Guldkorn

This TV commercial for OTA Guldkorn (a Danish cereal product) is one of two 30 sec films produced by A. Film and Jørgen Klubien (Klubien Animation) in 1991. I did about half of the rough animation, some of which was re-used between the two films.

The video of film #2 above is grabbed from a 24 years old VHS tape, de-interlaced and cleaned-up to the best of my ability. I only animated the middle part of the film, that is shots 3, 4, 5 and 6. The rest was animated by former Valhalla animator Henning Nielsen. I don't seem to have a final soundtrack for it, so I left it with just the music.

Here is a modelsheet of the teddy bear and a background layout for one of the shots, both drawn by Jørgen Klubien.

Choco Bolo

I went through some old boxes in the attic and found a bunch of VHS video tapes with various animation stuff dating back to the late 1980's. Amazingly, most of the tapes were still more or less watchable, and with a cheap video grabbing device and some patience I managed to clean some of them up to an acceptable quality.

One of the films was a TV commercial for some chocolate crackers called Choco Bolo, which I animated back in 1991 for A. Film and the Danish Disney animator Jørgen Klubien, who was apparently taking a break from Disney at the time. In this case I also found the original animation roughs as well as a copy of Jørgen's storyboard for the film:

Choco Bolo storyboard by Jørgen Klubien 1991.

The film consists of one single shot lasting 15 seconds (plus some live-action). It may be slightly insane of me to share with you the entire 118 rough animation drawings - but what the heck, here we go:

BR Toys Christmas Ad

In the spring of 2000 I was asked by the advertizing agency of Scandinavia's largest toy retailer, BR Legetøj (BR Toys), to produce the company's Christmas TV ad for that year. Thus, I spent most of the hot summer drawing Santa Claus and his reindeer flying through the snow-covered landscape.

In the previous years BR Toys had released a new Christmas ad every year, so I was hoping to become their regular supplier of these films. But apparently they were so happy with this particular commercial that they have run it on Danish TV every Christmas since then. That would be 15 years now, and counting...

Let me share with you some of the artwork that lay behind the final film. This is the final storyboard that I did, based on a pretty good draft supplied by the advertizing agency, Nørgård Mikkelsen.

Storyboard, BR Toys Christmas TV Ad, 2000

The "cel" painting and camera work on this film was done on a computer. However, the backgrounds were painted in the old fashioned way. I was always especially pleased with these backgrounds, which were done by Thomas Dreyer, who supplied backgrounds for most of the commercials I produced in the 90's. Here's a selection of layouts and color BGs.

Asterix Dialogue

Here's another rough animation scene from Asterix and the Vikings. This is a closeup of Asterix, once again arguing with Obelix. They have set out to sea in pursuit of Justforkix, the nephew of the chief of the village, but there is no wind. Obelix is hungry, complaining that there is no food on board.

In this shot Asterix says: "Well, maybe you shouldn't have eaten all the survival rations on the first day!" When animating dialogue on these characters I took special care to adhere closely to the style of mouth shapes drawn by Asterix' creator, Albert Uderzo. You may notice that it is distinctly different from the standard Disney style.

Pencil test of the entire sequence, all animated by me, at the bottom of this post.

Asterix and the Vikings

I'm going to start this blog by showing you some animation that I am particularly happy with. From 2003 to 2005 I had the privilege of working on the animated feature Asterix and the Vikings, which was produced at A. Film, Copenhagen, Denmark, and directed by my longtime friends and colleagues Stefan Fjeldmark and Jesper Møller.

On this movie I worked on the storyboards, did character and prop designs, and served as lead animator for the main characters Asterix and Obelix. Animating these guys was a real treat, especially for me, since the comic books played a significant part in shaping my life-long interest for drawing and art.

Here are some rough animation key poses from a scene with the two best friends arguing about whose fault it is that their troublesome holiday child, Justforkix, who was entrusted in their care, fled the Gaul village to the cold North and fell in love with the Viking chief's daughter.

At the bottom of this post you'll find a pencil test of the entire sequence, all animated by yours truly.

Introduction

Welcome to my new animation blog!

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Dan Harder, and I have worked in the animation business since 1987. During those years I have been involved in pretty much all aspects of the production of classically animated movies. First and foremost however, I am an animator.

I have wanted for a while now to create a place where I can share with the few people, who may be interested, some of the drawings and other production material that is otherwise just lying around in boxes in the attic (or nowadays filed away in computer storage), and is therefore never seen by anyone outside of the productions.

For those of us working with animation, it is sometimes interesting to see the planning material and rough development artwork that lie behind the neatly cleaned-up or CGI-rendered final films.

Among the things I will share with you are inspirational sketches, character designs, location designs, storyboards, color models, background layouts, color backgrounds, rough animation key poses and pencil tests, CGI character model development, CGI playblasts and whatever else I can find in the old archives.

Working at my desk at Sullivan Bluth Studios,
Dublin, Ireland 1989.

Though not directly related to animation, I may also add some examples of my work in illustration, painting, computer games and other fun things. Maybe I'll even throw in the odd anecdote from my life as an animator.

It is my hope that you will find some of it inspiring, perhaps even educational, in your continued quest for excellence in the forever challenging fields of art and animation.

Enjoy!

Dan Harder