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<channel><generator>iloblog 1.0</generator><title>Directing an animated graduation film Feed</title><link>http://rickard.grisevagt.dk/</link><description>&lt;p&gt;A personal tale about directing. It is a diary about making a 7 min animated graduation film in one year, from the tech details of it, the debates, sound, music to the visual storytelling of it. The film is musical about a Christmas Pig trying to escape its destiny as christmas ham in Copenhagen 1932.&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;The blog is running from September 2009 to the films premier June 2010! Also check out the related blogs about tech and design and the website at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grisevagt.dk&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;www.grisevagt.dk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><item><title>Everyone loves the Pig!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=50</link><description><![CDATA[  Now when the red carpet has been packed away and everything is calm again, I must say that the reception of the film was even more than my wildest expectations.  
 The press have been wild about it here in Denmark: 
   Julegrisen er et mesterværk (Berlingske Tidningen). 5 stjerner   
   (Christmas Piggy is a master piece)   
   Årets flottaste afgangsfilm (Weekendavisen).   
   (This years most beautiful graduation film)   
   Højt niveau af teknisk kunnen og kunstnerisk originalitet (Politiken). 5 stjerner   
   (High technical knowledge and artistic originality)   
   Söderström mestrer mediet til fulde(Ekko) 4 sjerner   
   (Söderström masters the media completely)   
 I am very excited and happy about the reviews. It's fantasic! I also have the opportunity now to develop it further with funding from the Danish Film Institute, so hopefully you all will se a longer version (about 30 min) in the future! 
 Now me and Stinna are planning what festivals to send it to around the world! 
 Cheers, 
 Rickard 
  www.rs-soderstrom.com  
 ]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:21:14 +0200</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>The premier!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=49</link><description><![CDATA[ It is always a nervwrecking when it comes to a premier, but this one was one of the worst ones I have experienced. It started with this big argument about what order the the short film should be shown between me and my classmates and after that it was changes back and forth to the program. 

I was a bit nervous how the filmed would be received because it is a very experimental piece I have made trying out allot of thing story wise and technical that I haven´t tried before. The way the camera moves (one shot), motion capture of humans mixed with hand animated, hand painted textures and ontop of that a musical. So I felt a bit unsure how the press and everyone would welcome it.

We had the press coming in earlier (on monday) before the premier and on Friday when we had the premier at The National Danish Film school the reviews were in and they were over the top positive. Especially one critic from the Berlinske Tidningen that compered the film with Sukorovs Russian Ark and called it a masterpiece! It was amazing. One of my big inspirations for the film is actually Russian Ark.

I also think the premier went really well for my film, and also for my classmates. I think most of the audience were very impressed by the standard of the films and thought it was a great leap forward. So now I am off to new adventures and The Christmas Piggy has already got government founding so I can make a longer version (hopefully)! 

And watch out for it in the festvivals of 2011! 

-R

ps. We also have an english version.  
 ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:03:47 +0200</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>At last, finished with the visual side!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=48</link><description><![CDATA[  I have been absent from the blog lastly because finishing the picture was literary a nightmare of never ending nights and days. A week ago (last weekend), we sat down to finish it, crunching like hell. But to make a long story short we ended up in technically diffulties that slowed everything down so we didn´t make it to deadline. We basically had gone through half the time in composite and we still had tons of things to do. All the layers were done, but we were missing the final comp to put everything together. 
 After discussions with the school they gave us 2 extra days to finish it, and we sat down Monday again, me production Designer Flemming and Niklas (after not sleeping since Friday). My pregnant wife came around with homemade chicken to give us some extra boost. And on the way back here water broke and at midnight I had to rush to the hospital – At 6:10 my beautiful son ”Sigge” was born and my wife were okay. 
 Flemming and Niklas tried everything they could to finish the picture, but without sleep and me being at the hospital everything naturally came to a stop. I came back Wednesday while my wife and son being still in the hospital starting up the ”3rd” crunch time. Everyone was basically already run to the ground and I began to fear that we never would be abail to finish it for the first time. Niklas had to move on so he could only work one day and Flemming were dead tired from the last 2 crunches we made…  
 But finally our second compositor Morten came to the rescue, and agreed to help us all weekend to finish the picture. So I finished all the render layers on Thursday and Friday, which we were missing (and o boy it was hard not being with my son and wife). And during the weekend Morten could put everything together finally! And after some heavy (2k cinemascope) rendering in after effects we were done Thursday at 7 in the morning. After correcting some new errors in the AE render. 
 Phuu… I have never experienced anything like it before, and I hope I never will again. But now – finally – the visual side of the picture is finished. We have even graded it at shortcut yesterday.  
 Because of all the things that happened I could not attend the music recordings and the sound designer have been working allot on their own. But I have been listing to what they have done at it sounds great. We are moving it to the mix studio today, to start mixing the film and we are even getting some extra help mixing the music. So there will be 3 mixers working on this little 7 min film! 
 Here is some finished frames and I will post a little clip from the finished grade soon… 
     
