Batman

I worked on Lego Batman! Well, okay, not the film currently in cinemas but still... it seems that, since the movie is a pretty huge deal at the moment, Lego has finally uploaded a commercial which I did indeed do animation on. So here it is (insanely fast paced, blink and you'll miss it).

Speaking of Lego, there is also a teaser up for the next batch of webisodes that I worked on. In my opinion, it's a much nicer style that the old ones since it's just a bit more toony - and the characters have Lego hands! :D

Happy halloween

Okay, way before going to the Philippines to help oversee our clean up/coloring helpers, I worked on animation for all of the latest Lego Elves Webisodes. Since it has just been halloween, here's the one I enjoyed both watching and working on the most of the latest batch:

Also, over the summer, JaFilm did, as always, the trailer-commercial-film-thingy for Aarhus Festuge. This year, I joined the effort way more than last year:

I also made and Activity/Coloring Book for all of the kindergartens in the city, as well as a pixie-book to help calm children about getting anesthetized, and a bunch of other stuff, which I will link to here once it surfaces online - I'm looking at you Lego Batman! :)

More commercials!

Just to try to keep up with it all, here are a couple of commercials I worked on recently.

Ta' Cyklen! (I did all design, layout and animation)

Chefen er en guttermand... (I did all animation from the Badminton Scene through to the end. Fun fact: the voice of "chefen" (the boss) is the voice of my boss)

Out there

I have now been working in the industry for well over a year. One thing that has become clear to me is the fact that I am not able to show off as much of my work as when I was just a student. For instance, I finished animation on episodes of LEGO Elves season 2 a year ago which have just recently premiered. But, enough time has passed that I thought I would collect a few bits of what I have been doing which are out there right now! Commercials are an expendable commodity and their screen life is often shorter than that of movies in the cinema, so a lot of my work have already been shown in TV and on the web and taken down again, but here's some of what, as of writing this, is still showing.

All animations for this app-comic (requires Flash Player). You click the little movie symbols when they appear in a panel to see the films:

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE SHANGHAI-MODERN APP-COMIC

Layout and all animation on commercial for Hoptimist Supporters

All animation on this commercial for Femmøller Efterskole introducing their new 3D-line

Bits of animation on this (by far not the best Lego Elves Webisode in my opinion but then again, it's for 8-year-old girls. There will be others which feature way more of my animations to come)

The Great Harlot And The Beast

Things have been moving fast for me over the last three months. I have landed a one-year contract as an animator at JaFilm, a great (mainly) 2D animation company located in Aarhus, which has kept me very busy, and I have moved back to Viborg (from Paris) to live with my girlfriend.
All of this means that I completely forgot to write about one very important movie: my graduation film, "The Great Harlot and the Beast". Here it is:

I worked as story- and character developer, animation lead, sound supervisor, and animation production manager. As you can see, the film has been staff picked by Vimeo, however, the thing it's been picked for which I'm the most proud of so far, is a screening at the 2015 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the biggest animation film festival in the world. Other festival screenings include the Festival Alto Vicentino in Italy as well as the Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival.

Internship at Mac Guff Ligne

 

The view from the studio terrace

Recently, I finished a 3.5 month internship at Mac Guff Ligne in Paris, France. It is a huge studio and I was in their commercial department, working on a pilote for a (potentially feature lenght) 3D production. I mainly did storyboarding and digital layout, setting up cameras, timing shots and movements. I also did some tests for the animation and rigs. This included animating different cycles, takes, and even a basic animation run-down of the entire film so that the digital layout could work as an animatic presentable to the client.
How much of my work will see the light of day is a question of where the client wants to take his project but the studio seemed happy with my work. I can, however, show you this little photo from my work station; appearently my analogue approach to storyboarding raised a few eyebrows.

I am back in Denmark for now in order to attend my final exams and graduate from The Animation Workshop.

I Have Started A Webcomic!

I am currently interning at a company in Paris. The cultural differences between Denmark and France often make for some pretty comedic observations. This sparked the idea of a webcomic about some of my ironic endeavors in everyday life.
You can check it out here - there's already a dozen posts to look through!

Whole

Better (2 months) late than never.
Here is the final National Danish Film School animation graduation movie, "Whole", which I did some of the animation on. The director, William Reynish, is a very talented man who thrives on impulse, which means that a handful of the shots I've animated got cut from the final movie -- as is to be expected, and to the benefit of the overall story- and entertainment value of the film. The film has been very well recieved: It's been featured on shotoftheweek and staff picked by Vimeo while the film magazine Ekko wrote: "brilliantly told through simpel yet visually impressive 3D-animation" (5/6 stars).

