There is near universal agreement that one of the most challenging things to animate is horses. So when, while working on the Danish feature film Help! I'm A Fish (released in 2000), I heard of a scene with a horse I naturally jumped at the opportunity to do it.
The movie is about three kids who are transformed into fish by drinking a magic potion invented by a crazy scientist. The girl, Stella, who is turned into a starfish, befriends a small seahorse. At the end of the movie when the kids become human again, the seahorse is magically transformed into a real horse.
The horse was supposed to resemble the fairly cartoony seahorse, so we weren't going for a very realistic look. Yet, in order to make it believable, it had to move somewhat like a real horse. So how to go about it? As it happened, I knew where to look.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