 R 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:30:18 +0200</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>We have lit more the half of the film!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=47</link><description><![CDATA[    
 Only about 2 weeks left of the visual side of the production we have done the lighting for about 60% of the film. We are still missing some scenes and we are waiting at most of the renders from the render farm at 3D-connection.  
 On Monday I have a final cut meeting with the teachers at the film school, but I don't´t have much colored material to show. I have finally finished the animation now and cut it all together. The changes I made have really made the film a better one, but unfortunately we had to cut on of the songs. 
   
 Right now we are preparing to finish the film and our compositor has started. We are counting on Easter to make allot of the composting. 
 R 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:40:05 +0100</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>Rendering problem solved!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=46</link><description><![CDATA[  For the last week we have had problems rendering on our farm. The farm we are using, from 3D-connection, has stopped rendering after peaking at 41gigbyte of RAM failure. It has been an mysteries problem and me an technical director Jakob Hanson had to grab our bikes and take the whole project over there to start testing what was wrong. 
 Finally we understood that it was something in the exterior that didn´t work, and after some time we could locate the problem on the hundreds of tiles on the roof. In the modeling process we have worked with something called ”instancing” in Maya, a function that duplicates object in a special way that saved allot of ram – and funny enough it was that problem that we believe caused the RAM pike. Usually mental ray worked fine with instancing, but out instanced were some of the tiles created in a way it didn´t understand – so when we converted the instances to real objekt, the render was back on track again. Ironically we actually use more memory to use less memory you might say.  
 But now our first scenes are rendering. Final cut for the film is closing rapidly (29 of Mars). It is a meeting with the school about the story. And after that the final film should be finished in compositing the 7 of april. 
   
  A still of work in progress on the first exterior scene.  
 R 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:30:19 +0100</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>Last minute story problems!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=45</link><description><![CDATA[  This past weekend I made my first cut with all finished animation. It is always completely nerve wrecking to do that, because you kinda know that somethings will work and some things will not – and this time was no different.  
 When I finally put all the things together, hooking up the different shots. I got a great one shot, but some of the story elements just didn´t work, and the flow and tempo was just not good enough. So me and Rokur and Jamie went straight to it to fix the problems.  
 The major problem was that one of the songs, the pig song, just didn´t work because that scene was just after another song, and there was just not time to have another song – you weren't emotionally ready for it! And the song was to short to actually do any emotionally work, so after a meeting with my composer Pete Livingstone, we finally decided to drop the singing in that scene, and at the last minute decide to make the pig mute trough out the film. 
 There was also one scene that story-wise just didn´t make sense, so we decided to reanimate that. I will post the before and after in the blog if I have time. There were also some other issues, mainly I tough the pig was not sweet and innocent enough, so we went in and worked on some of the facial expressions. 
 I have made a list now of last minute changes and we were abail to do most of them this weekend, so I am looking forward to re-cut the film today. 
   
 R 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:55:34 +0100</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>Lighting is making it come alive!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=44</link><description><![CDATA[    
  Some of the team from left: Jakob, Niels Thumb, Janne, Rickard, Flemming  
 After months of work with design, texturing and lighting – and of cource animating. Production designer Flemming Schmidt have painted the whole world, and technical director Jakob Hansson has set up the pipeline for the post-production phase. We have been blessed with reinforcement with two very experienced lighters helping us with setting the final look of the film – Niels and Johanna.  
   
