As we have previously reported, Domonkos Erhardt’s animated film From The Corner of My Eyes was awarded a certificate in the Generation 14+ category at the Berlin International Film Festival, better known as the Berlinale. We talked to the young animator about career opportunities, motivation, and visual styles.
How did you get involved in animation and when did you first become interested in it?
I too started my drawing ‘career’ as a kid, drawing dinosaurs, which later evolved into making sketches in my math notebook instead of taking notes. Of course, neither my parents nor my teachers really appreciated this. Then, during high school, it became clear that I was only really interested in drawing, so I wanted to continue my studies in this direction. I applied to the University of Fine Arts and MOME (Hungarian University of Fine Arts and Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design—the Ed.), but I didn’t get into either of them at first. I started drawing comics in high school, which led me to apply to a vocational training program in animation, which is where I first encountered animation. Then I tried the university again and got accepted at MOME animation, but I finished the training first. Then I did my BA, took a break from school for a while, and started working, we established our own studio, and then I did my master’s. In the meantime, I also started teaching: this is my second semester teaching animation at the Budapest Metropolitan University. Although it’s a wonderful experience to be around young, bright-eyed students, teaching is certainly a sideline for me, animation and Piros Stúdió come first.
When and with whom did you establish Piros Stúdió?
We started four years ago with Bencie Hlavay when we were out of the BA program. We were working together as layout animators on an animated series and we realized that we wanted to create something that we could have a bit more to do with, not just be a small dot on the end credits, but to build more on our own ideas. Nevertheless, it was certainly very useful to have a glimpse into such a big production. We started to get some people on board and with the current line-up and we’ve been doing it seriously, full-time, for a year now.
Do you tend to work on auteur films or are commercials also an option?
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive, we always try to incorporate the authorship and unique vision we developed at university into the commissioned work. We are also working on our own projects, of course. We are planning to make a series, and some short films, but the funding for these will obviously have to be found through tendering. There are so many opportunities in amination, you just have to know how to use them!
When did the idea for From The Corner of My Eyes first come to you?
I had to apply to the MOME master’s program with a thesis project, and that’s when this movie started to come together in my head. Of course, it was still in a rudimentary form, it had a completely different style too, but I had a rough idea of what my thesis film was going to be about. The story itself deals with a generational question, or concern: I’m with someone I love very much and I can imagine my future with this person, but my curiosity is also tickled by the fantasy of what my life would be like if I were with someone else. I found a good confirmation of this in a letter by the poet Attila József, which he wrote to one of his lovers, Márta Vágó, where he wondered whether he was in love with Márti or with love itself, which at the moment took the form of Márti. This feeling, this question was the basis, and then came the idea of putting the situation on a bus. I liked the phenomenon that when it’s dark outside in the evening and the lights are on inside the bus, the passengers see less the outside world through the window,a and more the faces of the other row reflected in the mirror-like glass.
The film has a very distinctive visual world. Is this your signature style that you’re going to carry forward or did you create it specifically for this film?
I always like to keep developing my style. Maybe when I’m 80 I’ll be able to identify that this is my world, but I don’t want to limit myself just yet. That’s not to say that there aren’t permanent elements in my drawings that I like to carry forward, whether it’s small details or line work. I always adapt the style to the project, so that there is always some ‘Domism’ in it. Here, I specifically wanted to bring back the visuality and planar thinking of comics, and the undulating lines of the characters is a direction I’m very interested in right now. I think the visuals of this film are definitely a milestone in my career.
And how did your film get to the Berlinale?
The school nominated several student films for festivals, but in the end, mine was the only one selected—this makes me happy and sad at the same time. I’m really happy to have been selected for the Generation 14+ section, seeing the films screened there, I was in very good company. I feel like they truly understood who, why, and what it’s about. The generation that my film was awarded by is the generation it is really about and for. I’m very happy about that to this day, but it made me feel a bit weird that I was the only animation filmmaker among all the ‘regular’ filmmakers... Since the Berlinale, I’ve been invited to numerous festivals and we have entered the film into several festivals too. I would love to see it at as many festivals as possible.
Do you have a favorite animated film?
There are many creators who have influenced me in terms of visual storytelling and aesthetics, but if I had to name one animated film, it would be Sony Animation Studio’s Oscar-winning Into the Spiderverse. It’s amazing how much creativity and how much human work went into its visual development, the way those characters are animated, and how well this comic book style has been adapted into a cinematic space. From a professional perspective, it’s also full of subtle nuances, for example how the fledgling, ‘learning to spider’ Spider-Man is animated differently from the mature superhero. This movie started a whole new wave of style, which is already apparent in other big studios, like with the recently released Puss in Boots movie. They are no afraid to mix 2D and 3D more and move away from the super-realistic backgrounds that are perfectly detailed down to the last hair that is so common at Pixar. This is very exciting to watch as a professional.
You can watch the trailer of From The Corner of My Eyes here:
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