Our Story
Bonne Animation is a hand crafted 2D animation studio rooted in the Netherlands. Shaped by friendships that began at CalArts. We chose to merge at a time the industry feels increasingly driven by consolidation, speed, and a focus on excess profit. We are choosing a path that is punk in spirit and always keeps craft at the forefront of our creative process.
We produce animation made by hands that adore the medium.
Our team’s voices span Tokyo, India, Munich, Wales, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam, and our work lives at the crossroads of those cultures. As a studio we are drawn to folktales, local myths, and the quietly human histories that don’t fit into the corporate templates we’ve worked in.
We are Bonne Animation.
The Story of 'Bonne'
Bonne Animation is named after Mary Cremers van Seumeren and her father Frans van Seumeren Sr. to their loved ones, simply “Bonne” and “Bonpapa.”
Bonpapa was a merchant from Utrecht and a builder in the broadest sense: of businesses, of community, of responsibility. He supported the people around him in real, practical and often financial ways, long before society made room for that kind of care.
And then the war came.
In the Netherlands of the 1940s, Frans was arrested. In those years he made a promise if his family and employees were spared, he would donate a set of bells to the Majella church in Utrecht.Craft and creativity in the Van Seumeren home became a lifeline.
Frans got to work on the bells, while Mary and her siblings made music, performances, poems, drawings, handmade films. When the world outside went dark, they made their own light inside. Everything centered around making. Anything that could ward fear into joy. This 4 year long period led to a creative collective with their own secret publication; ’t Schoffeltje, a self-made family paper filled with stories, sketches, jokes, and inventions. A living archive of imagination, still kept alive within the family today.
After the war, Frans kept his word and those bells still ring out in Utrecht as a reminder of community and protection. The heart of the Bonne legacy, however, lives closer to home than any bell tower. Mary carried the “Bon” spirit forward. Bonpapa to Bonne Mama and soon simply 'Bonne'. A name that became a creative force and a philosophy to her loved ones. Bonne encouraged the people around her to make things for the love of making. Not as product, but as connection. Bonne grew up with art as proof of life. A way of keeping the world human. That’s the parallel we carry into our studio now, in an era of shortcuts and fast media: We advocate for the hand made process and always strive to maintain the love of creating.
Because like Bonne, we believe, even in the darkest of times, art is meant to be a proof of life.
We named our studio after her to continue that lineage and to keep that ethos alive.
