Hugo Game II - Behind the Scenes

When a computer game runs, a lot of stuff is, of course, going on under the hood. Previously, I explained how the animation for the Jungledyret Hugo PC game was done, from rough hand-drawn sketches to the final illusion that Hugo can roam around freely inside the game's environment.

In this post I will focus on the backgrounds and the technical and artistic aspects which are thoroughly intertwined.

But before we delve into the geeky details, you may want to check out this clip, which I found on an old VHS tape. It is from the Danish TV show "Troldspejlet" (Magic Mirror) on DR's channel 1, and aired in the fall of 1995 when the Hugo PC game had just been completed. It offers a glimpse behind the scenes and a quick overview of the production process. The video is all in Danish but has English subs.

In a game like this, a new image is being assembled from all the different resources up to 60 times per second (depending on the power of the computer). As Hugo changes his position, and the "camera" moves with him, the right portion of the background must be shown on the screen, with all the different characters and objects placed correctly upon it.

SunCola Fencing

SunCola "Fencing", 1998.

Every year throughout the nineties, a pair of SunTop/SunCola commercials were produced. And the SunCola ad always had the same concept:

Mr. SunCola competes in some kind of sport against his long-time foe Bob Bubble. On the face of it, the opponent is both bigger and stronger, and thus has all the advantages. But Mr. SunCola has his secret weapon: the non-carbonated SunCola drink, whereas Bob Bubble will have to content himself with an old-fashioned fizzy cola. Yuck!

On the other hand, Mr. Bubble has no respect for the rules of the game. So every film starts out with him playing some nasty trick on our hero, who therefore loses the first round. But as they both take a break for a drink, Mr. Suntop gets re-energized by his SunCola (while Bob Bubble is all gassy from his regular cola), and then, with a couple of elegant moves, Mr. Suntop  easily outmaneuvers his rival.

Here's the storyboard for the SunCola film of 1998.

SunCola "Fencing" storyboard by Dan Harder, 1998.

SunCola Skiing

SunCola "Skiing", 1997

Along with the SunTop "World Explorers" film, this 18 second TV ad constituted the annual SunTop/SunCola TV commercial pair of 1997. The two films were done in one stretch of eight weeks, six for the SunTop film and two for the SunCola.

That meant that I had to do 15 seconds of layout, animation, cleanup, inbetweening, coloring, camera etc. all by myself in two weeks. Quite a fun challenge!

The film was done for Co-Ro Food A/S, parent company of the brands SunTop, SunCola, Sunquick and Sun Lolly. I drew the storyboard based on a script worked out by the client in cooperation with a film production company called Planet Productions run by Lars Borch Nielsen.

SunCola "Skiing" storyboard by Dan Harder, 1997.

SunTop World Explorers

My journey with Mr. SunTop, the mascot of the softdrink brand of the same name, spans the full decade of the 1990s. During this time I worked on a whole string of TV commercials for the primary product, the orange drink, as well as its spin-off SunCola.

The films were made in pairs with one SunTop and one SunCola ad per year. Initially, my contribution was limited to storyboards, background layouts and animation. Other artists did the background painting, character cleanup and inbetweening. The coloring and camera work were done at Nielsen & Nielsen, the Borch Nielsen brothers' studio, on their expensive Silicon Graphics computer (coloring animated movies on a computer was kind of new back in the early nineties).

Mr. SunTop as Colombus in "World Explorers", 1997

But in 1997, having spent a few years working on various computer games, I realized that it was possible to make an entire film in my own little studio on nothing more than a regular Windows-based PC. I sold the deal to the client - sweetened by a very competitive price - and got to work.

The plan was to do the entire thing myself, so I had my work cut out for me: make a 30 second film in six weeks. That is, 5 seconds of rough animation, 5 seconds of  cleanup and inbetweening and 5 seconds of coloring every week, plus layouting, color styling, scene planning, camera work, color adjustment and the rest of it. It was a fun challenge which soon turned into a 24-7 gig.

Storyboard by Martin Madsen, 1997.

The film had already been storyboarded (by fellow animator Martin Madsen), so I could dive right into the next phases: layouting, animation, cleanup and inbetweeing. I bought a flatbed scanner to get the drawings into the computer and a CD-ROM burner (which was also kind of new technology back then) in order to deliver the colored single frames to a video editing facility where the images would be combined with the sound and transferred to Beta SP video, required by the broadcaster.

For the backgrounds I called on my favorite background painter Thomas Dreyer, whom I had first met when working on a Guldkorn commercial some years before. Here's some of Thomas' backgrounds based on my BG layouts.

Hugo - 3D Background

The feature Jungledyret Hugo (a.k.a. Jungle Jack, Amazon Jack or Jungo) included the first appearance of CGI animation in a Danish full-length animated movie.

As mentioned, the film was conceived and executed as a low-budget project. That meant that all the shots were generally planned in the simplest and cheapest way possible. Even so, when we were well into the production, I felt an urge to push the envelope a bit. To do something just a little bit extraordinary or extravagant. Something that would challenge us and perhaps raise an eyebrow or two. I presented the thought to the director, Stefan Fjeldmark, and volunteered to do the extra work.

As usual Stefan was quick with an idea. He had this sequence towards the end of the movie, in which Hugo and Rita had to swim through a sewage pipe under the city, in order to escape to the harbor so that Hugo could go back to the jungle. The sequence was already planned and storyboarded in the regular way, using something like 10 or 12 shots. Instead, Stefan now suggested that we do the entire swim in one long shot, which would enhance the experience of Hugo and Rita holding their breaths under the water. Since they were swimming around corners etc. it would require me to animate the changing perspective of the background by hand as well as the characters. I liked the idea, and Stefan re-boarded the sequence with the same action, only this time all in one continuous shot.

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.

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.