Andrius Lekavicius - Lithuania

Andrius Lekavicius is all-around media storyteller recently living between Europe and Asia: Vilnius and Kuala Lumpur cities. In 29 years, the young creative succeeded in building a profile of projects on various media platforms: from creating brands image to second screen applications, from directing high-end ad spots to his first feature documentary ‘Game of the Nation’.

Andrius is working on ERA FILM’s interactive film project ‘Escaping Sunshine’ (feature fiction film + Alternate reality game) supported by MEDIA 2012. It has been awarded as the Best Project in Baltic Event Co-Production Market 2012. Lately Lekavicius has been shortlisted among five finalists from all over the world to present his Transmedia concept in MIPCube Content 360 competition in Cannes in April, 2013.

Right now Andrius goal is to take an active role in transmedia (r)evolution. He believes being part of TFL2013 would help to improve his personal knowledge and skills for international future projects. And in the end it would lead to telling better stories.

To see Andrius' work click www.didisalis.lt / www.hidalgo.im  / https://vimeo.com/33535490

Eglantine Ceulemans - Belgium

Eglantine Ceulemans is from Belgium and has done most of her studies in France. She recently graduated from the Emile Cohl school of Arts in Lyon, France, as an illustrator-conceptor.

She currently works as a Children's Illustrator and has seen her first works published.

During her studies she grew a keen interest in developing projects on multi-mediums (paper ones as well as multimedia ones, such as pop-ups, interactive books and picture books), in order to improve their narration, make them more attractive for the participant and to generally better the user experience.

She has been working with Iboo Interactive, an interactive publishing house, since 2010, where she continues to work as a web and graphic designer and a community manager, whilst also doing competitive intelligence and finding the time to make the interactive book Les Différences.

She strongly believes that the Tansform@Lab workshop sessions will be ideal to help her to improve her knowledge in the new cross-media approaches that she can then implement in her professional practice.

You can see her work here

Arnaud Miquel - France

Arnaud graduated last year from the Political Science Institute of Aix-en-Provence in Economics and Finance, while in the meantime studying television and digital media production at INA, the French National Audiovisual Institute. For several years, he worked in many film production companies (Onyx Films, Neon Productions), festivals (FIDMarseille, FIGRA) and audiovisual cooperation organizations (French Embassy in Chile). He is currently Head of Digital Business for Millimages, one of the leading animation groups in Europe. At the same time as his job, he personally develops several projects of crossmedia series as an author, and writes as a freelance journalist for the website InaGlobal.

For a long time, he has been passionate about movies, new media and new forms of storytelling. He has no doubt that Transform@Lab will provide useful knowledge and tools to improve his digital expertise in order to produce global transmedia projects. "These four European masterclasses are also the opportunity to meet the young professionals of tomorrow’s digital production to talk about our projects and to share our points of view from our respective cultures and countries."

To see Arnaud's work click 

http://www.arnaudmiquel.fr/

http://www.inaglobal.fr/en/utilisateur/arnaud-miquel

Celine Kniebihler - France

Celine graduated from Gobelins school in Paris in 2011 where she studied interactive Digital Media Design. With her team, she worked on a graduation project: Hiboo, books to explore (http://www.hiboo-project.com), a collection of digital books for teenagers on the iPad. This is a new reading experience that includes interactive tools, a social dimension, digital media and transmedia.

With Hiboo, we won the European Youth Award 2012 and she has been invited to talk about it at the WSIS+10 Review Meeting at UNESCO Paris in 2013.

After graduation, she moved to Amsterdam where she worked as a Visual Designer at IceMobile. She designed mobile applications and developed international relationships. In the meantime, she started 2 personal digital projects: a blog about her expat life (http://amsterdam.celinek.fr) and a blog about the funny dutch lunch habits (http://everydayieattoasties.tumblr.com).

Now, back in Paris she is working as a freelance graphic and user experience designer on mobile and interactive platforms.