(English subtitles (CC) avaible in the Vimeo player)

Since we last spoke...

I have to stress, the rate with which I have been updating my blog lately far from reflects how much has happend over the last 6 months. Here's a few high lights.

I am currently neck-deep in animation production of one of the bachelor films at The Animation Workshop, the tragicomic 3D shortfilm, Marionette [working title]. You can follow the progress by following the link to this blog. The movie will premiere January 2015.

Work-In-Progress Looktest from the film

Testing the animation...

On another note, I have spend 2 months this winter at The Naitonal Danish Film School, helping one of the aspiring animation film directors, William Reynish, on his bachelor film, the psychedelic 3D short film, "Whole". The movie is set to premiere in the early summer of 2014, so it will be available shortly. In the meantime, have a look at my Showreel of March 2014 for a few sneak-peek playblasts from the film.

End Year Exam Assignment: A Phone Call

This is the assignment I made for my 4th semester exam. We had 4½ days to create a 5-7 second shot of a man in front of a computer, getting a phone call, and reacting to it. We had the choice between several pieces of "imaginary" dialogue which could be said in the phone; I chose one, where my main character is told he has won the lottery.
We also had to create a backstory for our character, which would influence the acting in the shot. My character is a man with money problems who works in an office by day and as a wrestler by night to make ends meet.
I am pleased with the result and it was a fun short shot to work on.

Acting: Interaction

This is my last one-shot based school assignment. In it, I had to make two characters interact, doing either a handshake, a hug or a kiss; I went for the latter. It could still use a lot of polish but if I chose to put in extra work, it will probably have to wait, since I'm currently fed up with this particular transgender abomination of a rig. Next up, actual movie making! :D

Dialogue Acting

This was an exercise in acting to dialogue. It is my first attempt ever at both lip-sync and responsive interaction between two characters in 3D animation. Though it could have been more polished, I am very pleased with the result and the overall animation style (realistic yet toony enough to fit the characters) is what I was aiming for.

Mid Year Exam Assignment

My mid year test (or "exam"), a bit of karate animation done in 3-4 days though we had 5 days... I guess this means that either I could have been more ambitious or that I'm just faster than I thought. We will see how it is graded next week. Thanks for watching.

Showreel, January 2013

My showreel for the 3rd semester of the Character Animator education at The Animation Workshop. As always, every piece of product I've created during school hours over the last half year is in this in cronological order; Sorry for the bouncing balls... enjoy the music instead!

(Just to follow up on my last blog post, the last animation ("Pantomime Acting: Conductor") is what the Facial Exercise was for.)

3D Facial Exercise: A Take

This is a quick change of expression focusing on facial features. It was an exercise within an exercise and I now have to apply what I've learned from this to the other (longer) shot I'm currently also working on. Stay tuned...

Daisy Chasing A Butterfly

This is my basic 4-legged walk cycle and my 4-legged run cycle combined. The point of the assignment was to learn how to export/import cycles in Maya, make a trasition from one cycle to another (and to a halt), and discover the benefits of Animation Layers. I think the physical aspects of the animation are OK considering how toony the rig is, and I think the small acting works surprsingly well considering that none of it was planned out.

Basic 4-Legged Walk

This is Daisy the Cow walking on a treadmill. It was great fun to create this cycle and translating all of our real life reference videos and anatomy lectures to a rig this toony was very exciting. She does walk in space just as nicely as she does on this clunky treadmill and I will prove it once I combine this cycle with a runcycle and some acting. Stay tuned...

Basic 8-Legged Walk

Just a quickie: A basic 8-legged walk cycle of a spider. Before he ended his three week stay at our school, Alex Williams had a couple of hours to do whatever; he chose to do a lecture on insect movement and, by the end of it, I had this.

Action Animation: "Parkour"

Evidence A-Z that advanced movement calls for precise planning and pre-visualization. I'm still not sure just what the first part of the movement is supposed to be and the second part took on a life of its own and decided what it wanted to be next. Anyway, the result is not terrible and I had some fun. The end.

Maya Basics: "Lift"

This is my first attempt at creating an animation of a lift and using constraints in Maya. Hogan, with his primitive robot/puppet design and rig, is not a forgiving character when it comes to physically realistic animation but I am still rather pleased with the result. I think the box has a good weight and the animation is polished enough that the big box fits is his grasp without going through his body, arms, hands, and the ground.