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.