Pierre-Jacques Ober
Author and modeller
Born in a military family, Pierre-Jacques Ober broke with family tradition by preferring philosophy to war. After obtaining a degree in Philosophy at Paris Sorbonne, he went to Germany to work as an assembly line metalworker before finding himself an active element of the Parisian underground music scene at the beginning of the 80s.
During the 80’s, he combined architecture studies and music production while working in fashion and advertising for leading companies such as Premiere Heure and Gedeon. He finished the 80s in a creative duo with a New York fashion photographer, co-directing commercials, short films and music videos.
In 1990, he met and married an Australian photographer and moved to the rainforest in country Australia where life and work became documentary.
In the last 25 years, he has thrown himself into numerous adventures as an independent filmmaker. From the underbelly of Sydney with a gang of outlaw bikers to the Australian central deserts with the painters of the Pintupi tribe. From rough riding with cossacks in Russia to racing wild camels in the Simpson desert.
In between adventures, he has kept working extensively with France. Producing commercials in Australia for Kenzo Perfume, directing documentaries for Universal Music Paris, setting-up French-Australian co-productions for feature films, producing and directing road-movies for networks such as ARTE, France Television or ABC TV.
Jules Ober
Photographer and designer
Jules is a self taught photographer and designer who brings a passion for beautiful light, texture and colour to the project.
Born in Sydney, educated at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Jules Ober is a photographer who has developed a highly trained eye for images, working between Australia and Europe across platforms as diverse as fine art printmaking, fashion, film and multimedia.
As a documentary photographer her photographs have been published in magazines such as Vogue (Australia), Elle (Russia), L’Express (France), Digital Photography (Australia), Gastro (Denmark) Liberation (France), Voyeur (Virgin Airlines) and in 2017 she has her documentary photographs showing in 4 separate exhibitions.
In her personal work she combines the profound awareness and awe of nature imprinted on her as an Australian, with her passion for design and printmaking developed during years of living and working in Europe. Her abstract landscapes have been exhibited in Paris as well as in Sydney and have found an application in the domain of design and architecture. Jules continues to explore all the possibilities of our digital age. She may be found working as a director of photography, multimedia producer, teaching Digital Imaging at TAFE College, or building beautiful websites.
Felicity Coonan
Designer
Felicity Coonan is the third member of the team for the World War One Series.
She can be found playing at the intersection of feature film, publishing and design. She loves 3D stereo imagery, VR and all things appy and story driven.
She has worked creatively in the visual effects and animated film industry in Australia, UK and Europe, and was a foundation member of Animal Logic.
Felicity is recognised for her visual style and art directing skills along with her depth of understanding of the animated and visual effects filmmaking process, on which she has lectured extensively.
Felicity recently Art Directed the Lego Ninjago Movie (2017). Other film projects include Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), The Lego Movie (2014), Happy Feet 2 (2011), where she worked on both the marketing campaign and as one of the production Art Directors.
Prior to this Felicity worked with Zack Snyder as Associate Art Director for Legend of the Guardians : The Owls of Ga’Hoole, also designing and directing the fully animated 3D credit / title sequence. Felicity conceived and designed the Art of Legend of the Guardians hard book.
We will also work with freelance artists such as:
Junona Balash
Illustrator
Junona will contribute to the series as the hand of one of our characters – Paul – an artist who spent the war drawing the life and death around him.
Born and raised in the Carpathian foothills, Junona studied product design at Tula’s Polytechnic University until she decided to pursue her dream of becoming a costume designer.
So at age 20 she taught herself to draw, built an artist portfolio and went to Moscow where she was accepted in the exclusive and prestigious VGIK Institute ( All Russian State Institute of Cinematography ). She graduated after studying 6 years under the strict guidance of Lidia Yuryevna Novi, the cinema costume designer famous for her work with Andrey Tarkovsky.
From 2002 to 2010 she worked as a costume designer and as a storyboard artist at MOSFILM and GORKY cinema studios.
As an artist she also worked at the animation studio PILOT on the enormous project Mountain of Gems which consisted of 52 animated films with a combined length of over 11 hours. Each film narrating a fairy tale from one of the many ethnic peoples of Russia. The project won numerous awards at Russian and international film festivals.
There, she worked under the direction of the famous Russian cartoonists Alexander Tatarskiy and Mikhail Aldashin.
Since 2010 her talent as an illustrator has seen her working on advertising campaigns for agencies such as Ogilvy, Grey, G2 and BBDO or clients such as British American Tobacco, MTS and Beeline.
Her illustrations are also regularly appearing in magazines such as Glamour, Esquire, Snob and Robb Report.
She had one solo exhibition in Moscow. Her artworks were bought for private collections in Russia, France and Hong Kong.