Pottenkijkers / Snoopers

Snoopers gives us an insight into current social/ecological themes from a slightly absurd persepective. The story is told by five plants in a student’s windowsill, which is their own micro cosmos. Fed by daily worries, they discuss their views on social themes. Subjects like immigration, climate, the pandemic, (sexist) offensive behavior are openly talked about…without any filter by the characteristic plants.

(loosely) translated source: VPRO

During this project, we were commissioned by production house Family Affair Films to realize the stop motion animation for this series. Besides this, we helped Yvonne Kroese (Concept) building the puppets and drawing out the storyboard. Then, after four months of stop motion animation in a custom build student room, our work was done. Eight episodes of Pottenkijkers/Snoopers!

Naturally, this was only part of the process. The idea originated from the mind of Yvonne Kroese, who had this idea for years.. it just hadn’t found the right team yet. In the credits area of this page you’ll find there were a considerable amount of people involved in realizing this project and we are most grateful for being a part of that ‘production family’. This project was not just a great opportunity, but also a wonderful time to look back on.

This page will be mainly about our part in the process though, if you would like to learn more: please check out VPRO or NPO3.

During pre-production Eileen helped Yvonne with finalizing the puppets and making them ready to be animated. Puppets Hennie and Donna were seperately made by the Raymon Wittenberg. All the characters were to be voiced by Dutch actors. Max drew the storyboard, which we would later use as a reference for animating. Step by step, shot by shot, we filled in the moving storyboards with stop motion material: twenty-five frames per second for an average length of 5 minutes per episode.

After we did our part, the material went to Thijs Dikshoorn, who added and animated the faces of the characters. This is what made the characters come to live even more. He made combined live action footage with our animated material. The result: a technique consisting of two forms of animation AND live-action!

We are so proud of the end result and thankful to be part of this production.

Watch Pottenkijkers on NPO3
Watch Pottenkijkers on YouTube