"I wanted to take part in the TransformatLab because it’s for me a perfect match between 2 of my favorite things: I love to travel and meet new people and cultures and I like to think about innovative projects around digital ideas and needs."

You can check Celine's portfolio (http://www.celinek.fr) and follow her blog here (http://blog.celinek.fr).

Josep Miquel - Spain

I studied Audiovisual Communication at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. During my academic career I was very interested in the analysis of transmedia projects, having J. J. Abrams’s series as a model. Therefore, I could understand the power of engaging audiences and fans by offering exciting and unique experiences in a multiplatform context. After finishing my degree, I was enrolled in a Master study programme in Animation 3D. My final-year project, based on an animation short-film, was selected to compete in several cinema festivals. Since then, I had the opportunity to work in different production and animation companies.

Understanding the current changes lead by the convergence of television and Internet is my passion. I've been learning about transmedia storytelling on my own for the past few years by using available Internet resources and books. Furthermore, in order to share my thoughts I started my own blog. By giving me the chance to meet and interact with mentors and fellow participants, Transformat@Lab training programme would extremely contribute to further develop my skills and come up with good ideas. I’m really interested in learning and sharing ideas with others about second screen interaction, storytelling, fans’ collaboration, interactive narrative and gamification.

Blog - Linkedin - Twitter - Tumblr - Youtube - Slideshare

Anna Raycheva - Bulgaria

I am one of the founders and content creators at Brave Tomatoes LTD, an independent studio that creates and develops mobile iOS apps for kids 1 to 9 years of age. We founded our company in the beginning of 2011.

So far we have developed and published on the Apple App Store more than 10 Universal apps - educational games and interactive books for kids. Their download rate is good and most of them have been and are in the moment being featured in different iTunes stores. We have several ongoing projects that are about to be released soon. We are a small and very enthusiastic team, we love our jobs and we are very dedicated to our work and success. 

Cross-platform projects are something I am very much interested in and I would like to develop in the future. That’s why I am looking very much forward to participating in Transform@lab, as the variety of masterclasses and all the new people I’m going to meet are something that you get the opportunity for very often.

http://www.bravetomatoes.com

http://facebook.com/bravetomatoes

Mate Cziner - Hungary

Mate studied graphic design at the Moholy Nagy University of Art and Design and has been working in the field graphic design for a number of years, currently involved in the production of mobile applications.

Minna Panjanen - Finland

Minna works in Film and Television as a freelancer and has six years of experience.  She has done everything from editing to producing, from script supervising to screenwriting and is almost finished with her MA in Screenwriting Degree at the University of Salford (UK). Minna also has a BA in Television Screenwriting and Production from Pirkanmaan University of Applied Sciences (FIN) where she graduated from in 2007.

"As a storyteller I tend to create big story worlds, ones that could surpass the screen onto the internet, apps, games and books.  I feel that cross-platform storytelling allows the viewer to experience the story more fully, it allows us to dive into the world and discover even more about the main story narrative. During Transformatlab I hope to learn how to expand on my stories using cross-platform storytelling devices."

TamásTatai - Hungary / UK

Tamas was a successful entrepreneur, running his own business in his native Hungary before embarking on a career in film.

As a mature student, he completed his BA in Film and Media in 2009 at Birkbeck, University of London. He then moved to Wales to study practical film making as part of his MA in Film at the University of Wales, Newport Film School.

His graduation short film, On a Knife Egde”, which he produced and directed will be released on DVD by the Gwent Independent Film Trust. During his masters Tamas has also participated in the MEDIA supported ENGAGE 2011 program. He has recently completed his first independent short film “100 Miles” which is currently in the festival circuit.

Tamas intends to take his film projects to cross-media platform. He sees film distribution as the biggest challenge ahead of him and believes that the income for film makers lies in digital space. His knowledge of this field, however, is limited and he is aiming to develop it and learn more about cross-platform media during this program. Tamas is also very keen on networking and collaborating with fellow Europeans and sees Transform@Lab as the perfect environment to achieve this.