Graduation Film is out!

Our Bachelor film, "Under the Fold has been released!

It was a film we did at our third year in at the Animation Workshop. We are very proud of it! I was on the wonderful team of Bo Juhl, Sara Mai Olsen, Rune Rask, Thomas Vind Mortensen, Stine Fransen and Simon Lee Bresling. I worked on the story, as the Storyboard Lead, with the DLO and as an animator. I also did a bit of character design. Much of this can be seen on my "profesional blog." Or check out my "making of," for more eye-goodness:

The release of our film also means that I'm now a Bachelor of Arts in Character Animation! I've took my exam this month, after a half year as an intern at this project at Eyecandy Film in Copenhagen.

Some second year and summer stuff..

I've started at the 3rd year of the characther animation education now. It's alot of fun and work now that we're putting all our accumilated knowlegde of story, design and animation into working on bachelor projects in the form of 5 min short films. I'm at the short called "Under the Fold," which will be great!
Anyway, I wanted to post some of the things I did last year, but never got around to post.

This above is from an idea for a bachelor shortfilm I worked on before summer, but decided not to pitch due to the lenght of it. Instead I'm trying to write a short story out of the idea now.

The image above is from a pitch I did after summer, but which wasn't chosen. Oh well, I love the project I'm on now :)


...and some roleplay sketches ofcourse!

This last animation was the one I did as my second year exam. The task was to make a little story about two guys at a bar - one says something to the other, which results in a strong reaction from the other guy. I choose the reaction of paranoia.
This was the backstory I made for the shot:
Rob is working as a scientist at the local secret military base. Due to the pressure from work, he has begun to develop as strange phobic for the number two combined with red. All because of the operation called “red two,” a program to reveal dobbeltagents that have infiltrated their ranks.
After a long week of work, work that because of him have lead to the reveal of several dobbeltagents, he is at the local bar with his friend Dave, relieved.
But then Dave spots two hot women and whispers in Rob’s ear: “See those two in red?”
And Rob thinks, that “they” are there to get him.

Swordmaster the Hobbit

My roleplaying character, Belkar. Or, how he is dreaming of being, the little hobbit!
Tried to be a bit more saturated with the colours than I usually am. (But as I can see from my home computer, the saturation depends more on your screen than my choice of colors when I made the picture!)

Escape of the Wormbot!

Since the beginning of 2011, my class and the CGA class had been working in pairs of two to create a scene with a four legged creature of our own design. I was fortunate enough to be in group with Dennis Jensen - we go back all the way to the drawing academy. We designed the creature together. It should be something quite unique, so rather than going with a robot or organic creature, or have the legs placed under it, we did a mutated worm with robot legs placed ontop of it.
The poor thing was used in cruel experiments focused on creating a robot fuelled by the gasses of a mutated worm - but it escaped before they could finish it! Now, on a quest to find the worm family it was brutally taken from, it must journey... etc etc.

Dennis spend some weeks modelling, rigging and texturing the thing, and while I animated it, he created the background and finally all the light and render stuff.

Some Drawings

Here, some drawings from last half of 2010, primary from my sketchbook. I grew a bit tired of repeating the same style last summer, so I've been trying to draw some different.

This last one is a scene from our roleplay group. I post it in a rather unfinished state, because mistake after mistake with the inking took the motivation to finish it away.

Action!.. Shot

Its a dangarous thing - being a 3d model in my hands.

January Animation with Scenery and Lights

This was a though one, struggled alot with the program itself. It could be a rather frustrating experience, but what didn't I learn - and in the end: with great guidance from our teacher Michael Berenstein I finally got the animation back on track in the very last days. And well, it ended up okay!
Besides two weeks for animation, we've also been given time to compose and build the scene, add details and color to the rig (norman in my case) and finally put light on everything.

Trailer Project

Ever since the start of this semester our neighbor class "Computer Graphic Artist" has been working on the TRAILER PROJECT! Divided into seven groups, they've each gotten an old movie which they then have had to make a trailer of, with new design. In week 47 and 48 my class was then supposed to animate the their trailers, based on their animatics using their rigged models.
The CGA trailer I animated on, was based on the western "High Noon" now set in a caveman-like ancient evironment. Furthermore our trailer was a combination of 2d and 3d animation. I was in group with the CGA's Tommy, Tanja and Simon and Caroline, Carmen and Keld from my class.
Like the CGA's had divided roles, we should also choose a animation supervisor in our group. We divided it so that Caroline took care of all the paperwork and schedules, while I supervised the practical animation, which was alot of fun :) We also had Alex Williams as a general supervisor for the whole class.
I animated the following shots:


Everything was then colored, and the CGA's spend week 49 rendering everything. The final trailer looks like this:

I think the sum of all parts really came together in the end, I'm very happy about the done trailer :)
The other six trailers also turned out quite well. Take a stroll around on my classmates blogs and you'll see.

