3D Pepsi Bottle

As briefly mentioned earlier, I had a bit of a flirt with CGI animation back in the early nineties.

In the summer of 1990 I animated and directed a couple of hand-drawn commercials for the small Copenhagen studio Nielsen & Nielsen, which were colored and composited on the studio's newly acquired supercomputer, the "Personal Iris" from Silicon Graphics. Then, from December 1990, after finishing animation at A.Film on Don Bluth's A Troll in Central Park, I actually worked for a couple of months at Nielsen & Nielsen as a CGI modeler and animator.

Well, animation is probably stretching it a bit, since I didn't really animate anything living, it was more like building and rotating various solid objects which were rendered with nice glossy surfaces using 3D software from Thomson Digital Image (TDI). In the end I decided against pursuing a career as an operator of this new technological wonder, fascinating as it was. But I still stayed in touch with the studio and animated some 2D commercials for them, and also served as an animation supervisor for my replacement at the computer.

One such project was this TV commercial for the then brandnew 1.5 liter softdrink bottles (we had never had bottles larger than 1 liter before in Denmark). The Pepsi bottle jumps into the picture and calls on all its new bigger friends: Pepsi Light, 7-UP, 7-UP Light and the Danish energy drink Faxe Kondi.

In this case I did a full hand-drawn animation reference for the action. The new tech guy, Michael Holm (with whom I later worked on a number of exciting and somewhat crazy projects - see future posts) then built the 3D bottles and matched them to the 2D ref. It's pretty simple, and the result isn't perfect, but it was probably the first CGI "character animation" made on Danish soil, so it does have some historical significance :)

The flic above is grabbed from an old VHS tape. Below is the original storyboard from the advertising agency. (As you can see it's a fax - oh, what wonderful eighties' technology!)

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.

Disco Worms - Animation

Let's wrap up this small Disco Worms potpourri with some animation.

I'm not really a CGI animator, even though I did have some encounters with the technology back when it was quite new in the early nineties. In 1990-91 I did some simple modeling and animation on a Silicon Graphics "Personal Iris" computer with software from Thomson Digital Image (TDI). And as Autodesk's 3D Studio became available for DOS-based PC systems a couple of years later, I also played around with that for a while, doing the mandatory jumping architect lamp test. In the end, not much ever came of my 3D animation career.

A decade and a half later, however, having been deeply involved in the designs and facial setups of the Disco Worms characters, I couldn't resist the opportunity to brush up on my 3D animation skills. So I selected a sequence of my own storyboards, which I was particularly fond of, and set out to animate it using Autodesk's Maya software.