30 Юни 2019 | 18:23
Complex in structure, appealing in design, today’s narrative animation and video games are a compelling cutting edge art form that can instigate social awareness and compassion and speak to a broad audience. Mike de Seve will provide a variety of pedagogical approaches and techniques into story creation for this growing industry.
Writing for Animation and Video Games with Mike de Seve, Sofia, BG, August 19, 2019

In this one-day event, the instructor will deliver a lecture based on his own practice, accompanied by examples of techniques used by his studio Baboon Animation. In Mike’s own words “Baboon’s video-game work is rooted in the kind of narrative writing we do for animation”. For more than two decades, Baboon Animation's team members have provided Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated writing, directing and design to the most successful animation studios and networks worldwide.
(c) Portrait by Sergio Paez.
Mike de Seve is an Emmy-nominated animation writer and director, working in both feature films and television, and the Creative Director for the long-running New York writer-director collective Baboon Animation. As a director-writer at DreamWorks Feature Animation, Mike co-wrote the original storyline for "Monsters Vs. Aliens," served as a sequence director and story consultant on "Madagascar," and as a story consultant on "Shrek 2," "Shrek the Third," "Over the Hedge" and other films.
In the world of international kids' TV, Mike has served as Head Writer/Story Editor on several series, including "Angry Birds Toons," the global preschool sensation "Pocoyo" and other international series and features. His own series, "Taffy" is currently airing on Cartoon Network/Boomerang channels around the world. He's written and directed for Cartoon Network, Dreamworks Television, NBC, Nick, Disney, THE CW, WB. and FOX TV and for many major broadcasters globally, from China to Chile and dozens of countries in between.
Mike's earlier work includes writing and/or directing multiple "Sesame Street" and "Saturday Night Live" segments, directing the full 7 seasons of the original "Beavis and Butt-Head series, for which he earned that show its Emmy nomination; and sequence writing/directing on the Beavis and Butt-Head feature film.Mike is the author of the graphic novel Operation Ajax (Verso Books, 2015), which illuminates the history of US and UK intervention in Iran.
This event is for you if you are at least 18 years old, and you are interested in any of the following aspects of animation/video-games production:
- Creating compelling characters for animated series and movies
- The differences and similarities in character creation for TV, film and games
- Creating compelling storylines
- Cliffhangers and serialized storytelling
- Comedy: the when, the why and the what kind
- Tips to approach a game or series concept
- Interactive graphic novels and other forms of storytelling
- The conceptual challenges of writing story for VR and AR vs. other kinds of storytelling
Format: one-day Intensive including interactive lecture and exercises.
Language: English.
Date: August 19, 2019
Venue: TBC
Organizer: Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing.
Admission policy: first come, first served; capacity 25 people.
Early-bird: 100 BGN, if you sign up by July 31, 2019.
120 BGN, if you sign up from August 1 to August 17, 2019.
Sign up HERE.