What we make

Polder Animation is a 3D character animation studio based in The Netherlands.

We have the in-house talent to develop concepts, write stories and direct and produce narrative 3D animation productions. We produce our own short films, commercials and most recently 3D animated series.

We feel every project demands a unique look, feel and style in order to stand out in today’s busy visual landscape, and work hard on developing a distinct look and feel tailored to the demands of each project.

Who we are

Polder Animation was founded in 2010, following our successful collaboration on various projects during our studies. Each of us had a particular area of expertise in 3D animation and filmmaking. Bastiaan Schravendeel specialized in direction, storytelling, and animation, while Sander focused on rendering and art direction. Jean-Paul was naturally drawn to the technical aspects of the process, ensuring that the pipeline ran smoothly.

Over the years, our studio has allowed us to further develop our skills and hone our craft. Our passion lies in creating animated films, currently focusing on short films and series, with ambitions to create longer, more ambitious productions in the future.

Sander Kamermans talking at Shortcutz Amsterdam

3D Character Animation

We consider narrative, stylized 3D character animation to be the core of our company. It combines all different aspects of 3D animation production, applicable to all other disciplines.

Through creating our own short films we’ve not only developed a visual style unique to Polder, but also established the process and developed tools to do this for any project.

This has lead to our involvement in designing a visual look and animation style, as well as the production of the first three episodes for the 3D animated series Dr Panda, based on existing IP from the successful game franchise of the same name.

All of the design and production knowledge we’ve gained throughout these projects have enabled us to work with commercial clients and create narrative forms of advertising and brand building, such as the mini stories created to supplement the game universe of Duck World, a series of commercials for electronic retailer BCC and many more which can be found on our projects page.

We’re always looking to push our studios ability to tackle larger and increasingly more ambitious 3D animation projects.

Jean-Paul Tossings at the shoot of the commercial Knibbel Knabbel Knuisje

Stylized Visual Effects and Live Action Integration

Using our skills from character animation has lead us to work on a number of stylized visual effect projects. Some utilize more traditional forms of 3D character animation and stylized world building like Knibbel Knabbel, while others require a more creative approach to design problems such as Monuta.

Seamless 2D integration

Due to our continuous experimentation with 3D stylization, often interpreted as having a traditional look and feel, we’ve been asked to help integrate 3D visuals in traditional animated features.

Particularly rigid features such as vehicles, or buildings and background in shots with dynamic camera movements are notoriously hard and labour intensive to create in hand drawn animation. At the same time, make it too static, and the 3D work looks out of place and lifeless in an otherwise handcrafted world.

Together with directors and 2D artists we work in making sure the quality and feel of the 3D elements match up. This can mean adding geometric deformation and variable linework on a classically hand drawn animation such as Trippel Trappel or matching texture and painting techniques present in the works of Hisko Hulsing.