2018 archive
Guests

The festival aims to promote an exchange of knowledge, experience and inspiration among animation and games professionals and young talents. Get to know unique festival guests. (2018)

 Anne Winberg
Anne Winberg #

Founder and director of VOID – International Animation Film Festival (Denmark) Member of the Baltic Sea-Nordic Animation & Games Industry

Network Currently in sales and distribution at the production company Copenhagen Bombay, and production manager at the producer’s association Animationscirklen Before founding VOID, Anne worked at the National Film School as a producer and production manager of animated graduation films. In 2015 she founded VOID, the first festival in Denmark to focus on animation for adults, and the festival is now in its third consecutive year. As production manager for the Danish producer’s association Animationscirklen, Anne manages some of the practical efforts, resulting from the work of the association to promote better conditions for the production of animation in Denmark.

 Chris Ostrowski
Chris Ostrowski #

Concept Artist in PolyAmorus (Poland) Member of the Baltic Sea-Nordic Animation & Games Industry

Network Warsaw based concept artist and avid parrot lover. Architecture graduate, Chris decided to follow his passion and went through making art for card games and RPGs, including Star Wars Age of Rebellion, Legend of the 5 Rings LCG and Game of Thrones LCG. Currently he is working as a concept artist for Blur Studio and for Polyamorous Games on their debut title “Paradise Lost”.

 Jakob Keudel
Jakob Keudel #

Student of Game Art & 3D Animation (Germany) Member of the Baltic Sea-Nordic Animation & Games Industry

Network Jakob studies Game Art & 3D Animation at the SAE Berlin for his Bachelor of Arts. His major focus lays on 3D modeling, PBR texturing, Environment Art and real-time implementation with attention to visual fidelity and cinematic storytelling. He is also working for the renowned swedish software developer Quixel.

Agnė Berlinskaitė
Agnė Berlinskaitė #

Illustrator, Non-formal Educator (Lithuania)

Agnė is a creative person with interest in hand-made art. She’s always looking for alternative creative teaching methods and likes spending her leisure time in the woods. Agnė studied graphic design at Vilnius Academy of Arts, in the Faculty of Kaunas. Currently she’s working as an illustrator in the animation company “Indeform”. She’s interested in Lithuanian mythology and symbols, psychology, regularly goes on hiking trips and spends her time actively in the nature.

Alanay Çekiç
Alanay Çekiç #

Co-founder, Visual Artist, Public Relations at Turtleneck Studios (Germany)

Alanay Çekiç is Co-Founder and Creative Director at Turtleneck Studios, currently tackling the creation of cooperative exploration-adventure RITE of ILK. After having worked on Killzone: Shadow Fall and Horizon: Zero Dawn as a visual artist, the dream to work on impressive projects was more than fueled. With a growing desire for complete creative freedom and the wish to start his own projects, Alanay turned to similar-minded friends and colleagues he had met along the way and embarked on a new journey. His new adventure consists of turtle shells, dreams, and the eagerness to pack triple A-quality together with a blazing indie experience.

Andrius Lekavičius
Andrius Lekavičius #

Andrius Lekavicius is all-around media storyteller and interactive orchestra conducting images, forms, and medias. He has built a profile of projects on various media platforms: from creating brand‘s image to VR experiences, from directing high-end commercials to his first feature documentary ‘Game of the Nation’.

Aras Pranckevičius
Aras Pranckevičius #

Game programmer

Birutė Sodeikaitė
Birutė Sodeikaitė #

Puppet Animation Director, Puppet and Scenography Artist, Animator (Lithuania)

The alumni of the Arts University at Bournemouth (UK), Birutė worked for the greatest animation studios in Europe: Aardman (UK), Nukufilm (Estonia), Se-ma-for (Poland). Last Stop is the Moon is her debut film as a director. Currently Birutė is developing her second short puppet animation film Elena.

