Before the weekend

I actually did some drawings recently!

Hope everyone who reads this are well and happy.

F

SONG OF THE SEA

It's been a little over three years since I did my internship at Cartoon Saloon. Back then I got the chance to read the first script for Song of the Sea - Last Monday we started animation production in Nørlum.

We've had a great start and I hope to get into a rhythm of posting here on a weekly basis.

I hope that you are as excited about following the project in its making as I am about being a part of it. Feel free to spread the word and share the links from the above text.

- Frederik

Hi everyone!
The Theory and Thoughts posts that I like to do are from now on posted on the Nørlum blog. Follow this link to read this Mondays theory and thoughts about Animation work flow.

On this blog I will keep on posting sketches and things not corporate enough for the company site! Sketches like the ones below!

F

Designed girl 3.6b

So, it seems that some people are visiting this place once in a while still!

I thought that that called for yet another post to celebrate that.

This is a drawing I did about a year back. I is on my desk waiting to be colored.

Let's see about that!

Until next time.

Child Rights Governance Film - Save the Children

This is one of the earliest character concept sketches from our latest film for Save the Children. The character is The Ombudsman, who is installed in a state to make sure Children's Rights are implemented and protected.

To the left is the final design for The Ombudsman that was in the film.
Some slight changes in color and design!, but I think I created a strong base for the design.
The final design was carried out by Kristoffer W. Mikkelsen, who we had the great pleasure to have work with us for a couple of months. This LINK will take you to his blog, where you can learn more about him and his great work.

The film can be seen here: Child Rights Governance

It is created for internal use in Save the Children across its many organizations in different countries. The intend is to gather all its branches around a common understanding of how Save the Children plan to secure children's rights.

It was a complex assignment that took months of work and left us with a lot of concept art that we would like to share.
If there are any wishes (out there) about what I should focus a post around, please feel free to voice it here. Be it production process, from concept to final design or how we create a film like this or any other subject, I'm up for it.

DREAM - High Council sketch

It's been way too long since I posted anything in here and I have actually been very productive! Not good enough! So today I'd like to share this sketch I did last night. It's for our project DREAM. A Transmedia science-fiction adventure in development. If you'd like you can learn more about the project here: DREAM-equilibrium.com
DREAMs site is in development as well, but we'd like to share the artwork and other pieces of development sooner than later to give whoever is interested insight into the project. Hopefully it will be a great experience to follow the project and its profile develop.

Ambitions - Part 1 - The Teaser to Insight!

After a few months of internal debate, a journey to Estonia and extensive field testing, I finally feel ready to share my thoughts on ambitions.

Ambitions play a core part of the work I do and my thoughts circle around the subject a lot. About a month ago I started to boil down my thoughts on how I work with ambitions to its essence. The outcome is the equation depicted below:

I will leave this open for you to think about. Don't despair though, part 2 is already in its making!

The Huge Violent Man vs Sophie: The Attack!

Change of events.

We're at the moment configuring our public profile as Nørlum and this takes a bit of back and forth.

The back and forth in the situation I'll explain about now is this: We wanted to streamline any information from us through our company website. This meant that this blog would go inactive and all future posts would be posted and read at the company blog. We've had some discussions about it and have decided to keep on blogging through blogspot. We'll have a newsfeed on our website referring to any activity on either of our blogs.

We'll create a blog for each project we find to have valuable thoughts to share within. I'll list the company blogs in the side of this blog should people wish to have a look.

This blog will remain my personal place to think out loud about animation and anything related. I just had a look at the stats for this blog and realized that people are actually stopping by still! It's been a long slumber, but as I stated in the post below, I am ready to take it up again and share my experiences and thoughts with those of you stopping by.

You, as a reader, have the opportunity to influence the discussions I hope to get going in here. Don't be shy to ask me to talk about a certain subject or issue, or critique or comment some of your work.

I hope to see you all keep stopping by. I am at the moment finishing up an application for our project DREAM. I'll hand that in this Thursday and then I'll launch this blog again with an interesting post. The subject must for now remain super confidential.

Best of thoughts and thank you for reading.

NØRLUM

I co-founded the content producing animation company NØRLUM in the beginning of 2010. I am the CEO, Creative Producer of the company and in the past year of running the studio with Jeanette Nørgaard, I have gained a lot of experience that I would like to share.

I will beging blogging again, sharing my thoughts on animation and company related matters that I find interesting. I will do so at our company blog: NØRLUM NEWS

Check out our website here: NØRLUM that can also lead you to the blog. I hope to see you stop by! Best of thoughts. Frederik.

Running Indian: Skin Color Test

I just finished the coloring of his skin and the tones I had picked out and animated. I like how the forms animate in color, but I am not convinced this is how I should do it. I think the lightest skin tone on the legs and belly confuses more than they do any good, so I am doing a pass where I take them down to the mid-tone brown.

