The Secret World Teaser #4

I completely forgot to post this when it was released back in August.
It's the last teaser I was involved in before leaving Funcom. On this one I did the storyboards only. The director originally wanted it all in one take - which was a bit of a challenge. But they seem to have abandoned that thought later in the process.
Enjoy!

Blåfjell 2 Concept Art

Gimpville did some effects for the Norwegian christmas movie "Blåfjell 2: Jakten på det magiske horn" (a.k.a. Magic Silver 2) which has just been released in the theaters over here.
We primarily did effects for two sequences in the movie.
For the first sequence containing some animated holograms telling an ancient story I did the designs and storyboarded the animation before doing an animatic on top of the live action plates.
The second sequence was a two and a half minute long underground mine cart chase where we did the entire mine before comping in the two main characters riding the mine cart in front of a green screen.
Footage from both sequences can be seen in this trailer.
Here are some of the concepts I did for the movie.

Apotekforeningen - Bus

Here's my second attempt on CG-animation, the third spot in a series of four Gimpville just did for the Norwegian Pharmacy Association.
(The previous spots can be seen below - and the fourth and final one, animated by Kjetil Kulander, can be seen here.)

Marg & Bein: Korte Grøss

Here's yet another Marg & Bein cover. It's the 21st book in the series - which means my 21st cover, but it's the first book to contain several short stories by the regular three authors Arne Svingen, Ingunn Aamodt and Jon Ewo. It is also in a slightly different format than the previous books.

Apotekforeningen - Elevator

The previous post included my very first comp.
And here is my very first piece of CG-animation!
Gimpville is currently doing four spots for the Norwegian Pharmacy Association. The two first were just released and I animated the elevator scene in the one below.
Due to a fairly tight deadline I pretty much had to learn by doing, but I'm quite happy with the result after all.
I also did concepts and designs for these spots. I have posted a selection of them below.
Don't forget to check out the other spot as well, animated by Kjetil Kulander.
Enjoy!

Hodejegerne VFX

Hodejegerne is doing very well in the Norwegian cinemas at the moment. Gimpville did quite a few effects for it and here is a clip showing what we did. Some spoiler shots are excluded.
This movie also happens to include my very first compositing work ever to be released - which is the last shot in this clip with the garbage truck. :)
Enjoy.

Nille Skole

Here's a concept I did for Gimpville's third Nille spot. Nille is a Norwegian variety store chain and the spot can be seen here.

32nd World Wide SketchCrawl - NYC

Yesterday Hanne and me came back from 12 nights in New York (expect some photos soon). The 23rd of July the 32nd SketchCrawl took place so we joined the NYC group in High Line Park. It was an extremely hot day so we eventually moved indoors to Chelsea Market for a while before we left the group a bit early to do touristy things. It was great fun meeting the NYC SketchCrawlers and this is what I managed to jot down in my sketchbook that day.

The Secret World Teaser #3

It is finally released, the third CGI teaser for Funcom's The Secret World, the game I worked on for several years.
This teaser was actually finished about two and a half years ago and has been on hold since then. Digic did the modeling and animation as usual. Simon Poole at Funcom did the fantastic sound design.
I began working on it nearly three years ago and like on the previous two CGI teasers (here and here) I also storyboarded this one. In addition I also designed the monster (and, er, the restroom...) The monster was based on an even earlier and already published concept I did for the game:

Daily Sketch #34

Oh well... daily sketch...?
It's been two years since I last posted a daily sketch on this blog.

Beat.no

Here's the latest Beat.no spot which is just released!
When director David Reiss-Andersen from Pravda came to us with this project in May we at Gimpville pushed for a traditionally animated approach. Fortunately he thought it was a very good idea and I got to do some good old hand-drawn animation again.
I started off doing some concepts and towards the end of May we spent one morning at Danseløvene dance school here in Oslo filming the talented dancer Meriam doing some nice moves for reference.
I made a rough cut of the material and started animating the entire thing in TVPaint. Simon Dahle Nyhus helped me out animating the fancy rim lights and cleaned up my rougher lines.
I animated the whole thing in about four weeks - and here it is.
I've also included a progress clip showing the reference material, a rough version, the cleaned up animation and the final spot.
Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did doing it. :)

Pillow Hat

Just a quick sketch I did a few weeks ago of my girlfriend Hanne wearing a funny pillow on her head. :)

Eigil

My former colleague Eigil left Funcom today, and even though me myself left the company back in 2009 I just had to do the goodbye card for him when being asked.
So here is my interpretation of the king of shaky face photos.
Best of luck to Eigil and the rest of the great guys who just started up Blink Studios!
I smell success!