Brice Vandemoortele
Brice Vandemoortele #

Technical Artist at Klang Games GmbH (Germany) Member of the Baltic Sea-Nordic Animation & Games Industry

Network Brice is the most recent addition to Klang’s art team. He spent the past twelve years working as a freelance technical artist for a number of studios across the world and has the gift of being able to adapt to many styles, with Guild Wars, Fable II, and EVE Online among his impressive portfolio.

Carol Freeman
Carol Freeman #

Co-founder and Director at Paper Panther Productions (Ireland)

Carol graduated from the National Film School of Ireland in 2009 with a focus on experimental animation. Since then she has worked on various films, commercials, illustrating picturebooks and teaching workshops around Ireland and abroad. In 2014, she co-founded Paper Panther Productions with the aim of creating new and innovative work in stop-motion and illustration. The Bird & the Whale (dir. Carol Freeman, prod. Jonathan Clarke – 6 min.)

Catharina Due Bøhler
Catharina Due Bøhler #

CEO and Co-founder of Sarepta Studio (Norway) Member of the Baltic Sea-Nordic Animation and Games Network Sarepta

Studio is an award-winning indie company and part of the Norwegian game developers hub Hamar Game Collective. Catharina has been working in the industry for 7 years, primarily within the fields of game design, marketing and funding. One of the projects My Child: Lebensborn, is a story driven nurture game about children born of war, which experienced a successful Kickstarter campaign in April 2017. My Child: Lebensborn is a co-production between the production company Teknopilot AS and the game studio Sarepta Studio AS. The two companies work closely on the project.

Claudia Cazzato
Claudia Cazzato #

Head of Community at CRAFT (Denmark) Member of the Baltic Sea-Nordic Animation and Games Network

Claudia holds a B.A. in Management for the Arts, Culture, and Communication from Bocconi University in Milan as well as an M.Sc. in International Marketing Management from Copenhagen Business School. Throughout her working experience, she has built on her expertise in marketing and operations in different multinationals in Italy, Denmark, Spain, the UK, and Switzerland. Her fascination for the creative industries motivated her to return to Denmark to serve the creative community. Since 2017, she has worked for CRAFT where she is responsible for festival collaborations and soft-funding. Her personal mission is to bridge creative professionals with business people.

Eglė Uleckienė
Eglė Uleckienė #

Illustrator, creative event organiser (Lithuania)

For Egle it’s creative work and joy that are the driving forces in her life. Through the artistry she searches for inner kidness in the human kind. She graduated as a Graphic Designer at Vilnius Academy of Arts, in the Faculty of Kaunas in 2015. In the following years she worked for “Inderform” as an illustrator, graphics designer and got a closer look into the craft of animation, which led her to create www.animotukas.lt Currently Eglė works in the library, organizes workshops for kids and adults and continues illustrating animation website Animotukas for kids. She enjoyes spending her spare time, jogging, drawing and is always in search for new ideas. Eglė also likes skateboarding and spending her free time in the nature.

Elēna Nazarenko
Elēna Nazarenko #

Game Artist at ColdWild Games (Latvia)

Helen is a game artist. For the past two years she’s been doing design and animation for Coldwild Games studios, and worked on games Frequent Flyer and Lazy Galaxy. In her spare time, she draws pixel art and puts it on her Twitter @ElenaNazaire

Elviss Strazdiņš
Elviss Strazdiņš #

Chairman of the Latvian Game Developers Association (Latvia)

Indie developer for life, been developing games and game-related stuff since 2002. Main developer of the open-srouce game engine – the Ouzel engine. Founder and owner of the bool games, programmed both of the released games – Runion and Bearslayer. Founder and chairman of the Latvian Game Developers Association

Gediminas Tarasevičius
Gediminas Tarasevičius #

Designer, Co-founder of the Lithuanian Game Developers Association and its Director of Operations (Lithuania) Member of the Baltic Sea-Nordic Animation & Games Industry Network

After a 10 year career in online advertising, Gediminas started working with indie game studios and game industry start-ups, providing his expertise in product design. In 2013, Gediminas became one of the founders of the Lithuanian Game Developers Association and currently acts as its Director of Operations. From 2017 he has alongside worked as a game designer for the biggest Lithuanian game development studio Nordcurrent.