Daisy "Galloping"

Animation from week 44 when we had Sydney Padua (you can see her work here: http://sydneypadua.com/) teaching us four legged cycles. I choose to make a "galloping" cow. The way they run makes me wonder whether they're actually made for running after the way we've been breeding them for centuries.

Cycles

In week 40 and 41 we had walk and run cycles. We got alot of time just for the basic walk:

We didn't get much time for the characterwalk, so the next one is on thirds (ie I've only worked on every third frame), except for the legs. I followed the guide layed out for a flamboyant walk in Richard William's "Animators Survival Guide:"

Finally we got the task of doing a "basic" run:


This was the last we did with Erik Schmidt as a teacher, who had been guiding us into maya since we started this third semester.

Evil Minion Breakdown...

Poor Evil Master's Minion had failed his master, and now had to explain himself... But under the burning gaze of said evil master, who can explain themselves?

...Mercy your cruelness, mercy!

Flour Sack and Hogan Animations

As with the first weeks two weeks, week 37 and 38 consisted of more basic 3d exercises. Here's some of the flower sack animations I did:


I actually wanted to convey a bad feeling of panic in the last animation, not a humorous. But alas, when someone says it should've been falling pianos its hard not to laugh :)
And then "Hogan" - a model with all the traits needed to animate a human or humanoid.

First 3D Animations

Yes! The title speaks truth, I now find myself stumbling into an entire new dimension: the third!
Ofcourse, entering a new ground of animation means reentering the familiar ground of bouncing balls, thus this animation from week 35:


We had a short explanation of the basic modelling tools, the room above I've created myself.

In week 36 we had an already made model of a lamp handed out to animate:

CA 09's Animation Jam

Week 17 and 18... Animation Jam. Two rough weeks where we in groups of 3 should make a 30 second long movie (credits and title doesn't count). It wasn't the whole school with foreign directors that was making movies this time, but just my class supervised by Julia Bracegirdle. This meant alot of work and alot of discussion in the group about everything from overall plot to the placement of flowers. So it was great when the movie was done! I was in group with Stine Frandsen and Adam Boklund and we made the movie "The Slughter."

Julia had made some bags from which we should pick the stylistic theme, an emotion and a random word. We ended up with the theme, "Disney 1928-1932 combined with Gary Baseman," the emotion "fear" and the random word "wig." Gary Baseman is a modern artist which can't quite be explained, but his pictures can be seen here: http://garybaseman.com/
Disney from 1928-1932 is basically all the black and white shorts with Mickey Mouse.
We choose to let the Disney shorts be the inspiration for the animation, while the style of the design was taken entirely from Gary Baseman. These choices enabled us to focus on funny animations and interesting background compositions rather than realism, in other words it gave us alot of creative freedom.
We all worked on the characterdesign. I made these sketches:

After discussing the different ideas for the design we devided the characters, so that Adam made the final design for the old lady, Stine made the designs for the slugs and I made the design for the final monster.
As for the animation then I animated, cleaned and coloured the slug's running scene, the scene were it dodges salt and the final monster scene.
Otherwise I had fun making the style for the backgrounds. We had devided the backgrounds into tinyworld backgrounds, medium world backgrounds and huge world backgrounds (Though the last one was just a sky with clouds). I made the very first background in the movie, and the mediumworld background with the floating trees and the windmills. I also made a good part of the simple bacgrounds that was just colour.


The final film:

Slughter from Stine Agerskov Frandsen on Vimeo.

Layout Class With Lawrence

Week 16 was layout week with Lawrence, which primary consisted of good theory about composition and staging, less interesting practical studio rules for numbering cameramovements and backgrounds and ofcourse different assignments.

First assignment was to make a layout for the first act and scene of Hamlet. We needed to have the three guards and the dead king's ghost in the picture, and the style was to be realistic like Pinocchio, but we had otherwise rather free hands. Good shading and toning was essential.


