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.

2011

North Korea - October 2010

In October I went one week to North Korea.
Needless to say it was an experience out of the ordinary and a trip I will never forget.
As always I took thousands of photos. Below I've posted 15 of them.
In case you are interested I have a lot more photos in my collection on Flickr with comments and all. There you'll also find photos from my stay in China (Beijing and Dandong) the days before and after my trip to North Korea.
And before you ask: Yes, it is possible to travel to North Korea - unless you're a journalist or from South Korea that is. I went with Koryo Tours which I would highly recommend.
Enjoy.