2 more backgrounds to go

30.7.10


Yet another background in the bag. Here it is - featured from initial sketch to Photoshop background till the final AfterEffects composite... Ill dedicate this background to Jens Fussan who was the cool cat yesterday and helped me out with setting lights for some additional greenscreening for this spot. Later he took the picture of Peter Plock's head I used for the guy working the keyboard. There'll be more to come very soon...

The daily update...

27.7.10


Yet another shot of the CM promo-clip in the bag - Still 2 sequences to go...

Another day another shot!

26.7.10


I keep on trucking on the CM spot... A bit of fake 2,5d in After Effects...

Stockholm...


After a quarter of a years crazy work haze - me and the misses went to Stockholm for a few days to enjoy life (and shop fashionable Scandinavian clothes). I just went through the Photos from the trip. Heres my absolute favorite:


P3 WiP

25.7.10


Freshly returned from Stockholm, I am now back behind the computer at 00:11 local time slaving away to get Christina Maria's promo-clip for the peak Performance project done, so she can become world famous and I can tell stories about me once knowing her...

New Blog!

15.7.10


Just for the hv30 or music fanatics in the crowd. I just put up a new blog for my Hv30 music sessions. I will still post all the videos on this blog as well, but if you want the purity of the project run for the new blog. There are only 2 videos present at the moment, but more will be uploaded in the nearest of futures.

Pancake almighty!

13.7.10


Today was the first day in a week where the temperature hasn't exceeded 35 degrees Celsius. Yesterday we had 42 degrees here and our apartment was hot as an oven, with the result that I haven't done any work the past couple of days - I've basically just been laying around in my underwear sweating. But holy glory almighty, we have had 28 degrees today and what a day that has been. We closed the day down by inviting everybody over for pancakes!

Christina Maria - Peak Performance project - Intro shot

10.7.10


Ive spend the past 3 days trying to figure out a way to extract a killer intro-shot from some very hasty handheld camera flybys of a paper maché mountain on a poorly lit greenscreen-backdrop. My struggles  simply comes down to a severe lack of planning. We met up at 11 pm on Friday evening to come up with an idea for the clip and we had to shoot it Saturday morning at 10 pm. I encountered 3 main problems due to this poor lack of planning;

1: We only had 3 lamps to work with which resulted in a poorly lit greenscreen, a poorly lit subject and a white paper maché mountain standing way too close to the backdrop = Green spill light on the mountain and lots of it.

2: Motion blur and grain on the footage: Due to the "low light" conditions I was left with footage that was both grainy and had a lot of motion blur, and the fact that we did a hand held shot with a miniature didn't help my 3d tracking process much either.

3: My worst nightmare: OLD TAPES! I cannot emphasize this enough; DO NOT use old tapes! Always have a stock of tapes for your camera laying around (if you still use tape). Because of the time pressure and my very hectic work schedule over the past months, I simply hadn't thought of buying new dv-tapes for my small hv30. And because I keep most of my footage in an archive, I didn't have any empty ones, so one of my friends borrowed me a bunch. Unfortunately they are quite old and packed with pixel errors and digital noise. That is even worst than just ordinary noise. It leaves great big squares on your shots and tends to cut out parts of your footage...

I tried every possible angle available: 3d tracking, camera projection, I even went as far as to try Nukes 6x's excellent 3d tracker/projector, and I actually managed to get got somewhat of an OK result out of it, but the hand held motion of the camera was pure horror and I quickly realized that it would take several days of work to fix the camera movement, key and roto out the mountain, build Vancouver in 2,5 d etc. etc. etc.

So instead of sitting crying in front of my computer I simply decided to cast away the footage of the Paper-Maché mountain that Peter and Christina so beautifully built - and simply make a graphic solution instead of a high grade one. I still used the Mountain though. I just extracted some closeups from the flyby and put it back together in Photoshop. And I will use some of the shots for a later scene in the clip. Ill see if I cant get around to edit a making of at some point after finishing this clip...

The intro (around 10 sec) took about an afternoon to piece together...

A screenshot of the "P3 Christina Maria Viral" intro:

ATA episode 1-7

7.7.10


Yes, the new episode off the monster is online...


Episode 1-7 from Animation Tag Attack on Vimeo.

Helmet Girl

6.7.10


Another quick'n'dirty sketch from the ol' book. It is a photorealistic rendering of my girlfriend... Thats right... She is HOT! Thats why you get an exclusive closeup as well...


3 finger piggin'

5.7.10


A few days ago I scribbled a banjo playing pig in my sketchbook for the dueling banjo pigs blog. - Try repeating that sentence 5 times fast!

Here you can see it in its home environment.

Zoo!

4.7.10


I spend the entire Saturday with my favorite veterinarian at Copenhagen Zoo. Her name is Michelle and she is currently writing her thesis on how turtles reacts to anesthesia. So she has spend 3 months in a dark room putting almost asleep creatures to sleep and afterward ultrasound scanning them to see how the heart etc reacts to the drug + dosage she has been giving them. It was pretty awesome. She knows a load about animals and I got to pet a sloth and hold a salmonella infested gecko. After Michelle left for home and her awaiting thesis I spend the evening wandering about the zoo scribbling in my sketchbook... What a day!