th1ng th2ng Directors

Being Belgian through no fault of their own, Thijs and Wouter started creating, designing and directing character driven animation, motion design and moving silliness for everyone’s viewing pleasure. VOLSTOK thrives on quality, detail and high grade nonsense and feeds off exciting approaches, fresh ideas and contemporary visuals.

We get our hands dirty. We get involved. And we don’t shy away from poisonous monkeys. 

Johanna began her career as a graphic designer for a record company designing the covers for records but swiftly moved to motion graphics. Her talent led her to produce and animate her first music promos. This seamless transition from graphic design to animation brought more surprises and opportunities to Johanna who now creates music promos and commercials. She works primarily with mixed media using illustrations and live action together to create new imaginary worlds. 

Will Barras is an artist, illustrator and animation director living and working in London. He grew up in Birmingham and moved to Bristol to study graphic design. After college Will's glittering career began in a call-centre where doodling stopped him from going insane. Here he developed a crazy way of holding a pencil and a distinctive illustration style. He later became one of a new crop of young artists working within Bristol's world renowned street art scene 

Sylvain Chomet is a prolific feature film and commercials Director with over 30 years experience.

He has three Oscar Nominations, twice for his animated feature films “The illusionist” and “The Triplettes of Belleville” and once for his short film “The Old Lady and the Pigeons". He has been awarded many times, including the French Academy Award ( Cesar ) and the British Academy’s BAFTA.

In 2005 he completed his live action debut directing a segment of the critically acclaimed “Paris Je T’aime“. In 2013 he completed his first full length live action feature film: “Attilla Marcel“.

His specially commissioned sequence for the Simpsons continues to gain millions of hits.

Sylvain spends his time working between London and southern France. 

Chris enjoys creating friendly hand-drawn characters, in quirky illustrated worlds. His craft integrates traditional animation technique with paperless digital technology, finding a best of both worlds approach. Revelling in the joy of storytelling and characterisation, Chris brings brand stories and commercials to life with a light touch. 

Anthony Farquhar-Smith can do everything stop motion, from characters to objects to food. Anthony goes by the name of Beardy. Don't ask, it's a long story. He brings his extensive experience of feature film work to the party, having worked with Tim Burton (Corpse Bride) and Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr Fox). 

The Dr, as he is often referred to is actually Lars Magnus Holmgren. Of Viking decent he has an outrageous view of the animated world. He creates strange and wonderful characters in 3DCGI, designing straight into 3DMaya software. He often combines live action elements and photographic textures with 3D elements. 

Shay has a real range of styles and techniques. He is super familiar with compositing techniques and uses this skill in what he creates. Cut-out photo style,contemporary illustration or even stop motion, he loves mixed media too. Shay is excellent at playing with new styles or techniques and incorporating it into a Narrative with cool transitions. 

Kirk Hendry is an award-winning New Zealand born, London based film-maker. Kirk's latest project is a six minute animated film called 'Junk' that has taken a team of twenty artists two years to complete. The film has been supported by the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund and includes the involvement of the Royal College of Music. It has won numerous awards including the Most Promising Newcomer at London's Creative Circle Awards. His last project was the unique film 'Round' for the BBC Electric Proms which features the exclusive use of hand shadows to tell its story. There has been only a handful of similar attempts worldwide and Kirk brought over an Argentinean magician especially for the project. The film has screened at over 40 festivals around the world. Kirk has also produced and directed a number of music videos and has been nominated for MTV Music Video of the Year 

Tom works in a variety of design orientated stop motion techniques. His piece " We are Ghosts " won best animated music video at the MVA awards 2013. He used laser cut shapes that had been previously animated in CGI to create characterful animation from geometric shapes : a modern day Romeo and Juliet story. Give Tom a design brief in stop motion and he will bring it to life. He works with textural materials to create tight animation and a visual feast. 

Grig has a great sense of character design and style in 2D animation. He loves character design and characterful animation. He is adept at bringing simple forms to life through animation, be it a chicken McNugget or just a square or a triangle. 

Hayley Morris is a director and animator based in Brooklyn, NY. While attending the Rhode Island School of Design she discovered she could combine art of all forms into animation to create fantastical worlds through drawing, painting, sculpture, textile, lighting and sound. Her work uses traditional animation techniques such as stop-motion and hand-drawn to tell stories that unfold through layered textures, hand crafted details, and experimentation. Hayley's work has been featured in films festivals around the world. Her short film "Undone" won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Animated short at Slamdance in 2009. Hayley has also been included in SHOOT MAGAZINE'S New Directors Showcase� and BOARDS MAGAZINE'S Directors to Watch Issue. 

We exclusively represent Richard for feature film titles design. Richard Morrison is one of the world's leading film title designers. In a career spanning three decades, he has created over 150 feature film title sequences for many of the industry's most respected film directors and producers. Richard began his career with Maurice Binder on the Bond series. His credits span Hollywood blockbusters such as Batman, Enemy at the Gates, A Fish called Wanda and A Passage to India, to cult classics like Brazil, Sweeney Todd and Quadrophenia. He has worked with directors as varied as Sir David Lean, Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Frears to Jean-Jaques Annaud, Ridley Scott and Tim Burton 

David Nord was approached by Boris Nawratil in 2002 and they have since directed a number of commercials, idents and music videos together. David has a background in illustration and graphic design and has worked for many years with experimental film, including projections for concerts (Madonna), theatre projections and art exhibitions. Boris is a fully-fledged CG artist and likes to be as hands on as possible when working on projects. Their style uses impressive 3D with lots of layers and new solutions with a strong design influence. 

Andy lives character animation, be it in 2D or 3DCGI. He has a great ability to design original characters alongside being able to work with animation classics. He is one of the very few Directors approved by the US studio Hannah Barbera and has worked with classic animation characters such as Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo and Top Cat. Great at conceptual work he loves developing character designs and visual story lines with creatives. 

Peter Szewczyk has been through Hollywood's finest breeding grounds, enjoying a ringside seat at crafting some of the biggest box office hits. Since starting his career at George Lucas' renowned Skywalker Ranch, he has contributed, as artist and supervisor, to the legendary franchises of Star Wars, Harry Potter, Shrek and Ice Age. Learning his craft from working with, and studying from, modern masters of digital cinema like James Cameron, Andrew Stanton and Andrew Adamson. It was ultimately his experience working on Avatar at Weta that inspired him to direct his own films. He has written, produced and directed his own award-winning shorts films including Dark Clouds, Our Lady Of Lourdes, and the BBC collaboration, ColourBleed. 

'Michael will never achieve anything unless he stops drawing those ridiculous stories in pictures in his school books...' David Brody, Headmaster Woodford Secondary School, 1971. Michael came from a non-showbiz family and had to wait a while to realise his filmmaking dreams, finally making his first film 'G.I. Joe on Fire in a Tank' when he was 10 years old. The follow-up 'Barbie Air Hostess on Fire in a Tank' proved less popular, particularly with his sister. After studying sculpture and film making at University, Michael began his career in the industry as a production designer, working on Nick Park's Academy Award winning short 'Creature Comforts' and the multi-award winning Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' promo. Michael has now learned to stop fiddling with the wallpaper and concentrate on directing movies and commercials using live action, animation and visual effects. 

Alon studied Art and Design in Tel Aviv before coming to the UK over 20 years ago. He has been with th1ng since it started in 2003 and has built up a large body of creative work. He has a penchant for motion graphics and mixed media and is as happy shooting live action as he is designing animation. He has a wide variety of clients which reflects his versatility : Film Studios for his feature titles work , Ad agencies for commercials and TV stations for branding and idents.