Mill+ Signs Directing Duo Salon Alpin in London

Directing duo, Phillipp Cormella (Lip) and Simon Griesser, the founders of the multi-award winning animation outfit, ‘Salon Alpin’, join the Mill+ team in London to further bolster it’s animation offering. 

The pair set up their own studio in 2011 after meeting at ‘Eat My Dear’, a boutique creative studio in Vienna. Shifting between art, illustration, animation, film direction and music, they take a multifaceted approach to their work and seek to create new looks, worlds and opportunities on each project. 

The duo has worked with a number of major international brands. Some of their creative highlights include an international Christmas campaign ‘Winter Tale’ for luxury brand, Montblanc and, more recently, they have worked on an exciting collaborative project with the Austrian newspaper ‘Falter’ alongside agency Jung von Matt / Donau. The collaboration resulted in them creating an illustrated journey through eight layers of hells, earning them the four Gold Lions and a further two Silver Lions at this year’s festival in Cannes. 

Lip comments, "For Simon and I, style feels much more like an attitude rather than a visual characteristic of our work. We strongly believe in interdisciplinary work and we like to transition back and forth from traditional to digital.

This means we try to see the world around us every day under a different light. It means constantly bringing in new influences, trying new materials, techniques and getting new people on board to work with us."

Mill+ Executive Producer Ollie Allgrove explains, "Animation is a big part of where Mill + can grow and I’m super excited about these guys and look forward to getting them out there as part of our creative offering.

Lip and Simon are highly driven, super nice guys and they join us in a Directing capacity. They will sit on our Roster but continue to work from their bases in Vienna and Lisbon, pitching specific projects through Mill+ and working with us in a more traditional rostered director manner.

We will help to grow their reel and I think we’ll also benefit a lot from their combination of 2D, 3D and stop frame knowledge, they have a handmade feel to some of their work which is incredibly detailed but charming and is something that will sit well amongst our other animation talent."

Stephen Venning, Executive Director Mill+ adds: “I’m very excited that such a talented and award winning animation collective have agreed to partner with Mill+. It’s always nice when you sign a Directing duo and then they promptly head to Cannes and win lots of awards! So if we were excited before, we are now even more so. Their work is so distinctive, so inspiring that we are extremely confident that we can get them winning projects through Mill+, both in the UK and the US”.