Jungledyret Hugo PC Game

If I were to choose one project that I am particularly proud of, it would be the Jungledyret Hugo (aka. Jungle Jack) PC platform game based on the animated movie of the same name. Considering the budget and the circumstances of the production, it was nothing less than a momentous achievement.

Screen dump from level 1 of the Jungle Jack (Jungledyret Hugo) game, 1995.

I had been working for a while with a group of young self-taught computer programmers and graphic artists on various smaller games and advertising programs. I shared my experience in animation and visual design, and they in turn taught me programming and other computer skills.

Box, booklet and CD-ROM of the Jungledyret game, 1995.

When, in the spring of 1995, we were hired to do a CD-ROM game as a kind of merchan-dising for the animated Hugo features (the second one was in production at the time), we immediately knew that we wanted to do a classic 2D side-scrolling platform game. As the game director/art director of the project I was heavily inspired by Disney's newly released Lion King game, which featured high-quality (almost) full classical animation, much resembling the animated Disney feature. So I couldn't resist the temptation to follow Disney's lead and make a similar product for Hugo.

Werner (and the fall of the Berlin Wall)

I recently came across this wonderful picture from Gerhard Hahn Film in 1988. It was posted on Canadian animator Nancy Beiman's Facebook page last month and shows the staff at the West Berlin animation studio as of April that year. Thanks Nancy! I hope you don't mind my stealing the photo, I just had to have it.

From left to right: Michael Hegner, yours truly, Nancy Beiman, Stefan Fjeldmark, Andy Knight, Børge Ring, Gerhard Hahn and Jody Gannon. It even has the NAC Quick Action Recorder, a very early (and fantastic) animation test computer, sitting there on the right! So retro.

The crew at Gerhard Hahn Film, April 1988: Michael Hegner, Dan Harder, Nancy Beiman,
Stefan Fjeldmark, Andy Knight, Børge Ring, Gerhard Hahn and Jody Gannon.

This picture really stirs up a lot of memories. Forgive me for tripping a bit down the ol' lane. If you're not into that, please skip the rest of this post.

Nocturna

Nocturna is an incredibly beautiful movie. It has that magic from the old Disney features, the feeling that you are simply there. This universe really exists. It sucks you in.

It's hard to deny that the character designs in Nocturna are pretty weird. Especially the main character, Tim, looks very odd indeed. Honestly, those designs are too artsy for my conservative taste. But the backgrounds, the colors and the mood of the film is just wonderful.

So when I saw the teaser on the internet back in early 2006, I just knew that I had to be part of this film. I contacted the Spanish animator Sergio Pablos, whose studio, Animagic (now SPA Studios), had made a substantial part of the animation on Asterix and the Vikings, which I also worked on a year earlier. Animagic was subcontracting on the animation for Nocturna, and I managed to get a piece of that action.

How such a good looking film was made on a EUR 8 million budget seems a bit of a mystery. Well, one explanation is probably the Spanish wages. I worked pretty hard, churning out some six seconds (nine feet) of animation per week, but still only made about a third of a regular Danish animator's salary, certainly not something you can live on in expensive Scandinavia. But hey, I've got scenes in Nocturna, that's what matters.

This is a linetest of a sequence that I animated with Tim and Tobermory the cat (carrying the star, Adhara, on its back) as they run across the bridges in the sky from which the stars of Nocturna are suspended.

Jungledyret Hugo

Whenever people ask me which of all the movies I worked on is my favorite, I tend to go for the animated feature "Jungledyret Hugo" (sometimes called Jungle Jack, Amazon Jack or Jungo in English). That is, the first one in a series of three, which was released in 1993.

Jungledyret Hugo movie poster, 1993.

The movie was done with a relatively low budget, and was hardly expected to become an all-time classic of Danish animation. But as the years have passed, it seems to have captivated one generation of children after another. This is probably due to its touching story of a strong but impossible friendship told through a very charming gallery of characters.

And, no less important, the animation in this movie is actually quite good. In retrospect, I suppose Denmark has never had a stronger animation team than at that particular moment. A bunch of us had just returned from a few years at Don Bluth's studio in Dublin, Ireland, loaded with freshly acquired knowledge from the highly skilled former Disney animators there. Others had experience from the first Danish Hollywood-style animated feature Valhalla.

All the lead animators had individual characters assigned to them, enabling us to give very personal and coherent performances. The tight budget required quite high weekly outputs, but that also meant that full sequences were placed in the hands of relatively few people. This, coupled with the fact that most of the animators had to clean up their own animation, assured a high level of control and consistency of each character throughout most of the picture. Its rough and somewhat dated look notwithstanding, the movie still has a lot of life and charm to it.

Cel setup from Jungledyret Hugo, 1993

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.