Second assignment focused on camera movement: We should make the backgrounds and overlays for a Yogi Bear sequence already storyboarded. A zoom and a pan:

Yogi Bear Zoom from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Yogi Bear Pan from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

In the week's final assignment we were given rather free hands stylistically and settingwise. The title for the assignment was "Escape on rooftops," and it should both contain cameramovements and great layout. In pair of two we should make a little sequence of four backgrounds where a rough character should be escaping on rooftops. I teamed up with Bo. We got rather inventive with the style and setting. The escape was to be in a middleage-like city, but were the houses was build upon one another so that there would be different social lives at the different levels, with bridges and catwalks. So the rich people would live in the top. At the centre of the city there would be a giant castle, somewhat shaped like a big tree with small branches sticking out. I made these two backgrounds:

The sequence ended up like this:

Escape On Rooftops from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Dancing Hippos and Flying Mountaineers

In week 14 the Danish animator Christian Kuntz came to teach us dance animation for the week. After spending weeks trying to make animation with uneven and interesting pace, and lots of overlapping actions - having to animate strictly within a beat that should be hit with the movement was a challenge.
I choose the hippo from Fantasia and the beginning of the Michael Jackson song "Smooth Criminal." I once worked on a musictheater where we put up the stage for a so-called "Michael Jackson" ballet. I thought it was weird back then, but now that I've tried to make a hippo dance ballet to one of his songs, I can kinda see the idea.

Dance of the Hippo from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Ten seconds of animation was taking things a bit too far, so not everything is animated.

Christian Kuntz is a part of the four-man company "framebender," you can see some of their stuff here: http://www.framebender.dk/

In order to expand our capacities to make our own films, we spend week 15 being introduced to the editing program Adobe Aftereffects having Henrik B Clausen as a teacher. We did some small exercises and finally got the assignment to create something that moves really fast. Out of these two pictures:
http://www.canadasmountains.com/Java/columbola_pano.jpg
http://dhpersonal.com/images/desktops/2009-07-08pano.jpg
and photoshop and aftereffects I made this:

Untitled from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

TVPaint animation with Fabian

After the winterbreak in week 7 our lighttables and pencils were exchanged with computerscreens and tablets, so that we may animate on computer - still in 2D, we draw in the program TVPaint.
It fell upon the shoulders of Fabian Erlinghauser to introduce us to the program and more advanced animation during week 8 to 12. Fabian has among things supervised the animation in the Oscar nominated 2D feature "The Secret of Kells." I think Fabian left a really good impression on the class, and it seems we left quite a good impression on him aswell!

Week 8 was a relaxed getting-to-know-the-program week. I made a bunch of animations, some of the more interesting was these two:

Untitled from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Hogarth Take from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

The last upper animation was a so-called "take," with Hogarth from "The Iron Giant."

The assignment for week 9 was to let our character of choice be tempted by a valuable item, ponder upon wether he should take it, but leave it in the end. I learned a lot that week - mostly by my mistakes! I choose Roger from 101 Dalmations. While the initial key poses I did were fine, having Roger freeze into them killed the acting and made him look more like a posing model.

Untitled from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

So I went into week 10 determined to make something better than the Roger animation. The assignment was a setting where our character was sitting alone on a date, realising that she is not going to come! I choose Bernard as my character:

Bernard's Miserable Date from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Its a few too many things that's happening, but I think the animation is much more lively than the week before.

In week 11 it was time to make our characters speak. We could choose between two soundbits, which our animation then should centre around. My character was Sinbad from the dreamworks movie, and the soundbit is the voice of Gandalf:

Foolshope from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Its rather amazing how much more real the animation becomes, once it breaks the silence and actually says something. Again, a bit too many things is happening - and how should anyone know that its supposed to be a cookie jar he is holding?! But I like the animation.

The last week was about monologue, meaning we had to do two characters. I thought I was beginning to get a rather good idea of animation, I just put too many things into them, so I wanted to make something where I only tried to tell one or two things, rather than tree, four or five! I choose Kerchak and Kala from Tarzan:

Wanna toke? from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Four seconds with two characters was a bit much, so the animation is in a bit of an unfinished state. I think its some of the best I've done though, so I might finish it sometime.

All in all, it was five quite good weeks. I learned a lot, especially on the acting part of things.

Finally I will recommend a visit to http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/ - the place Fabian works. They got some really neat stuff going on with their experimentation of styles, especially the backgrounds in the short "Old Fangs" are very beautiful and not something I've seen before.

