'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 received his artistic education at the Amsterdam Grafische School (nowadays Mediacollege) and afterwards worked for the Toonder Studio's. One of his projects was drawing 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 another former Toonder employee, Ed van Schuijlenburg. In the mid-1970s, Benerink wrote and drew the funny animal comic 'Beestje' (1975-1976) for the preschool magazine Bobo (which had a copyright notice for Cartoonder, the syndication division of the Toonder Studio's). He also designed record covers in collaboration with photographer Govert de Roos.
Animation
Rens 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' by commission of the Dutch/Finnish/Japanese TV production company Telescreen. The Star Kids were a gang of pink space creatures with big noses, modeled after the horoscopes of the Western Zodiac. They lived on a musical, star-shaped planet. 52 episodes of 22 minutes 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 collaboration with Sicco Kingma. Starting in 1995, the school offered a private evening training course in comic art, animation and character design. After Kingma's departure in 2000, Benerink operated the school on his own, until in April 2004 a declaration of bankruptcy was filed. The school then start up again until at least 2006. Comic artists who have been educated at the Cartoonschool were Sander de Fouw, Maarten Gerritsen, Olivier Heiligers, Jan-Roman Pikula and Viktor Venema.
Still from 'Star Street'.