Giedrė Narušytė Boots
Giedrė Narušytė Boots #

Scenographer, Director, Animator, Theatre Maker and Audio-visual Artist (Lithuania / Belgium)

In 1995 Giedrė graduated in Scenography from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania, and moved to Belgium, where she further studied at KASK Ghent (Royal Academy of Fine Arts). For two decades she took part in different interdisciplinary art projects, her artworks and installation were showcased at various exhibitions. The following years Giedrė focused on children’s theatre. Together with Bob Van de Putte, she made improvisations with actors, puppets, shadow puppets and live music. They experimented with all kinds of ways of storytelling but avoided using language as the main mean of communication. In 2013 Giedrė started studying animation film at the School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium (KASK Ghent). Animation is a great challenge for Giedrė to convert her experience in visual and interdisciplinary arts into film language.

Goran Saric
Goran Saric #

Co-founder of Okomotive (Switzerland)

Goran Saric is currently working as the tech lead on Okomotive’s debut title, “FAR: Lone Sails”, which will be released on Steam this May. The game is a 3d side-scrolling vehicle adventure wherein a tiny little girl needs to maintain a huge ship on wheels, driving it alone across a dried out seabed. FAR: Lone Sails has already won several awards and was nominated for the Best Student Game at IGF in 2017. Since February this year, he’s also working as a game design teacher assistant at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Gvidas Kovėra
Gvidas Kovėra #

Cameraman and Photographer (Lithuania)

Gvidas worked as a cameraman for various Lithuanian TV production companies. Alongside, Gvidas photographs for newspapers and magazines; organises photography exhibitions; performs traditional Lithuanian folk as well as improvisational music; produces music records.

Ivars Bergs
Ivars Bergs #

Game Developer at SIA Fufla (Latvia)

Ivars Bergs is a game developer at SIA Fufla, where he develops browser-based and mobile casual games. Currently working on Bacterial Takeover, successful mobile game which won the 2017 Latvian Game of the Year Award as the best mobile game. Ivars started a career in game development 7 years ago while studying computer science at Riga Technical University. His latest hobbies include game market research and he is a believer that data rules.

Janis Eidins
Janis Eidins #

Designer at FunGenerationLab (Latvia)

Started as a graphic designer at small social game development studio, ended up in mobile game development. Have more than 5 year experience with Unity game engine. During Janis career he has become proficient in both 2d and 3d animation. But mostly Janis has pushed himself as a 3d modeler. Started with 3Ds Max, and ended up becoming master of Blender. Janis is a designer with more technical and demanding approach to life and art. He prefers lively animations, expressive shapes, hard/high-tech surfaces.

Liudas Ubarevičius
Liudas Ubarevičius #

CEO at SneakyBox (Lithuania)

Liudas Ubarevičius – board member at Lithuanian Game Development association, head and founder of Sneaky Box studio, based in Kaunas, Lithuania. Huge fan of video game culture and a very happy person to be among the pioneers of local industry.

Meinardas Valkevičius
Meinardas Valkevičius #

Founder and Animator at MeinArt (Lithuania)

Meinardas has been interested in animation since childhood. In 2010, he graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a BA in Animation. While studying, he created many animated films, one of them, named The Impossible Moon, has been sent to many global animation festivals. In 2012, he established an animation studio MeinArt. During the 5 years period, the company has created various animated films, including Hunt which travelled around the globe to many animation festivals and has been viewed online for more than 2 million times. MeinArt and its director’s vision is to invest part of its profits into production of memorable animated films with a deeper meaning.

Mihkel Reha
Mihkel Reha #

Animator and Compositor (Latvia)

Mikhel graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with MA in Animation Directing. Since then he has worked on various films and commercial projects at animation studios Atom Art and Tritone in Riga. Some of his personal works include: Les Nuits Magiques, Breakfast on the Grass and DEsign.

