Felix Weyss

Felix Weyss grew up as part of a huge patchwork family in a small town about 25 mins from Vienna, the heart of Austria. During his high school years at HTL Spengergasse, where the class focus was audio-visual media design, he regularly worked at a graphic design studio called Vektorama.

During this time he gained a lot of self-confidence as an artist and learned some important facts about himself, like his drive for creating moving image work. Therefore he chose to continue his studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, specialising in 3D character animation and game design.

After graduating with a Bachelor in Arts in 2017, he started working professionally at the digital advertising agency TUNNEL23 as an animation designer. There he created work in different disciplines, including 2D animation, 3D character animation and Motion Graphics. His most fruitful experience was working with a team and learning to give and accept constructive feedback.

In 2019 he rediscovered his passion for learning new techniques and translating ideas into short narratives. Therefore he chose once again to continue studying an MA degree in animation in the UK at the Royal College of Art, which he recently successfully graduated from. In the future Felix wants to combine different disciplines and collaborate with different artists. His curiosity and hunger to learn new techniques is what keeps his work innovative.

Felix films are inspired by everyday events, ordinary scenarios seemingly obscure and fascinating. Within his work he questions people's behaviours and their way of dealing with each other in various situations.

In the first year of his MA at RCA he used this observational method on himself, creating a film that questions his ways off dealing with the challenges that await one when met with an ultimatum. He translates the overwhelming feeling of being small when facing external factors and portraying how decision making is affected by them. It was his first film to blur and stretch the borders between traditional and digital animation by mixing 3d and 2d animation techniques.

The main idea behind going back to university was to have the time to explore and learn a new technique. Felix always had a passion for crafting, especially for wood working. He enjoys the unique texture of every material and especially little imperfections nature comes with and always struggled a bit with the cleanness and coldness of 3D. It was only the logical next step for him to combine his passions of crafting and animation to explore the world of stop-motion. As he didn’t have any experience in this area and limited support from RCA, a lot of research had to be conducted in order to make the puppets, cars and sets. One of the biggest challenge he had to overcome was to create the set in the very limited space of his room, as well as manage to live and sleep only 3.42‘ away from the setup.

The film is still in production, most parts ready to get animated, and will be screened at the BFI in July. Special thanks to Divya Tamilselvan for her immense support and the Flora Gardens Gang to make sure he didn’t loose his head or to go hungry.