Dear Animation Workshop, my name is Leon Fechner, I was born on the 26th of October in 1992 in Berlin, Germany. With this letter and portfolio I would like to present to you my eager wish to become part of the CG Bachelor line. This is my fourth application (2013, 2014, 2015).


Where I’ve been so far

After leaving school at the age of 17 I started my first job in the movie industry, becoming an intern in the Art Department of “The Three Musketeers 3D” in Studio Babelsberg. Originally I just wanted to use this time to figure out what I wanted to do, but then realized that for the first time in my life - not like in school - I felt challenged and appreciated.  I not only learned to be a team player and how to handle stress and spontaneous changes of plan but also how to interact with an international community. Projects like “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, “Cloud Atlas” and “The Hunger Games” were filled with people from all over the world and it is amazing to see how people approach and solve problems in so many different ways. I always stayed with the art department working once as a junior Illustrator and once as an assistant graphic artist (from which grew my love of vectors) but still feel that my biggest advantage with regard to skills - even art wise - is what I learned while coordinating people and schedules, doing budgets & legal clearance. Every one of these tasks has its own problems and gave me a lot of new perspective. In an industry that keeps changing, I see this flexibility and broad range of professional influence as a must. However, I realized that I needed to take some time off to improve my art skills and in Spring 2015 I attended the Drawing Academy with Artem as my teacher. It was certainly a stressful and mind-bending experience but also one that I will never regret as it helped me to improve and introduced me to people that I would not want to have missed in my life.

The World that influences me

I have a great interest in sacred, religious and mythological topics.  The tales of the brothers Grimm, Greek mythology and the Divine Comedy are absolutely magical to me. Gustave Dorés illustrations first introduced me to the latter. I am almost haunted by his images, which show the pure terror of the two poets traveling. The grotesque and beauty combined. Someone who combines the old and the new is concept artist Jeff Simpson who overpaints his oil creations in Photoshop and with this is able to keep a classical look to his rather non-classical portraits. This together with his choice of color never fails to amaze me. When it comes to classical master paintings I love the works of Jean-Leon-Gerome, a man who loved the old Orient and created his paintings in such a smooth and elegant way that I cannot withstand the magic. His piece “Pollice Verso” - a gladiator in an arena waiting for the Emperor's judgement - is my most favorite painting.

With every visual image comes a story and some of the best storytelling happens for me in David Fincher's movie “Se7en”. The pace & composition perfectly morph around the grim tale that is told. A shaky cam on the man without control, a steady cam on the man in control? Brilliant! A more fun movie is “Good Bye Lenin!” by Wolfgang Becker. The way comedy and drama go hand in hand here is astonishing. A movie where I'm crying with laughter, it also showed me that I don’t need fancy sets to tell a great story.

Gamewise I definitely have to point to The Witcher 3, which was able to transport real emotions to me. The characters - even side characters - have been written in a way that made them people rather than just a bunch of pixels, not to mention the enormous scale of story and experiences it brought with it. Personally, I feel all of the three mentioned have one thing in common, an appropriate atmosphere. This is a big challenge that not everybody meets. The Hunger Games movies sadly fail completely to achieve this along with side stories that just disappear in bad writing and acting, not to mention the terrible holes in the plot. I appreciate a different approach to storytelling but find it disturbing to create something different only for the sake of being different. David Lynch's “Mulholland Drive” is the essence of this problem for me. It has some genius scenes but destroys itself with trying to make every scene way different and more special than anything ever filmed. When it comes to characters - even though I haven’t read all the comics - the one superhero that I have to criticize is the classical “Superman”. Even though the idea of having his costume being Clark Kent and not the other way around is great I feel like he’s a character that just destroys a lot of great plot because of his godlike powers and easy world view.


Today & the Future

While waiting for a response, I will further develop [RK1] my story “BLACK ABSINTH” about a woman who flees Nazi Germany and becomes a femme fatale gangster lord in the 1950s US, seeking redemption for the death of her son. “How close is the average human to being a “monster”?” is a question that I mainly try to answer. I was first confronted with it after visiting the concentration camp “Auschwitz”. I saw what was left of the terror and horror that once took place there.  How could the men who did this still go home to their wives, kids and pets and hug them smiling? But they did and they were able to find joy in the company of loved ones, as do we.  This is a complicated topic that will not leave me too soon. 

In general I feel that my travels opened my eyes to larger topics like this. The differences between people, the stories of the past and how different the cultures are and how they changed is more than fascinating. I took trips to the far west of France where they have a second native language next to French - the Breton. I took a trip to Tunisia where a Muslim told me the secret why camels always smile (as well as the experience that it is very painful to ride them..) and of course I took a trip to Denmark where I have been now for almost a full year. This year has changed me a lot in the best possible way and introduced me to some of the greatest people I’ve ever met. I not only learned a lot here, but of course also brought a bit of myself with me to share. 

When I’m not drawing or painting I love to cook (a good meal is one of the few things that might surpass good art), play drums to balance myself out or play pen and paper to challenge my creativity in the most sociable way I know. Next to that I have a great passion for good movies, their science as well as astrophysics and good books.

My greater goal is to visualize stories from myself and also others. For this I have to improve, learn and change a lot and there is nothing I’m looking forward to more. I feel like the Animation Workshop is a great first big step into this direction.

I’m very used to Photoshop and illustrator while still being on my first steps with regard to 3D, though I have done experiments with Maya as well as ZBrush. With my last words I want to give out a big thanks to the Open Workshop and their great help and support. This includes the amazing staff as well as the people who shared their hard work with me. Thanks! I hope you enjoy the little journey through this portfolio.

I’m able to fund the education with the help of a German student loan.

Best regards and hopefully see you soon,
Leon

imdb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4400666/
e-mail: Fechnerberlin@live.de