An Update

So...I'm back in Norway! I left New Zealand September 15th to return to Norway and work the rest of my contract with HuHus remotely. Currently working on the children show Veggie Tales which is kinda cool.

My time onsite at HuHu in New Zealand has been really great. Made some awesome friends and the studio is a very nice place to work. New Zealand is also a truly beatiful country with the nicest people on the planet :)

Haven't been too much time lately to work on my showreel, but there's a couple of tests I've been working on during the past months that I will try to put up soon.

Cartoony - Breakdowns

Sorry for lack of posting lately, but here's the blocking breakdown pass (keys, bd's and inbetweens) on my cartoony animation test.

Feedback are very welcome.

Practicing cartoony animation

Alrighty. So, for ages I've been wanting to do some wacky cartoony stuff, but all kinds of other things has gotten in the way. Now, I've found some time to do it. I know this isn't the greatest gag/story in the world, but I just wanted to do something cartoony for the sake of practicing it. Here's my blocking pass (main keys/extremes only) of my first attempt.

Celebrating ONE year as an animator!

Exactly 1 year ago today, I planted my feet on German soil and started my first day as an animator. Woohooo!

It's been totally crazy and I've learned so much during this first year and met tons of awesome people.

I'm currently working at HuHu Studios in New Zealand and we're moving to London in January for new adventures.

Exciting times ahead :)

WOW!

Animation Mentor Summer 2008 Showcase

The Red Truck

Congratulations to Team Grojf for winning the FJORG competition at Siggraph. Their winning test, The Red Truck, is a stunning piece of emotional storytelling and animation, created under extreme conditions in 32 hours. Awesome!

Watch "The Red Truck" here

Sir Ian McKellen - On Acting

This may be old stuff to some, but still hilariously cool :)

Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Savages

Philip Seymour Hoffman talks about his part and acting in The Savages.

On structure


On the directors


On the script


On his role


On his co-stars

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Really inspiring lecture from Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch about achieving your childhood dreams.



There's a couple of really good quotes from this lecture that really stood out to me. "Brick walls are there to let us prove how badly we want to achieve something" and "'Luck' is where preparation and opportunity meets". Pretty cool stuff to keep in mind.

The Princess and the Frog

Yay! 2d features are back at Disney.

Workflows

I always find it very inspiring and useful to read about other animators workflows. At AM they showed us a bunch of different workflows and my current workflow is a mix of those. I think there's always something that can be picked up from seeing how others do things. Here's some workflows that I found on the net. If you read this and know about links to others that have posted their workflow, please shoot me an email :)

Anatomy of a shot - Kevin Koch
Reference footage and planning - Michael Makarewicz - Splinedoctors
Mike Walling Workflow
Keith Lango Pose to Pose workflow
Shawn Kelly Workflow
Turok Animation Workflow
Jacob Gardner Workflow 11 sec club test - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
Making of Alien Song - Victor Navone
TJ Phan Animation Workflow
Glen Keane Animates a scene

Inside Pixar Animation Studios

This is an older short documentary about Pixar, but still cool :) I never get tired of behind the scene stuff like this. Super inspiring.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Disney Animation Special from 1981

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

More quality online learning

It's awesome to see more quality online learning for animators is starting to pop up online.

David Weinstein's Digital Apprentice Workshop went online 4th of July and after a quick look at his site, it looks like a great addition to Jason Ryan's Tutorials and Keith Lango's Video Tutorial Service.

Animation is such a huge topic, so getting inputs and looking over the shoulder of different experienced animators are really valuable.

Check out the site. Looks pretty cool with (among other cool stuff) a video interview with the one and only Ray Harryhausen. Also, one of the animation tutorials are available free of charge :)

If you dream it - You can do it!

Awesome inspiring interview with Pixar animator Austin Madison.



Also, check out The Ending from CalArts 2006 Showcase (second film on the list) and Boy Meets Rex.

The Tale of Despereaux

I was so pleased when I saw the trailer for this movie. I've only heard great things about it, but watching the trailer made me think that maybe it's a good idea to stick around in Europe after all :) It looks awesome. It'll be Christmas for sure this year.

No charge for awesomeness

Well, I did pay $15 to see Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda yesterday, but it can be considered no charge for what we got in return. The movie will make you go blind from overexposure to pure awesomeness. Fantastic!

Jason Ryan Animation - The Basics

I've done all of the basics Jason Ryan tutorials and here's the Flipbook result of it :) Working in 2d is a lot of fun and it's amazing how much I feel that I've learned already from looking over his shoulder. I totally recommend it!

CG Excellence Award 2008

My short film, Forever Young is shortlisted for the CG Excellence Award at CG Overdrive in Singapore which takes place June 17th to 20th. It's such an honor to be picket together with fellow AM'ers Jure Prek with Crash and Anil Kapoor with Peppy, both awesome shorts!

Ramblings and more goodies

Wow. Time flies. Been quite busy the past month doing Jason Ryan tuts, 11 sec club and working away at HuHus, which by the way is still awesome. Learning tons on every shot and feel that I'm slowly moving forward. We're on our way into the winter here in New Zealand, but guess what, no snow! Woohoo. Can't really say I miss it. It's about 10-12 degrees celcius, which is kinda okayish for a winter :)

The big event lately has been the Jason Ryan site going live. And he's not letting us down. It's pure awesomeness. Doing the 2D Flipbook stuff really makes me feel like an animator and the most important thing that I get out of it at this stage, is that doing 2d forces me to think about the spacing at every frame. He's also big on opposite actions to get more entertainment into the animation. Great stuff! In addition to that, just peeking over his shoulder, getting into his mindset of how he animates, what he's thinking about and when, is invaluable.

Bobby Beck has posted a couple of really cool posts on his blog lately. Check out this squash and stretch video. Crazy stuff! He also shared some personal thoughts about your potential a few weeks back that I thought was spot on and super inspirational. He also have a follow up post, Positivity in the Workplace (scroll down a little) about how people found it hard to deal with his positive energy, which is just sad. Thank god he didn't manage to change. His energy is an inspiration which helped me a lot through Animation Mentor! To get a portion of the Boom-energy, check out the replay of the Webinar he did recently.

Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda is on its way. June 6! This movie looks awesome! There's a 2 min preview out and also a cool behind the scene clip just released. Tons of more Kung Fu Panda stuff here.

Carlos also keeps his blog going with lots of cool tips and thoughts. Check out his tips and tricks site! He also talked about 6 word stories a while back. "For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn" (Hamingway). That's efficient storytelling and puts "less is more" in perspective. More 6 word stories here.

Kevin Koch has a very good post about the talk by James Baxter, Pete Docter, Andreas Deja and Eric Goldberg about mentor ship in animation. Interesting thoughts. He also got a post about the importance of physics and how it can throw the audience off without really knowing why, but just feel that something is wrong. Newton rocks!