Goodbye Bram!

Last week our Business Director Bram left us, but not before we heard him out about his favorite animations from his Kaboom (and Klik) years… So let’s say this is his goodbye present from him to you, his favorites!

Klik Trailer 2017

My first KLIK festival as director. The festival kicked-off with a fantastic homage to popular culture, with the ‘Klikker’ in the starring role. I’m still blown away by the work KLOMP! Animation, Colorbleed, Studio Plumeau, Elephant Ears,

Kasper Werther, Hilde Buiter, Kabo Lam all did under the artistic direction of Junaid Chundrigar.

Opening 2017 and Midnight Mindfulness

Working with Mathijs and Michael from reanimation.nl is always a joy and creatively super inspiring.

This was no different in October 2017, when we opened the KLIK Festival with an opening ceremony involving thousands of balloons, creating KLIK DNA strains with the entire audience in the 300 seat cinema in EYE. Also that year the yearly recurring wonderful Midnight Madness extravaganza took another approach and – for one time only – took the form of a (beautiful) contemplative journey to our inner selves with the help of meditative animation (no video unfortunately!).

Bei Mir Bist Du Schon

2017’s opening film. The beautiful and touching film by Bouwine Pool moved a significant part of the audience to watery eyes, myself included.

This Magnificent Cake

2018’s opening film. This daring and beautifully crafted film (in felt!) by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels is both super painful and incredibly funny, with a lot of scenes I will never forget. It was an honor to have the film open the 2018 edition of the Festival.

Breadwinner in Tuschinski

This one was definitely on my bucketlist: (co)hosting a film screening in the wonderful art deco Zaal 1 of the Tuschinski Cinema in Amsterdam. Thanks to our friends of the incredible Playgrounds Festival team, we were able to co-host the first Dutch screening of ‘ The Breadwinner’ by Cartoon Saloon’s Nora Twomey in April of 2018, during Playgrounds Blend 2018. In October 2018 we had the honor to welcome Nora as an international guest to the 2018 edition of KLIK.

Cuphead

With a lifelong passion for videogames, it was great to be able to display the videogame Cuphead during the festival, as a project which marries beautiful, nostalgic animation together with frantic gameplay. Studio MDHR’s animator Jake Clark attended the 2017 festival as special guest and hosted a special workshop.

Wolves in the Wall

Based on the story by Neil Gaiman and director by Fable Studio’s Pete Billington. This project really ignited a love for animated virtual reality with me. It has a beautiful art style, the interaction with protagonist Lucy is really intuitive and endearing, in 2019’s Kaboom we displayed both Part 1 and Part 2 of the fantastic VR work.

Agent 327

At KLIK 2018, founder of Blender, Ton Roosendaal, received the KLIK Global Domination Award, for Blender’s achievements and in particular for the immense international recognition that the trailer for Agent327 received that year, a trailer for the feature film which is being developed by Blender. This is the project that for me bridges the past and the future 😉. I will leave Kaboom Animation Festival, with pain in my heart, but will join Blender team, to help further the Blender software and help the animation studio in its endeavors and hopefully also help realise the Agent327 feature film in the foreseeable future.

Thank you for letting me know

Our backstage anthem of Kaboom 2018. Thank you for letting me know how you feel.

The anthem took center stage during the 2018 Award Ceremony.
Hearing it, brings me right back.

Dog of Wisdom

My personal backstage motivation booster, when the festival is in full swing. Ballieve it or not.