Dark Days

My last week in Funcom didn't turn out as expected.
Yesterday morning the company announced that they had to cut 20% of the staff and our main office here in Oslo was hit the hardest.
It was incredibly sad to see so many of my extremely talented friends and colleagues one by one getting the news that they had to leave. And the messages kept ticking in on Facebook throughout the evening.
I wish them all the best for the future!
I wish Funcom good luck too...

The official press release can be found here.

Leaving Funcom

Everything comes to an end.
It's four years (and two days to be excact) since I started working as a concept artist in Funcom. Monday I handed in my resignation and in two weeks today I'll have my last day here.
The first concept I did in Funcom was an alien-mushroom-thing for the Anarchy Online expansion pack Lost Eden where I ended up designing the entire mothership interior. I also did a few little things for Conan inbetween.
Then finally production started on The Secret World during the summer of 2006. It's been fun to follow the project from the beginning, see the team expand from just a few people and to work with such a bunch of great people.
I have a note on my wall which I believe I wrote during our very first official TSW meeting. On top it says KICKAZZ in big red letters, a keyword which still is being frequently used to describe the game. I wish my team and the project all the best. And I certainly hope it will be really KICKAZZ.
So what's next for me?
I'll return to movies and animation - which is closer to my heart I guess. The place is Storm Studios where I will be a part of the art department together with some extremely talented friends of mine.
Storm Studios did Norway's first CG-feature Free Jimmy which was released in 2006. They did special effects for some of the recent most successful Norwegian movies like Max Manus and Død Snø (Dead Snow). They also produced and did the effects for Peter & The Wolf which was awarded with an Oscar for the best animated short last year.
I'm really looking forward to it. I'm sure it's going to be great fun!

Super

Here's another book cover from me.
This is for Norwegian author Endre Lund Eriksen's latest which is called Super and it has just been published by Aschehoug in Norway.
(And, yes, the Kill Bill reference is intended. ;))
Hope you like.

The Secret World Teaser #2 Storyboards

(And post number 100 on this blog! Yey!)
I did the storyboards for the second TSW teaser and again I grabbed some screenshots from it and compared it to my storyboards. And they match up pretty well (apart from the train scene which wasn't executed the way I intended, but that's not a part of this selection anyway).
I've mixed boards from several parts of the process. Some are coloured (we ended up colouring the entire storyboard for this teaser), some are rougher and some, like the last two, are from the very first super rough draft. In fact, that she fires the gun was later removed, but made its way back into the final cut. Enjoy.

The Secret World Concept Art #1

Since Funcom just published a few of my concepts for our game, The Secret World, I might as well throw them in here too.
There's not much I can say about them except for that they're relatively old.
If you haven't already, do drop by the game's website for more info on the game, more concept art, new screenshots and a forum - which always is a lot of fun to read.

The Secret World Teaser #2

The second teaser for Funcom's The Secret World is out.
I did the storyboard on this one as well based on a short synopsis from director Ragnar Tørnqvist.
Designs were done in Funcom as well as the sound. Digic did the modelling and the animation.
Enjoy.



Edit: Watch it in higher resolution here at GameTrailers.com.