All in all a good test and a nice preview to how it will look when the coloring is done.

Running Indian: Animation

About a month ago I finished the first pass on this animation. The first pass took about half a days work. I finally had some time today to continue my work on it.
Today I've straightened out some arc issues and I feel it's ready for me to move along.

I did a fast color pass on the legs and feet to experience if the kick forward will flash or disappear in the entire shape. It is through color and value that I would like to make this clear as much as in silhouette.

Here's the linetest

Here's the color test

I was positively surprised with the colortest and I believe it will be possible to find the right color for underneath his feet to have them stand out, yet not flash. I set the colortest up against another background than white to ease the eye as it will be when a real background is made in the same value as the blue I chose.

Running Indian: Thumbnails

Some time ago I did a drawing of an indian man. I, along with my mother, thought that this was a very successful drawing and I really wanted to take the character further and use him for some animation. The drawing can be seen further down the page.
At first the idea was to do a close up scene with him using the drawing as a keyframe to get started. However, the God of Doodles had another plan! While doing a playblast of a scene for Cartoon Saloon I started to sketch him in a full-out run. The sketch had a good raw energy to it (first one was the one down in the right corner) and I kept on going almost keying out the poses for the run.
I did the sheet in about half an hour, threw down a few notes, scanned them in and started working them over in TV-Paint adjusting them for animation.
I love the feeling of being on a roll putting every line down in just the right manner. (Not every line maybe...look to the lower left corner) Feeling the flow of what the drawings would be like in motion.
when I sketched these out I tried to have in mind all the time how to take it further than a simple generic run. How to add an interest to every sketch, while still having it compliment the previous ones. When every sketch is strong enough on its own to show what's going on, then the foundation for an appealing animation is laid out.
Going into the first pass on the animation the drawings will have to be adjusted to unfold an overall pleasing flow playing out the motion intended. This can be a very hard compromise, I think. Maintaining the uniqueness and strength of the sketch while toning it down to be a part of the continuity is a delicate process. In the end it should only make the scene better, so the compromise should be to strengthen the animation without taking too much away from the single frames.
Next post I'll show how I am trying to get through this process safely with strong drawings together making a strong animation.
As always I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter, so please don't hesitate to leave a comment, thanks.

Another scene in the bag!

Above clip is copyright property of Cartoon Saloon

(Text incoming)

Seanduine silhouette animation

Here are the two first scenes I have animated for the short film, Seanduine, accompanying an old Gaelic folk song. The song is about a young woman marrying an old man for his gold. My classmate, Louise, animated the old man chasing the donkey in the bottom scene.
Enjoy!

(The clips above and below are copyright property of Cartoon Saloon)

New found love for drawing and Photoshop

I did a quick sketch of an indian yesterday and had a strong urge to color it, so I did! I am currently planning the animation I want to do with this shot and I am looking very much forward to see these colors in motion.
I have never really done much in color, but I am starting to get a glimpse of the incredible possibilities this aspect of the media holds in store. What I find particularly interesting and what I will try and explore with this scene, is first off how the shadow layers on the basecolor can be used to define and enhance both depth and form and second how textures, here the markings on his face and body, can add another dimension of detail and believability of form.

Below the finished picture is a breakdown of my process. It goes from the rough sketch and step by step, simplified a little, to the end result.

Enjoy!

Drawing for animation

For the past three years I have tried to in cooperate drawing successfully into my workflow when approaching a scene. It is not up until recently that I have started to feel in control of both the animation and the drawing aspect of the scene and make them go hand in hand as I believe they should for a scene to breathe organically.
Either the drawings turn stiff in the attempt to maintain the character model, the animation gets compromised, because it is adjusted to fit the drawings or it simply takes too long to draw the frames to keep a healthy continuity going for the animation. These have been the problems I have run into during my self-study and now feel I am starting to shake off. What have helped me in this process is what I would like to share in this post.

What I first off had to realize was that the animation and overall feel of the scene and character has to be priority number one. Everything else should be in the scene to support this. To be able to support an overall feel of a scene I have to know what that feeling is and break it down as simple as possible.
For example the scene I did called 'the old couple' had one keyword to the entire scene; joy. Every drawing in this animation should depict this feeling. This approach brought something into my animation that I had not been able to bring earlier. I can best describe it as my intention and emotion for the scene getting integrated in the 'masses' (the characters) I animate. The reason I say masses is because without the transfer of emotion and intend they are exactly that, masses. They only become characters in my eyes when they appear to have a will of their own. I think I brought some will to the characters in this scene by not trying to control it entirely, but letting it play out with the the clear emotion of joy in mind while creating it. Too much control over a scene will in my experience hinder the characters in it becoming actual characters. Let them surprise you and take the scene to another level, where you bring them life and they in return turn to life as unique creations rather than an empty shell, a thought of what they should be.
I used a different approach on how to implement the drawing aspect for this scene which I think worked really well for me. I told myself repeatedly that no drawing was tied down before the part of the animation it supports is working as I intended it. Even a storytelling drawing is only two frames in your scene! I benefited a lot from this way of thinking about it.