New Alvin Pang

The third book about Alvin Pang has just been published here in Norway. It's called "Alvin Pang og hva foreldre gjør når du sover" (Alvin Pang And What Parents Do When You Sleep), it's written by Endre Lund Eriksen and published by Aschehoug.
I did 28 illustrations for this including the cover. Here are a few of them.

31st World Wide SketchCrawl, Oslo

31st World Wide SketchCrawl took place on April 16th. It was a nice and sunny day in Oslo and about a dozen sketchers showed up. Here are some pages from my book.
The official Oslo thread can be found here.

Cody

Einar A. Lund's first book in the Rottekrigen-series was recently published by Gyldendal here in Norway. It's called "Codys arv" and I did the cover illustration for it. Here it is.

VIC - Gathering Brands

Gimpville did a commercial for VIC which was released about a month ago.
I did the storyboards and the concept art for this one.
Watch the commercial here.

Artists Help Japan

"On March 11, an 8.9 earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan near the city of Sendai. The earthquake generated a massive tsunami with waves as high as 30 feet, resulting in floods, fires and the closure of airports and transit systems. Hundreds of people were killed, and homes, fields and towns were flooded or destroyed.

Artists Help Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Fund is responding to the immediate needs of survivors as well as short-term to long-term recovery projects undertaken by the affected communities. Founded by Dice Tsutsumi, an art director at Pixar Animation Studios who was also behind 2008 Totoro Forest Project to help preserve Sayama Forest in Japan and Sketchtravel Project.

We are partnering with Give2Asia, which has a local team based in Tokyo to assess the current situation and to obtain more information on the needs of survivors. Give2Asia helped animation industry famous Totoro Forest Project efficiently send fund to Japan and has a great reputation when it comes to humanitarian efforts in Asia.

Please make a contribution today to help the survivors! And spread the word on your blog and facebook!!"

DONATE HERE

Artists Help Japan Blog

Bufdir: Sara

About one year ago, while working for Storm Studios, Endre Skandfer and myself started production on two shorts for Bufdir (a.k.a. Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs) to be screened in schools. The theme of the first film, Sara, was drug abuse in the family while the other one, Alex, dealt with psychiatric problems.
Endre directed both shorts while I storyboarded them and did the character designs. I animated a big part of the Sara film as well as drawing up many of the backgrounds for it. The budget was extremely tight so Sara was all done in a handful of weeks - if not less. For some of the backgrounds we even used storyboard frames which Endre improved with colors and textures.
I didn't get to animate on the Alex short though. It was impressively all done by Endre in one (!) week - animation, backgrounds, comp and all.
Despite the short time we had it was great fun to work with. It was pretty much exactly 10 years since Endre and me last worked together with animation. And seven years since I had animated anything myself. It was also my first attempt to work with the great animation program TVPaint - which I also had to learn during this production.
Sara can be seen here.
Below are line tests from two of the scenes I animated.

Statnett

Here's something else I've done in Gimpville recently. This is an ad for Statnett, the operator of Norway's main high voltage grid, and it was just published for print.
The image was based on a photo of an ice skater I was given and it's all painted in Photoshop.

Lotto: Drømmerekka

I have never posted anything I've worked on in Gimpville on this blog. So I guess our latest project could be a good start.
Three commercials for Lotto have just been released here in Norway (three more are on their way) and Gimpville did the visual effects on them. This mainly involved creating the city environment, which is all CG, and compositing the live action into it.
I designed the look of the city. I also did the mattepaint of the background elements which was based on some simple geometry.
Here's the first commercial (the other two can be seen here and here) followed by two pieces of my concept art showing a few approaches.
Finally I've posted my mattepaint of the background.
Enjoy! :)

30th World Wide SketchCrawl, Oslo

Saturday, 22nd of November 2011.
We met up in Oslo's Zoological Museum. Sketched there for a while before having a break in Tea Lounge nearby. We ended the SketchCrawl with dinner and drinks in Tekehtopa as usual.
Here are my sketches of the day. And some photos.