doc. art. Jelena Oroz

She was born in 1987 in Osijek. In 2008, she completed her undergraduate studies in fine arts at the Academy of Arts in Osijek. In 2014, she graduated from the Department of Animated Film and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts, where she now works as an assistant professor. She has directed, designed and animated several auteur films, including the festival successes Two for two (2018) and Letters from the edge of the forest (2022), for which she has won several awards and recognitions, and recently completed the short animated film No Room (2024), which received the ASIFA Croatia Award for Best Professional Film in 2024. She is the author of Animafest's visuals and credits for 2021. For the last ten years, she has been actively involved in animation. She works as an animator on films by renowned domestic and foreign authors (Daniel Šuljić, Petra Zlonoga, Ivan Bogdanov, Anja Kofmel and others) and collaborates with numerous Croatian studios such as Bonobostudio, Adriatic animation, Nukleus film, In the Forest, Creative Union... She is the author of several educational commissioned projects (TedEd, Ministry of Health, HRT, Vanishing Angle). Her graduation film Wolf Games (2015) was screened at many animated film festivals, including Annecy and Animafest, and won several awards and recognitions. In addition to animation and directing, he devotes great interest and attention to character design and art direction, and has several successful collaborations with other directors in this field. Since 2024, she has been employed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. She is currently the Commissioner for Animated Film at the Croatian Audiovisual Centre.

In my own work, I explore the possibilities of 2D animation in the context of the story I deal with – most often it is a combination of the bizarre, the darkly humorous and the real or personal.

Students are introduced to the basics of animation and animate in a classic way, on paper, according to given templates. They go through the 12 principles of animation that they apply in the exercises. They acquire the necessary skills, but also the "animator's mindset". They also work on character design and art solutions for various purposes. Exercises become more complex in the older years and students independently design character animation.

2024 – No room, 2D animation, stop motion animation, Bonobostudio, DCP, 6'22'' 2022 – Letters from the edge of the forest, 2D animation, Bonobostudio, DCP, 12'17'' 2018 – Two for two (2018), 2D animation, Bonobostudio, HD, DCP, 8'