaculate illusion of a miniature world, and although I’ve never been to the Netherlands, their 3D environment is spot on what my imagination of a Dutch city is (also according to historical photos and television). Their characters take on the Dutch stereotypes from the sleazy son to the ecstasy raver, combined with a claymation lifestyle gives the film an extremely pleasured watch.

grachtmovie.nl

facebook.com/gracht2013