Popsickle Add, Midtyear Exam and Animation Jam

In week 4 we had storyboard with Tod Polson (www.todpolsonart.blogspot.com) who has been affiliated with the school for a good amount of years, especiallly helping out at the 3rd year bachelor films.
At first we were to make a 30 second animatic (or 25 since the last 5 should be reserved for a logo) for a Popsickle commercial, based on some work Tod already had done: http://todpolsonart.blogspot.com/2010/02/space-sicle.html
I made mine with Nicholaj and it ended up like this:



We made a another board of mastershots over our characters from "taste," but it seems the drawings is lost for the moment being..

In week 5 we had a midyear test exam, which basically just meant a week of animation without teacher. The assignment was to make a 5 second animation with the pink panther standing up and try to open a door without luck. The background was given to us.

Pink Panther Midyear Exam Animation from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Week 6... Now that was something. The school had a visit from 6 different directors which were to make 2 shorts each, with a group consisting of both the first and second year character animators and computer graphic artists. All the movies can be seen here http://animwork.dk/en/news.asp?AjrDcmntId=451
I was on Pritt Tender's movie. Basically he just threw out some ideas, designs and overall story, and then let us create all the fun and weird stuff that were going to happen and the ending. The two movies were to be connected to one, but otherwise we mostly worked in two groups, both using the first day to come up with things and make a storyboard and then the rest of the week to animate. The movie ended up as this:



I created the last scene. Since us 1st years hadn't been taught Tv Paint at that point, I created my scene on paper and then two second year students cleaned it up in Tv Paint. I think it has a certain charm in rough, so I'll post it as I made it aswell:

Scene 110 from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Basically I thought this should be a contrast to the rest of the movie - a moment of a certain grace coming out of - and into a rather mad and surreal movie. If we've had two weeks I would have made it at least 15 seconds, I think its hard for the viewer to catch all the small ideas that was in it in just 10 seconds.

Week 2 - Character Design

In week 2 we had character Design with Julia Bracegirdle. She put alot of focus on alternative methods of character design, and alternative character designs. The week started out with alot of focus at shapes; hence the first thing we made was shadowplays. This one was made by me, Kenneth, Benny and the intern.



Eventually we got around to creating a set of characters based on the short story "Taste" by Roald Dahl (he also wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). It is a rather curious story, and very well narrated since we received it in sound instead of text. You can read the story in very short format here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_(short_story) - if you don't want the ending spoiled then just read the two first parts.
While Julia suggested alternative methods to creating the characters, I really just felt like spitting out alot of different suggestions for the characters:

The characters physical appearance was not really described in the story, so we had alot of creative freedom with them - except for Richard Pratts lower lip and noose that was troughoutly and rather funny described when he tasted the wine. It was an easy decision to go for the monstrous Pratt. I think several of the Mikes would have worked, though in the end I thought that the one with big furrows on his forehead would suit Mikes unsecure and worried character best. My initial thoughts on Louise were that she should be the one we could feel sympathy for, since both Mike and Pratt was gambling about her. So the upper-second-from-the-left Louise was my first choice. However after a short discussion with my teacher I decided that I might as well just present all three of them as unsympatic characters, thus enabling me to do whatever I wanted with them. I also played with the idea of giving Louise a sort of smoky form, since she smokes in the story, but it didn't work well enough. The final characters ended like this:

Week 1 and 3 - Clean Up and Inbetweening

In week 1 and 2 the class was split up, one class would have clean up the other character design. We would then switch in week 2. In week 3 We had Inbetweening. I'm gonna talk about the characterdesign week in another (big) post. As for now, I can hardly call the work done in week 1 and 3 my own. Let me explain:
We had Clean Up with Lee Huxley who gave us about 13-14 frames from a short scene from the movie "An American Tale: Fievel Goes West." It was the key frames/breakdowns done by the animator, so we should clean them up - make one consistent line with a technical led pen, following the looser drawing made by the animator. Not very creative, not really my thing.



In the inbetweening week we were lucky to have Uri again. This time we got 11 frames from the movie "Balto" which was to be inbetweened with 13 frames. It was a bit more creative than clean up, but again it can't be called my animation:



We we're alsp supposed to make four poses with the character before the inbetweening:


Its supposed to be: Surprised, the conqueror, fleeing, and in love...