'Beestje' (Bobo #42, 1975).
Rens Benerink is a Dutch animator and illustrator, best known as co-creator of the animated series 'Starstreet' (1991) and 'Robin & The Dreamweavers' (2000). Between 1995 and 2006 he had his own Cartoon School in Amsterdam.
Comics work
Benerink was born in 1950 in Amsterdam. He took his artistic education at the Amsterdam Grafische School (nowadays Mediacollege) and afterwards worked for the Toonder Studio's. One of his projects was an illustrated booklet with eight comic strips about shipping traffic and insurance, 'Verzekerd varen' (1975). The scripts were written by Patty Klein. In 1970 and 1971 Benerink wrote the scripts for four 'Pepspotters', short one-page strips published in the comic magazine Pep. The artwork was done by Ed van Schuijlenburg, another former Toonder employee. In the mid-1970s he wrote and drew the funny animal comic 'Beestje' (1975-1976) for pre-school magazine Bobo (which had a copyright notice for Cartoonder). He also designed record covers in cooperation with photographer Govert de Roos.
Animation
Benerink eventually embarked upon a career in the animation industry, developing internationally co-produced TV series as well as concepts for animation and merchandising. In 1991 he created 'Star Street: The Adventures of the Star Kids' in commission of the Dutch/ Finnish/ Japanese TV production company Telescreen. The Star Kids were a gang of pink space creatures with big noses, modelled after the horoscopes of the Western Zodiac. They lived on a musical, star-shaped planet. 52 episodes of 22 minutes each in length were made, and the series was sold to 59 countries. Benerink later worked on an adult-oriented animated series called 'Robin and The Dreamweavers' (2000). It featured the first girl born in Cyberspace, who battles the dominatrix XXX and her quest to turn everyone into porn-crazed maniacs. Only a 75-minute pilot was completed.
Cartoonschool
Building on his reputation after the success of 'Star Street', Benerink began his own Amsterdam-based Cartoonschool in 1995, in cooperation with Sicco Kingma. It offered a private evening training course in comic art, animation and character design. Benerink operated the school on his own after Kingma's departure in 2000, until an adjudication order was issued in April 2004. The school then did a go-around until at least 2006. Comic artists who have been educated at the school were Sander de Fouw, Maarten Gerritsen, Olivier Heiligers, Jan-Roman Pikula and Viktor Venema.
Still from 'Star Street'.