Metin Seven is a Dutch freelance visualizer, illustrator and animator based in Bussum, with a specialization in 3D designs. He mainly works for TV programs, commercial clients and print media, but also uses his 3D illustration skills for comics projects. These include a couple of comic strips he created along with Pieter Hogenbirk and Rudy Hulleman, as well as his own newspaper comic 'Seamour Sheep' (2006).
Game development
Growing up in Bussum, Seven has had a passion for comics since his early childhood. When he was only 17 years old, the self-taught artist became a graphic designer for 16-bit computer games. While still at school, he was part of Soft Eyes - later known as Team Hoi - a group of game developers for the Commodore Amiga, also consisting of programmers Reinier van Vliet and Pieter Opdam and composer Ramon Braumuller. In a time when games were still distributed by mail-order computer discs, the team developed game demos like 'Ragnov' (1988) and 'Venom Wing' (1990), the latter a shooter that was released through the British company Thalamus Ltd. Their 1992 platform game 'Hoi' was released through the American company Hollyware Entertainment. Among Team Hoi's other productions were the advertising game 'Peanutbutter Power Game' (1992), and the puzzle games 'Cognition' (1993) and 'Clockwiser' (1994). After Team Hoi, Seven and Van Vliet worked together for the media companies Valkieser - working on the CD-ROM game 'Moon Child' - and Spin Multimedia, where they developed commercial games for advertising campaigns.
Comic House
During his Team Hoi years, Metin Seven also worked for the Dutch game developing company Radarsoft, which got him in touch with the Comic House agency in Amsterdam. Fresh out of high school, he began working for Hans Buying's Comic House studio directly on the stop-motion animated series 'Mannetje & Mannetje' (1990-1994) for VPRO television, based on the photo comic 'Mannetje en Mannetje', created by and starring Peter de Wit and Hanco Kolk. Seven eventually provided about 80 percent of the animation for each episode. For the 'Storm' comic album 'De Genesis Formule' (1995) by Martin Lodewijk and Don Lawrence, Seven created a 3D virtual reality world (pages 35-41) which the main protagonists Storm and Roodhaar explore. In the early 2000s Metin worked again with Comic House on an award-winning, pioneering interactive VPRO animation series called 'Tattletoons' (2000-2001).
Metin's anti-war cartoon 'Pumping Irony' (2003) was featured in the international anthology 'Peace Signs' by the German publisher Olms.
3D artist
Since 1998, Seven has worked as a freelancer on visualizations, pixel art, illustration, animation, 3D design and modeling of toy prototypes. He has done computer designs and illustrations for the TV shows 'Lingo', 'Robot Wars', 'Stop de Strop' and 'Z@ppelin', and for almost a dozen magazines: PC-Active (1999-2004), PC Magazine, Computer Totaal Magazine (2004-2007), Intermediair (2002-2005), FNV Bouw magazine (2003-2009), Wildlife Magazine (2005-2008), Elsevier (2006-2014), AV & Stage magazine, Taptoe and Hello You. Among his commercial clients are Unilever, Albert Heijn, Milky Way, Bose, BNN, VPRO, RTL, John de Mol Productions, Music Television, N.O.T., Philips, Planet Internet, Portuguese Television, RTL Television and Zwijssen. He had a daily 3D cartoon on the news site Nu.nl between 2006 and 2013, and also made topical cartoons for newspapers and magazines like NRC.next (2006-2010). Seven also has written articles about computer graphics for specialized magazines like PC-Active, as well as articles, reviews and tutorials for the computer-generated content creation platforms BlenderNation and CG Cookie.
'Doris Dutch', characters by Pieter Hogenbirk, 3D backgrounds by Metin Seven.
Comics with Pieter Hogenbirk
In addition to his commercial work-for-hire, Metin Seven has worked on a couple of comics projects throughout the years. By 2003 he teamed up with comic artist Pieter Hogenbirk and the scriptwriter Rudy Hulleman to work on a couple of innovative comics features: Hulleman wrote the scripts, Hogenbirk drew the characters and Seven created the 3D backgrounds. Three early efforts were 'Fodee', a tragicomedy about a failed magician, 'Planeet Zoo Zoo', about a zoo with strange animals in another solar system, and 'Ali Bombarie', about a hip genie in a horn who constantly misinterprets wishes. Their comic about the air hostess 'Doris Dutch' appeared in Global Dutch magazine. Seven and Hogenbirk also drew the short story 'Prinses Patty en de kikkers' for Margreet de Heer's fairy tale comic anthology 'Sprookjes in Strookjes' (2006), written by Patty Klein. In 2015 Seven made printed 3D sculptures of Hogenbirk's comic characters 'De Ruyter' and 'Rembrandt', which were sold on Dribble.com.
Seamour Sheep
Metin Seven created the comic strip 'Seamour Sheep' in 2006. This comic was published in the NRC.next newspaper, and reached an audience of more than 300,000 Dutch and Flemish readers. 'Seamour Sheep' also became a finalist in a daily comic strip competition organized by the Dutch newspaper De Pers. 'Seamour Sheep' became even more popular when Crazy Label in Hong Kong began producing vinyl toys of comic figures from the strip; these ended up being sold in designer toy stores around the world. After 60 episodes, Seven Metin discontinued 'Seamour Sheep': the time demands of the strip were too much for this multitalented commercial artist, who has plenty of freelance creative work in animation, illustration and 3D modeling to otherwise keep him busy.