Monika Poškutė
Monika Poškutė #

Export and Business Events Coordinator at Lithuania’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Association INFOBALT (Lithuania)

Monika is currently an Export and Business Events Coordinator at Lithuania’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Association INFOBALT, based in Vilnius. Previously she worked for Lithuanian investment promotion agency “Invest in Lithuania” and creative agency “Ad Fingers”, where she learned the importance of country’s outside communication for export numbers, business sales in general and for the image as well. Today Monika’s job is to create opportunities for Lithuanian ICT companies to discover potential partners and business opportunities in foreign markets during business missions, to promote the products and services they create, and to share their knowledge and practice in business events.

Nikolay Komarov
Nikolay Komarov #

Producer, Managing Partner at Gamefjord (Ukraine)

Nikolay Komarov is a skilled developer with 8 years of the game industry experience of developing original titles for PC, Mac and mobile devices. He was a head of engineering at ERS Game Studios in Kiev before he left to found Gamefjord where he teams up with highly professional developers to work on their new titles.

Ole Tillmann
Ole Tillmann #

Slow Bros meno direktorius, iliustratorius (Vokietija)

Ole Tillman yra iliustratorius ir animatorius, dirbantis tarptautiniu mastu iš Vokietijos. Ole studijavo iliustravimą Rod Ailand dizaino mokykloje JAV ir tapo bendraįkūrėju žaidimų studijos SLOW BROS. Ole dirbo su plačiu klientų asortimentu, įskaitant Disney, Vice Media, Time inc. ir Vokietijos televiziją. Pastaruoju metu Ole Tillmann dirba meno direktoriumi žaidimo “Harold Halibut – A Handmade Adventure Game”.

Ričardas Jaščemskas
Ričardas Jaščemskas #

Communications manager at game studio Nordcurrent (Lithuania)

Ričardas is a communications manager at game studio Nordcurrent, responsible for social community management, media relations, events, internal communication, basically anything that involves written or spoken words from Nordcurrent to the world. Earlier background is in game journalism – Ricardas was an editor of several gaming related magazines, including PC Gamer edition for Lithuania.

Šarūnas Ledas
Šarūnas Ledas #

Co-founder and CEO of Tag of Joy (Lithuania)

Šarūnas has been involved in game development for more than 10 years and is currently a co-founder and CEO of an award-winning indie game development studio Tag of Joy. The company constantly looks for new ways to innovate experiences in games, and has already won multiple awards and nominations. Šarūnas is also an active member of the Lithuanian Game Developers Association, which helps local game developers meet, share their knowledge and learn.

Stephan Hövelbrinks
Stephan Hövelbrinks #

Indie Game Developer (Germany)

Stephan is a self-taught artist and programmer. Creator of dozens of small games, including a series of ‘One game a week’. Creator of Death Trash, a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. Painting daily art for over 1000 days now. Member of the first German Indie Games Collective Saftladen Berlin.

Virginijus Malčius
Virginijus Malčius #

Video Artist, Animator, Director, Author and Illustrator of children’s books (Lithuania)

Virginijus earned his bachelor’s degree in Audiovisual Arts from Šiauliai University Faculty of Arts, Lithuania, and his master’s degree in Photography and Media Arts from the Vilnius Academy of Arts. He creates video art, music videos, animation, graphics, drawings, as well as writes and illustrates children’s books. Previously, Virginijus taught computer animation at Šiauliai University Faculty of Arts and was a Film Programme Curator of the Enter10,14,15 Media Arts Festival. Virginijus’ exhibitions of animation and drawings were held in Vilnius, Šiauliai and other Lithuanian towns. He is an active artist who continuously tries out various techniques, new fields and waves in arts.

Vladimirs Slavs
Vladimirs Slavs #

ColdWild Games and member of the board of LGDA (Latvia)

Vladimir worked as a software engineer before choosing to become an indie developer. For the past 2 years, he’s been leading an indie game studio under Coldwild Games brand. Apart from the commissioned work, their two best games are Lazy Galaxy and Frequent Flyer on Steam.