Creativity is written into Predin's genes, as his father Zoran is a successful musician while he himself was drawn towards painting His childhood experience growing up with a musician father and his desire to paint have come together in his talent for creating animations.
Rok Predin lives and works in London. He is a member of the team at Trunk Animations Production Company, which includes nine directors from all around the world, creating animations for all formats and platforms, from commercials and advertising spots, to short films and digital content. Six years ago, he set out for London as a freelancer. He did not just wait for an opportunity to come, but continued with his production projects and made a number of short films. In the first two months of his stay, every day he sent out fifty emails offering his services. The first order for a short animation came from the team of Jerry Seinfeld. Then, one day, he received an invitation for an interview from the Trunk Animations Production Company, and that first meeting marked the beginning of excellent cooperation.
His work instantly convinced Keith Urban, Elton John and other prominent musicians
The cooperation with Trunk Animations has opened many doors. His first project was a concert animation for Put You in a Song by Keith Urban. Keith Urban wanted a more personalised animation dedicated to his romantic relationship with Nicole Kidman and their child. The animation was presented at the National Country Awards ceremony. Rok's version was selected and the final product received rave reviews. This opened the door to cooperation with Elton John and with the bands Madness, Take That, etc.
Predin made a short animated film for Elton John's piece "The Yellow Brick Road", which was used as part of the spectacular Million Dollar Piano Show in Las Vegas. In Predin's own words, he felt like Alice in Wonderland. He had access to all of Elton's photographs, particularly to a warehouse in North London, where Elton's accessories are stored: his costumes, star glasses, models of the coloured domes of Moscow's Church of St. Basil the Blessed, cages with birds suspended from a tree, a three-storey wedding cake topped by two male figures, a spotted white horse, a red rose larger than the piano and Elton himself, a bottle of champagne with an octopus, etc. Rok's visualisation has been written about in the media, such as in Billboard and the Washington Post. Elton John's response was positive too: he sent the production company a case of French champagne with a handwritten thank-you note. It is the customer's satisfaction that counts the most for the artistic creator.
The next successful project followed on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II's 60th Coronation Anniversary. Predin produced an animation for the song “Our House" performed by Madness at a concert on the roof of the Buckingham Palace.
Cooperation with the Rolling Stones
Before a record company decides to invest a lot of money in a video, it puts a song onto YouTube with minimal visual effects – a lyric video. Rok Predin made such a video for the Rolling Stones' album GRRR! Doom&Gloom, issued to celebrate the band's fiftieth anniversary, within five days of the band approving the trial version. The Doom&Gloom lyric video, directed by Predin and illustrated by Sara Šavelj, exceeded all expectations of both the record company and the Rolling Stones. Even Mick Jagger tweeted his excitement, inviting everyone to view the video, which is still their most watched video on YouTube.
The next project was completed only recently with Predin's lyric video spot for the acoustic version of the Rolling Stones' hit "Wild Horses". On 25 May, the Rolling Stones reissued their "Sticky Fingers" album, which was first released in 1971. The album includes hitherto unpublished material and remakes of some of their greatest hits. Predin's lyric video animation follows the graphic design of the first album, which iconographically linked the band to the lips logo and the zipper. The zipper, a motif created by Andy Warhol for the first release of the album, recurs throughout the video and reveals and hides the text of the song.
His own artistic production
Rok Predin has always been fond of cartoons. In the 1980s, when Slovenia was still a part of Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc, children watched high quality animations produced by studios in Eastern Bloc countries. These animations also impressed Predin, who first discovered Zagreb Film and watched "Surogat", an animated film created by Dušan Vukotić in 1961 and the first non-American Oscar-winning animated film (1962). Predin was particularly enthusiastic about the Russian animator Yuri Norstein, whose creations are poetry in images. He is known as the Golden Snail, as he produces a film every twenty years on average. But they are worth the wait. "The Tale of Tales" from 1979 has been selected the best animated film of all time at many festivals.
The subject of Predin's first serious animation was his musician father. He produced an animated video for his father’s song "Pod srečno zvezdo" (Under A Lucky Star) (Zoran Predin & The Gipsy Swing Band), which is a Chagall-like collage of flying, fragile images: a paper chimney sweeper who gets hold of a star, catches a girl and flies with her towards the sky.
Predin has won international recognition for many works. In March 2011, the front page of the British magazine Design Week featured a scene from "Zimska pesem" (Winter Song), Predin's animated film about a partisan soldier who wanders through the woods where he sees phantoms and demons, and highlighted "Predin's original and fresh visual style full of magic and folklore". "'Winter Song' combines rich visuals with bizarre, dark forces, even voodoo, Nordic mythology and John Masefield's children's fantasy story 'Box of Delights'", wrote Gary Webster.
Nataša Bušljeta, SINFO
