Wit & Wisdom

Animating and film-making with a super 8 camera by the age of twelve, in his early twenties Daniel ran away from the stultifying edit suites of the British film industry to Prague. There he sought and found the surrealist animator Jan Švankmajer. For several years he worked for him as model maker, animator and in editorial.

Over the next decade he worked as director, editor and animator on numerous projects, including his award-winning short film Seed.

He spent a year working for Greenpeace International in Amsterdam as their in-house viral-maker, before returning to the Czech Republic to continue making films and commercials.

Bird means “Pták” in English. And he does actually flap and sing and flutter about, annoyingly.

Jarda studied animation at Zlín Film School, graduating with the stop-motion film Výhled.

During his studies he was invited to become principle animator on Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life.

This was when he and Daniel first met (Daniel was making a stop-motion animation for Greenpeace in a dank outhouse of Švankmajer’s studio).

The man is a diligent artist and animator by day, and a maniac rock guitarist by night.

Mrázek means “Iceman” in Czech. And his cold grip on reality and no-nonsense devotion to work means things actually get done around here.