JÁRA CIMRMAN
FOUND IN THE JARMARA
Archive and maze of theater plays...
FOUND IN THE JARMARA
Archive and maze of theater plays...
The personality of Jára Cimrman needs little introduction in the Czech environment. He is a "legendary inventor" born in the minds of the representatives of the theatre group "Jára Cimrman". Some have even compared this venture to Monty Pythons. A non-existent character meets existing personalities, invents everything and actually nothing.
STORY & INSPIRATION
The alternate reality of the Czech patriot Jára Cimrman is set in the environment of Austria-Hungary (containing the country of Czechoslovakia). Jára Cimrman is part of a romantic techno-optimistic world with an enthusiasm for invention along the lines of Jules Verne with the classic aesthetic of Czech filmmaker/animator Karel Zeman. So it was an interesting challenge and a heap of inspiration to play with themes, visuals and atmosphere, where I had a lot of creative freedom, much to my delight.
JARMARA PROJECT
The Czech search and information portal seznam.cz (the Czech google :-) took the whole venture under its wing, mysteriously announcing the unspecified arrival of "the last missing service of seznam.cz". The moment I received an offer for a possible collaboration on the visualisation of a virtual treasury of Cimrman's works called "JARMARA", I was excited.
INTERIER DESIGN
The actual work on the project on my part took place in three phases. In the first part, I worked in a very short period of time on the visual concept, development and realization of fantasy environments (matte paintings) of a feature TV spot for eallin animation studio in collaboration with director Uroš Trefalt. The actor and member of the Jára Cimrman Theatre Zdeněk Svěrák introduced us to the vast archive of "JARMARA" in a TV clip. The TV spot was produced, animated, built, put together and brought to life by the creatives from Eallin Animation studio.
INTRO DESIGN
In the second phase of the work, I focused on the realization of the accompanying environment of the archival maze Jarmary itself, in which a signpost through the works of Jára Cimrman is placed for errant travellers. I collaborated with the BrainZ studio, which realized the entire online interactive work of that giant archive in a web environment. The whole project was created in FLASH, which is unfortunately no longer functional. You can see how Jarmara was created through the eyes of seznam.cz below, or you can see the "Jarmara chronicle" of the Outbreak advertising agency below. You can also see the "making of" in which I present the development of the creative work on Jarmara and how I proceeded technologically.
TREE KEY VISUAL
The last very important part was the collaboration with creative director Petr Hanousek on the visuals of the fairy tale "genealogical tree of the plays" by Jara Cimrman. Like ants, we have collected excerpts from the plays collected by Jakub Smoljak. Together with Petr Hanousek we then composed a genealogical maze of texts and ideas from the master's works. Working on the tree was very fun. This visual was used for the print part of the advertising campaign for the launch of the web project. Petr and I later met and worked together on a number of other fun and interesting projects.
