Ondrej Slivka
Biography
Ondrej Slivka was born on the 19th of December, 1959 in Bratislava. After secondary studies of the propagation graphics at the School of Applied Arts in Bratislava, he shortly worked at the Slovak Film Studios as an artist and assistant. In 1980 – 1981 he studied Slovak literature and art education at the Pedagogical Faculty of Comenius University in Trnava. In 1981 – 1987 he studied film and television graphics at the Academy of Arts and Design in Prague under the leadership of Miloslav Jágr. In 1988 - 1991 he worked as an artist, animator and director at the Slovak Film Production in Bratislava. Even during his academy studies he debuted by films The Umbrella (1984) and If I Were a Bird (1986), which were followed by other film projects, primarily by the highly rated TV series Bratislava Tales (1991). Since 1993 he has lectured at the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, since 2003 also at the Faculty of Multimedia Communications of the Tomas Bata University in Zlín (Czech Republic). As an author of script, story and set design he participated in production of various successful interactive exhibitions for children in BIBIANA, Bratislava.
Illustration Features
Ondrej Slivka ranks among the leading artists, directors and cartoon script writers in Slovakia. Thanks to specialization achieved during his university studies he entered into the film art scene with mature works. Unconventional in opinion and genre, his works usually make use of the technique of classical pen drawing. Ondrej Slivka's unobtrusive drawing makes a positive contribution to Slovak animated film production, showing how this ever-modern animation technique can be used to express complicated thoughts. One such example is the film Virgin Land (1989), in which he used austerly composed, refined drawing to interpret a serious topic in a witty „readible“ form. In the film on an environmental theme If I Were a Bird (1986) he did not hesitate to make use of an untried technique combining classical means of artistic expression with those of computer graphics, in order to achieve the desired effect. The loosely-connected cycle of legends Bratislava Tales (1990-1999) based on Mária Ďuríčková´s literary work belongs to the family of works that combine modern artistic techniques with literary traditions. He portrayed the setting of the different stories in the cycle in a remarkable way, aptly expressing the old-time atmosphere.