Life in the Fast Lane

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Ferenc Cakó is a Hungarian sand animation artist, with a litany of other award winning talents including film-making.

While at the College for Creative Arts he won several awards as an amateur animation film-maker.

From there he moved on to the Pannonia Film Studio where he worked as an animator, designer and director from 1973 to 1991, using puppets, clay, and paper-cut techniques in his films.

He was invited to hold workshops for his extraordinary techniques at locations in France, Finland, Spain, Belgium and Portugal.

Ferenc Cakó also makes illustrations for several children and youth books. His graphics and paintings are shown at individual exhibitions in major cities of Hungary and abroad. In addition, he teaches 3D animation at the School of Applied Arts.

Incredible Sand Painting Demonstration

Here is the staggering video of Ferenc Cakó’s live performance called Genesis at Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (SICAF) in Seoul, South Korea, for which he retells the story of Adam and Eve with a sand painting presentation.

SICAF is an annual showcase festival of animation, cartoon and related art genres, held in Seoul since 1997.

Ferenc Cakó with an unnamed Interviewer — The Painter of Sand

So, the first question is rather obvious — how does a painter become a film-maker?

I inherited my drawing skills from my father, a graphic designer who still works at the age of 86. He taught me — although not in the strict sense of the word — how to handle the material, how to look at colors and how to see the world as a whole.

Did you switch for sand animation because the material had ‘dried’ out? Did you not find plasticine satisfactory any more, or were you following other examples?

Yes, I really felt that what I was doing was not satisfying any longer. Obviously, others were also trying to do that, but everyone knows that I am doing it on a 1m x 2m glass screen. Just like everything else, film-makers also tried plasticine, as well as sand or washing powder in the A / 4 size frame of the cartoon, but it is impossible to work with it in that size. The grains of sand are too large for that size, they cannot be overcome.

I work on a larger surface (I even had an iron stand made, on the top of which the cameraman can also see the whole glass surface) which shows a different surface, a different image. Due to my drawing skills, I make rather naturalistic and realistic pictures, not abstract ones. Most people like it, though, that they are drawn.

Another factor is that the sand cannot be corrected, so while working I do not have a control, no motion control. I do not have any opportunity, which cartoonists do, such as the tracing paper phase, during which they either draw the lines or scan them in the computer. In my head I have to know the guiding line along which the whole process is running, since as I remove it, it will no longer have a ‘before’ or an ‘after’, which is also true of puppet films.

You perform at social events as well — at the opening ceremony of the European chess championships in Dortmund, the International Day of Water or the event Microsoft held in the lobby of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. Last year you were invited to different parts of the world with this performance on 15 occasions.

The Kolozsvár Opera House invited me to make a sand animation to the Overture and Freedom Chorus of Nabucco. I also worked with a large orchestra in Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and now here at the Vigadó. A special crew works with me and makes sure that the picture and the sound are ‘in tune’, that the screen and the projector work properly. A complete television desk was set up at the Vigadó which helps to create a show-like atmosphere during the live act. A camera is set on me and the orchestra, and while I’m cleaning the glass, the orchestra is shown.

You can find out more about Ferenc Cakó on his website.

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