Distortion is necessary to make a scene work. It took a lot of personal struggle to begin to grasp this and how to implement it naturally into my work. I find that it has to be controlled through drawing. I tended to get scared of 'ruining' the design of a given character in my animation and it turned out as a string of illustrations lacking believability and move too mechanically. A thing that helped me start to push this issue aside was to think of where to implement changes of shape into my scenes. To see a breakdown or extreme as a chance to bring in a unique shape for the mass animated works well for me. Do not think of the breakdown or extreme as a the middle shape between the keys you might be animating to. These are great opportunities to push your characters model around and be imaginative about it. I try to have fun instead of feeling restrained basically, which is harder than it sounds. With this approach I find that a lot of the drawings in the animation get to be unique while they still serve their role as frames in a scene. I find that animation and drawing go well together this way since the drawings now bring interest to the animation and compliment the it better. There will be more interesting movement through the change of shape and less straight-forward in-betweening which in the end will bring a more interesting look to your scenes.

It is important not to let a single drawing stall you and ruin the continuity in your work. I find that if I am having trouble with drawing a frame in my animation it is because I am unsure what is happening in the animation. I then either re-evaluate what I planned for the animation, get really rough with it and try to hit something that animates with the surrounding frames or simply leave it to come back to. For me it is really important not to get stuck since I forget my priorities and get lost in the drawing aspect of the scene, which will in the end ruin the scene.

Drawing in animation for me is about adding finesse and characteristics to the scene and I want to add it from the beginning. This is hard, but I am truly pleased that I do not settle for anything less.

Here's a link to the scene I mention with the old couple : http://frederik-villumsen.blogspot.com/2009/03/one-week-of-1st-pass-animation.html
and a link to the thumbnailed golden poses for the scene: http://frederikvillumsen.blogspot.com/2009/04/animation-sketches.html

Not all scenes are about great emotions and life and death though, and I think it is important to be able to take these grand thoughts down to a level where they can function in smaller and less grand scenes.
I recently did a short cycle scene for Cartoon Saloon, where I think the drawing is a good example on how I like it to be for animation. The character is riding on the back of a wild goat. There is not a clear emotional state of the character or at least it is not in focus, but every drawing is drawn with the action in mind and as first priority giving me a clear idea of where to push each drawing instead if letting it be its own.

(All pictures and animations in this post is copyright property of Cartoon Saloon)




Mike Nguyen has written a post I found very interesting. It is about distortion in animation and here is the link:
- http://rainplace.net/?p=270

Thank you for reading, I hope it has been of interest! You are very welcome to share your thoughts on the matter or simply comment on the post. I am always interested in input and hearing from like-minded people with a passion for animation.

Animation for the chorus

I was fortunate enough to get the chance to do the animation for the chorus of the Puc music video. I got a single key drawing to build upon and a take on the timing of the scene, but I had fairly free hands to make it work and that in a funny fashion.

Below is shown the drawings I did for the animation and the timing I ended up with. The cycle is repeated across the screen and it has two different jumps, similar in down and push-off, but different in its hang-time to contact.
(All pictures and animations in this post is copyright property of Cartoon Saloon)


I would also like to share the workflow I used for this scene. It was great fun cleaning the scene up by animating with pure shape instead of the usual linework. So, here's a little overview of how the drawings progressed.

Especially the pass from rough animation to filled color shape was fun. It offered an opportunity to push the shape language of the animation and really work on a flow that animated well as well as compliment the graphical edged style of the design.

Here's how it all looks when played out.

The animation has been approved and is moving into compositing soon, nice!

First Animation at Cartoon Saloon

I just did my first animation scene at my internship at Cartoon Saloon and luckily I have permission to share it on my blog! The scene was for a short music video called Puc, but unfortunately it got cut in the last review of the animatic. I'll be moving on to my next scene later today. It is great to get to do some animation and I am looking forward to help the guys out as much as I can while I am here.

The scene below is copyright property of Cartoon Saloon
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Character Concept development

I was asked to help design the characters for Paw Ravns graduation film. Paw is a student at The National Danish Film School studying to become a director for animation. I worked on and partially did the character designs for Paws mid-way film 'Nima' and I hope we can achieve something similar in quality this time.
I think it could be interesting to show every step of the way from the first rough ideas to the final designs that have to be done for the end of October. So here are the first sketches I have done for the character work. I did them all in the breaks I had yesterday while waiting to get some work approved for Cartoon Saloon.

Enjoy!