The Lift – by Robert Kohr
The Lift explores the consequences of one very common behavior of not holding the elevator door open for someone rushing to get on or worse, lifting your finger and actively pushing the close button. In this film, an elevator interaction between the two lead characters goes wrong, prompting a young woman to learn about being insensitive and to be more considerate in the future.
The Lift seamlessly marries traditional animation and 3D background illustration into a modern day moral tale that any city dweller should heed. A mix of realism and fantasy helps transport the story from the modern world into a fantasy ala Alice going into the rabbit hole to see what’s on the other side only to then learn that her attitude was wrong.
A true labor of love, it took Robert and his team over 4 years to complete this 5 minute plus film that has been screened in over 55 festivals around the world, winning awards in 15 of them. Robert explored working with artists found online, all of whom he had never met and have developed continued working relationships with some of them. In this day and age it’s important to leverage social networking into your business model and The Lift is an example of this trend.
Robert lives in New York with his fiancé and his computer.
Kohrtoons Studio Logo
Just wanted to toss this out there. I just finished working on my new Kohrtoons Studio logo and its logo slate animation for the Lift DVD that I will be selling at C2E2 next week. The animation is my first animation in Toonboom’s Animate Pro.
Making of a shot – Shot 13
This week I am posting a much earlier shot from my film ‘The Lift’. In this shot the main character is leaving for work, or what ever she does. As you saw from one of the other later shots I posted she doesn’t make it to where she was going.
Something I haven’t really talked about yet, and I am always asked, is when will it be finished. I am looking to complete this film in early 2010, actually the end of January. I am attempting to submit this film to Annecy which is apparently celebrating its 50th anniversary. If you are interested I took some pictures when I was there in 2003 (Annecy Animation Festival Pictures).
Enjoy!
Making of a shot – Shot 51
I am posting this new video on my blog a little late this time, a week late actually. I forgot to do this last week, though I did get it up on Youtube and Vimeo. This week I won’t be doing a video as its a holiday in the US.
Shot 51, what you see below is the shot immediately after last weeks, the girl gets pulled down the sewer drain and transported to another world.
Other than that I think I am pretty set on the new title of the film “The Lift”, as my sister Emma says “Once and Never Again” sounded lame. I think i agree.
Making of a shot – Shot 50
This week I created an almost 7 minute tutorial showing my process of developing a shot from the animatic to the final video. I demonstrated how I use Flash to create the animation and color the frames, Blender to generate the 3D scenes and After Effects for composting.
YouTube Kohrtoons Studio Channel
Vimeo Kohrtoons Studio Channel
On another note the film is currently called “Once and Never Again” though I am considering changing it to “The Lift”. The premise of the film is an elevator experience gone wrong, a cautionary tale about holding the elevator door for people (though you wouldn’t know it from this shot)
Based out of Brooklyn NY, Robert Kohr is the owner of