Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver
It took a long time until Michael Ende's epic children's novel "Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver", got made into a feature film. After the beloved Augsburger Puppenkiste version from the 60's, it took another six decades until Christian Becker from Ratpack Film took it on together with Dennis Ganzel and Warner Brothers Germany. The Visual Effects for the film got divided between five german VFX houses: Trixter, Rise, Scanline , Chimney , and Mackevision.
Jim Button is one of my most celebrated children's books.
I got the chance to work on the project at Mackevision where Juri Stanossek had assembled a team​ to bring the Kingdom of Mandala to life. My contribution where all kinds of vegetation for the city (00:10), the palace garden (01:07) and a magical Bonsai that grows origami birds. (00:30) It was a lot of fun to work on the project and I'm very happy with the finished sequence.
Credits
Script: Dirk Ahner, Andrew Birkin. Nach der Novelle von Michael Ende
Director: Dennis Gansel
Camera: Torsten Breuer
Production Design: Matthias Müsse
Music: Ralf Wengenmayr
Sound: Dirk ‚Teo‘ Schäfer
Costumes: Ute Paffendorf
Editing: Ueli Christen
VFX Supervisor: Frank Schlegel
VFX: Scanline, Mackevision, Trixter, Rise FX, Chimney
Production: Rat Pack Filmproduktion GmbH
Co-production: Malao Film Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment GmbH