User:Mel2669/sandbox/Stephan Franck

'''Stephan Franck is a French/American animator, writer and director, and comics creator. He is mostly know for his work as a supervising animator on ,The Iron Giant, for Co-creating the animated TV show Corneil & Bernie (AKA Watch My Chops , and for his graphic novel series Silver. He is the brother of animation producer Emmanuel Franck.'''

ANIMATION
Franck was a Supervising animator on Brad Bird’s animated movie The Iron Giant and a story artist on Despicable me. In 2000, Franck worked with Adam Sandler on Adam Sandler’s 8 Crazy Nights, and was at Disney Feature Animation for most of the decade. In 2013, he directed the television special SMURFS: The Legend Of Smurfy Hollow for Sony Pictures Animation, which combines CGI and hand-drawn animation, and was nominated for an Annie Award for “Best director for a direct to video or TV Broadcast”. Because of its positive critical response and its use 2D animation, the special stands apart from other projects in the Smurf Sony Universe. Franck also developed a feature film project at Sony Pictures Animation with writer Dave reynolds.

SILVER & SILVER UNIVERSE
Silver is a graphic novel series written and illustrated by Stephan Franck. Silver is a supernatural heist story. It takes place in an original universe inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and follows a group of conmen and a Van Helsing descendent trying to steal a mythical treasure from Dracula’s castle. The first volume was released in 2014 and the 4th and final volume of the original arc is set for Direct Market release in November 2018. The reviews for Silver have been generally positive, with NEWSARAMA giving it 10 stars out of 10. It was also nominated The Russ Manning Award in 2014, and the Geekie Award for Best Comic Or Graphic Novel in 2015 As of New York Comic Con 2017, writer Andrew Cosby is attached to pen a movie adaptation. . In 2018, Silver #1 was one of the titles participating in Diamond Comic Distributors’ Free Comic Book Day.

Rosalynd, an illustrated novella that takes place in the past of the Silver universe, was released in 2017 as an addition to the Silver Volume 3 Kickstarter campaign. Presented in the form of a diary, it explores the origin story of Rosalynd “Sledge” Van Helsing, one of the lead characters from Silver. While Rosalynd is a fictional story, Franck mentioned in interviews that it is also a metafiction about his family’s history, as they crossed Europe fleeing Jewish persecutions in the early 20th century.

Quote: “Theirs was a life perpetually lived as strangers, never knowing when the community they had just settled into would eventually turn on them. And it always did”. Quote: “After my grandparents were deported, my mom and her younger siblings had to survive—often on their own. Hidden children on the road. Processing the horrors of the world through their somewhat innocent eyes. I grew up hearing these stories (…), and somehow, Francine became Rosalynd.”

Early Life
Franck grew up in L’Hay Les Roses, near Paris France, where his parents had a retail store that sold everything from books, comic books, periodicals, toys, bus fare and cigarettes, and where his father had a photography studio in the basement. Franck credits his parent’s store for his early immersion in all forms of visual storytelling.

Quote: “Some of my actual earliest memories in life are hanging out in my parents’ book store, where they sold among many things comics, home-movie equipment, and art supplies. That store to me was a cave of wonders, where I was able to spend my free time reading every comic they had, both American and European, and get my hands on the supplies and equipment I needed to start creating myself.“

Franck mentioned the French anthology television show Cinema de Minuit as a major influence in imagining a meta pulp universe that became the world of Silver.

Quote: “It introduced me to–just to name a few–Fritz Lang and Orson Welles, but also awesome B movies like Fu Manchu or Nick Carter (…), as well as screwball comedies like The Thin Man series. In my imagination, all those movies connected into some sort of meta pulp/noir continuum in which, somehow, The Public Enemy, Hounds of the Baskerville, King Kong and Love Affair existed in the same universe.”

Franck graduated from the French Animation school Gobelins.