Exhibition of drawings from animated films

Milanka Fabjančič: With a Pencil to New Worlds

from 15. May to 14. Sep 2025, from 9:00 to 20:00, Pentagonal Tower, Ljubljana Castle

With her virtuoso drawing, animator and illustrator Milanka Fabjančič creates magical worlds using basic technical tools such as pencil and paper. Regardless of whether she produces an illustration capturing a rich narrative in a single frame, or an animated sequence of illustrations in which the story unfolds through the illusion of movement, everything remains anchored in the artist’s masterful line. The exhibition in the Pentagonal Tower presents original material from the animations Liliana (2019) and Hobotnica banana mišmaš (Octopus Banana Mish-Mash, 2023).

Milanka Fabjančič, who is active as a screenwriter, director and principal animator, constructs her animated films through a thoughtful, systematic and sometimes intuitive process that begins not with writing a script, but with sketching. Thus, the story gradually emerges based on a particular personal sentiment or relationship between two people, while the animations reveal themselves as bearers of numerous hidden meanings, open to the layering of various interpretations.

The artist’s visual aesthetic is based on nostalgia, anatomy and character drawing. The script crystallises from the storyboard, followed by the creation of an animatic, a simplified animation that serves as a plan for the final animation. In this phase, the artists shapes the rhythm and dynamics of the animation together with the music composer, while harmonising the animation with the dramaturgy of the film in cooperation with the editor. This is key to creating a dynamic whole that conveys the film to a new dimension. There follows a long period of drawing, which is a magical but extremely time-consuming process: one second of animation requires approximately twelve individual frames, so an eight-minute animated film takes some two years to create.

Every working day is dedicated to drawing and finding new ways to bring the drawings and movements to life. The backgrounds are meticulously drawn on paper and then scanned in high resolution, while the characters and movement are created using digital tools that preserve all of the characteristics of an analogue drawing: irregularities, textures and “random” errors that add vivacity and authenticity to the drawing. In the final part of production, the process shifts to creating the digital movements of the characters, the final editing of the animated material, and sound and colour correction.
The exhibition offers an insight into Milanka Fabjančič’s creative process, demonstrating her extraordinary technical skill and her passion for the art of bringing images to life, and revealing the deeply personal and artistic background of her films. It invites us to a place where drawing is not just an art, but a way of life and a means for creating new worlds.

Biography:
Milanka Fabjančič is a trained painter who is active as a freelance illustrator, primarily in the field of original animated films: Liliana 2019, Hobotnica banana mišmaš 2023 – both produced by ZVVIKS; the series Pastiche – 1st season 2022, 2nd season 2024 (France). She creates illustrations for youth literature and teaches at the Academy of Arts of the University of Nova Gorica as an assistant professor (Historical Fiction) and at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana (Illustration). She received a great deal of recognition for the animated film Liliana, including the Vesna Award for Best Animated Film at the Festival of Slovenian Film in 2019, and the Innovation in Animated Film Award at the International Filmmaker Festival of New York in 2021. The animated film Hobotnica banana mišmaš was awarded an Honourable Mention by the Jury at SEEfest 2024 in Los Angeles, as well as gaining the award for Best Direction in Animation at the Canberra Short Film Festival (Australia) in 2025. The web series Pastiche was awarded the Best Web Series of 2023 at the Marseille Web Fest. Milanka Fabjančič is currently preparing her third original animated film, which is expected to be released in 2028.

Curator: Lucija Smodiš