MoCCA Festival NYC 2009

This summer I was in New York at the annual MoCCA Festival. It’s a cartoon festival, with visitors and exhibitors from around the globe. I was representing Storm, exhibiting some of our work. But I was also there to learn about the industry and look for talents. Before I went, I thought I was a cartoon-geek, but being there, I felt kind of misplaced. Some of those people really live for cartoons! It was a great experience, and I met very friendly, interesting, strange and talented people. You can see sketches of some of them here. I also took time to see a lot of NY - that city takes my breath away! This night-shot is from the top of The Empire State Building. I’ll be posting more NY-photos in my PhotoFun-gallery.

Kutoppen Theme Park

After years of planning, Kristiansand Zoo finally opened the Kutoppen/Cattle Hill park summer 2009. 8000 People attended the opening! Kutoppen/Cattle Hill is a Norwegian 13×7 min animated TV series. I was art-direcing and co-directing the show, and also led the group that developed the plans and designs for the theme park. It’s the first time I’ve designed actual buildings. We had to take into consideration issues like ventilation and access for wheelchairs - unusual limitations for me. Here you can see the result for yourself.

Kuraffen, Fantorangen & friends

It’s funny how the strange animals Rasmus Sivertsen and I created for NRK’s Children’s-TV in 2002 have taken on lives of their own. They were just meant to be strange mutated creatures in the original 10 sec animated intro. The intro ran every day for six years! My good friend and colleague Stig Saxegaard did a great touch-up on the designs in 2008, and the characters reappeared in the intro which replaced the original. By then, the characters had their own magazines, books, CDs, websites. Now they’re appearing as muppets in their own TV-shows. NRK bought the whole concept from day one, so It’s totally out of my control. But although I would have liked to have some royalties here, I must say it’s quite cool to have been giving birth to such a successful concept. Here you can see what they originally looked like.

Krüger & Krogh

Our graphic novel-project is slowly moving forward. Bjarte has done a fantastic job on the first draft, and about 35 pages have been sketched out. But we’re still working on the script, so don’t start looking for it on Amazon just yet…

Norsk polarhistorie/Norwegian Polar History

I’ve been doing multiplane illustrations for thie documentary series about Norsk Polarhistorie. The illustrations fill out the holes and strengthen the story where photos or film were missing or didn’t do the job. Fun and fascinating project directed by Håvard Jenssen and produced by Videomaker. Some of the stories are unbelieveable. It’s amazing how some of our forefathers managed to explore, conquer and actually make a living in the polar regions. Norsk polarhistorie premiered on NRK April, and will be out on DVD in the fall.

Viborg Animation Workshop lectures

Viborg Animation Workshop is not a workshop at all, but a very impressive college. It’s beautifully situated in central Denmark. May 2009 I was there for a week, teaching sculpting - of all things! Knowing the professional level of the school is very high, I was a little worried since I’m not even near doing sculpting on a daily basis. I decided to focus on the importance of having a strong sense of shape, whatever we decide to do in this industry - and how sculpting is an incredible way of becoming conscious of shape. We looked at hundreds of examples of wonderful sculptures - from Donald Duck to Rodin. All the students got to do their own maquette in Super Sculpey, which was a lot of fun. See some of their work here!

Max Manus

Storm Studios won the Norwegian award for best visual effects for the work we did on Max Manus - based on the true story of the Norwegian WWII partisan Maximus Manus. I reconstructed detailed blueprints for the ship D/S “Donau” which plays a prominant part in the plot. The ship was modelled in Maya and beautifully intergrated in the film by the CGI-people and compositors at Storm Studios. The film premiered in December 2008, with prominent war heroes and the Norwegian King and Queen present. So cool! It’s been a major success at the box office, and is already the third most seen Norwegian film ever!!

Kurt blir grusom

The animated feature Kurt blir grusom/Kurt turns Evil premiered October 31. 2008, and I was very proud of the result. Although it has a low-budget feel to it, I think it has a lot of qualities, and it feels fresh and original in it’s genre. I think we pretty much managed to do what we set out to do. The designs are quite daring, as we wanted them to be. On some characers I guess they’re too experimental, but that’s what you get for taking chances. It was a very linear production. Once a modelsheet was approved, the character was created based on that, and there was really no turning back. Unfortunately it’s fallen a little short at the boxoffice, making it only a moderate commercial success.

Click here to see some of my artwork!

Blaatt Lerret, April 9. 2008: I did A talk on the production design in Kurt blir Grusom/Kurt Turns Evil at Parkteateret in Oslo. I was on stage with director Rasmus Sivertsen and screenwriter Karsten Fullu. See the talk here!

Lectures at HIHM

During the autumn semester 2008 I also teached the soon to be bachelors of Interactive Media at the University College on Hamar. My subject was Concept Art, with emphasis on visuals, but also touching in on game design. It was a challenging but fun task. In the end I think many of the students produced some quality artwork as well. I wish them the the best of luck for the future! This goes for the faculty as well, which is quite young. I’m looking forward to see how it’ll evolve.

Barley Films in Oslo

My friend Barry O’Donoghue also visited Oslo this December. Barry is running the animation studio Barley Films in Dublin. Barry is known to be very fund of everything arctic, so we fed him whale beef and walked for hours in the freezing Norwegian winter. In his suitcase he brought his very interesting script and teaser for Barley Films’ animated feature Little Caribou which is in development. I’m very much looking forward to that one!