'The Truth About Your Sister' (Zone 5300, 2010).
Hisko Hulsing is a Dutch animator, director, background painter and storyboard artist, who has gained international recognition for his animated shorts 'Harry Rents a Room' (1999), 'Seventeen' (2004) and 'Junkyard' (2012). He is also notable for the animated sequences in the 2014 'Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck' documentary and as director and production designer of Amazon's first adult animated series, 'Undone' (2019). In addition to writing, directing, painting, and animating for his animated films, Hulsing has composed and arranged orchestral soundtracks for his own films. The few comics he made have appeared in Eisner, Zone 5300 and NRC Handelsblad.
Early life and career
Hisko Hulsing was born in 1971 in Amsterdam as the son of a Czech mother and Dutch father. Both he and his younger brother, the future graphic novelist Milan Hulsing, inherited their creative talents from their grandfather, the former illustrator and writer Ber Hulsing (1907-1980). In 1995, Hisko Hulsing completed his education in painting and animation at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Since the 1990s, Hulsing has created illustrations and storyboards for over 100 advertising and production companies such as Saatchi & Saatchi and Czar, while using his spare time to work on personal projects.
Still from 'Junkyard' (2012).
Animated shorts
Hulsing's first animated film was 'Harry Rents a Room' (1999), a hallucinative short about a young man who is terrorized by his landlord, with voices by Sylvia Kristel (of 'Emmanuelle' fame) and Belgian film director Robbe de Hert. It was released in the Dutch cinema together with David Cronenberg's 'Existenz' and in the Czech cinemas together with Terry Gilliam's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. His next animated short was 'Seventeen' (2004), about a shy seventeen-year-old construction worker who tries to hold his own in the macho world of roofers. Animated in a painting style called "magical realism", it appeared in the Dutch theaters together with the 2003 'American Splendor' biopic about Harvey Pekar. 'Seventeen' was invited to international film festivals like Telluride, Annecy, Montreal and Seattle, and was the official Dutch entry for the Academy Awards 2005 in the category "Best Animated Short". With 'Junkyard' (2012), Hulsing told the story of a man who is robbed and stabbed on a metro train. As he lays dying, a friendship from his youth flashes before his eyes. The short won a prize at the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival and at the Shanghai Television Festival, and was also an entry for the Academy Awards.
In 2013, Hisko Hulsing made over 100 oil paintings on canvas to serve as backgrounds for the hybrid live-action/animation documentary 'The Last Hijack', which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2014. Hulsing and his team provided the animations for Brett Morgen's biopic of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, 'Montage of Heck' (2015). The documentary also featured animated segments of Cobain's own comic strips from his journals. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released worldwide in theaters by Universal Pictures and broadcasted on HBO. The film received critical acclaim worldwide and received 8 Emmy nominations.
Director
From 2018 on, Hulsing directed 'Undone', an American adult animated psychological comedy drama television series for Amazon Prime created by Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Produced by Michael Eisner's Tornante Company, the series tells the story of Alma, who, after a nearly fatal car crash, can manipulate and move through time, and uses this ability to find out the truth about her father's death. The first season of 'Undone' premiered on Amazon Prime in September 2019, and a second season followed in April 2022. Both received raving reviews. In 2022, Hulsing directed and designed the bonus episode of the Netflix TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman', titled 'A Dream of a Thousand Cats'. In January 2023, both 'Undone' and 'A Dream of a Thousand Cats' were nominated for an Annie Award.
Oil painting of the Russian conductor Valeri Gergiev for Dutch newspaper NRC (2015).
Print media
Besides animation, Hisko Hulsing has additionally made illustrations for various newspapers, including NRC Handelsblad, De Volkskrant and Het Parool. On occasion, he has tried his hand at comics, but unlike his brother Milan, these excursions have remained scarce. Together with the poet Ingmar Heytze, he created the comic story 'Verdwaald' (2008) for the Dutch literary comic magazine Eisner. In 2010, his horror comic story 'The Truth About Your Sister' appeared in the pop-cultural magazine Zone 5300. On 23 November 2017, the newspaper NRC Handelsblad printed his comic 'Mahler, Alma en de Symfonie der Duizend', telling the love story of the composers Alma Mahler-Werfel and Gustav Mahler, while citing from their letters and diaries. The script was written by Mischa Spel, and the lettering was done by Frits Jonker.
Exhibition
In 2015, Hisko Hulsing had his first major solo exhibition at the Peacock Art Centre in Aberdeen, Scotland. In 2021, a retrospective exhibition of Hulsing's paintings, storyboards, and illustrations was held at the Storyworld Museum in the Forum in Groningen. Paintings from 'Undone' were exhibited at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills in 2019 and at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood in 2022.
'Verdwaald' (short story written by Dutch poet Ingmar Heytze and published in Eisner in 2008).