  Lighting of the kitchen work in progress. Missing some food and christmas feel.  
 For rendering we have got help from 3D connection and Walter Vestergaard and his powerful render farm to render the final output. It enables us to do full 2k cinema scope renders for a full and crisp look of the film. I am very happy about it because our screen test proved us that scaling up frames from 1.3k to 2k produced a very blurry look of the film – we dont want that! I think it is because of the anamorphic lens, that produces extra blur, when the film is beeing projected in the cinema. But in order to reach our 2k goal we had to do compromises with final gather and only run occlusion passes instead. But I think actually the film, so far, actually benefits from not having a ”to” realistic look. Our style of the textures and the film is ”stylized” and a ”photo-realistic” lighting would make it borderline in styles, so I actually think a classic 3D-animated lighting actually makes the design stronger. 
   
  Pig in his chamber, work in progress missing beam light.  
 On the modeling side we still have our star modeler Janne Eilskov building snow, and cobblestones and other general things improving the look of the film together with Flemming. On composting Niklas Thiesen is making him self ready for the first full renders we are expecting next week. So all and all the finished team is assembled to make the most awesome look of the film as possible! 
 Animation wise we are only missing two scenes now and animator Rokur Heinesen and Jamie Holmes are firing away to get them done for the weekend. Then I can finally make a cut of all the animations of the film! 
 It is a great feeling as an Director to be part of the team right now, every day something new is happening and being improved! So all and all – it is a lot of stress and work – but so much fun! 
   
   
  Finished lighting on top and pre-comp of colors on the bottom.  
 R 
   
 ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:41:42 +0100</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>Animation almost done now!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=43</link><description><![CDATA[  It has been a week since the animators from viborg left for new adventures! Left in the production is two animators Rokur and Stine (just graduated from Viborg). All in all we finished 13 of 16 animations and we have been working on the last three scenes the past week. I have also got export help from a great animator named Jamie Holmes how have joined up the team to finished the last scene – a scene with allot of physics in it! 
 Meanwhile we have started preparing for the rendering with making the first lighting tests! We have got a great compositor onboard named Nicklas Thiesen how till stay on board to the bitter end! That is great news for the production!  
 Personally I have started working from 10 am to 8pm everyday including weekends and it is taking its toll on me, but I think I will have atleast one free day this weekend. During the daytime a spend time fixing render and animation errors (like intersecting surfaces or flying ovens and knifes!) – and during the evening I spend most of my time prepairing with Niklas the different layers we want to render. 
 Here is some of our first test for rendering we are working on, but we still have a long way to go! 
   
    
 R 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:43:04 +0100</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>Deadline closing rapidly for animation process!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=42</link><description><![CDATA[    
 (Test of hookup between scenes in the one shot and animations in working progress) 
 The animators from viborg has nearly been here for 3 months now, and we are coming in to our last week together. At the same time I have got extra help from two extern animators Rokur and Stine, how I also worked with during my halfway project. I am very happy about having them and they are necessary to finish the animations. We have finished only 4 of 16 animation scenes at this point, and it is only a week left. That is way we are sitting here all weekend and I havn´t had the chance to update the blog so much. But we have atleast more then half the film in the pipeline right now, so I am hoping that on Monday a good chunck will be completely finished (atleast 8 out of 16 scenes). Then the rest of the week will be the finish up week.  
 Hopefully we will have the whole film done at the end of next week, but at this point it is hard to believe. But I don´t want to stress the animators about it, becouse it is more important that we make good animation that finshed bad animation – even though how strange that might sound. So we are still not making compromises with quality. 
 Today is Sunday and I am very excited to se how many scenes we will have finished on Friday. Brian our lead designer is stopping on Monday and we have a new composer on the project. So people are coming and leaving. I feel the team is really working as a group at this point, our modeler Janni and Brian and Flemming are working closely with the animators and the moral and humor in the production is high and jolly. It is just to bad I don´t have two weeks extra, becouse now it is really floing as it should J! 
 After the animators from Viborg animation school leaves on Friday, we are going to start lighting and compositing the film. We have about 7 weeks until the beginning of april. Then I have final cut on the film showing it to the school.  
 R 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:40:38 +0100</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item><item><title>Sweatboxing!</title><link>http://iloapp.grisevagt.dk/blog/rickard?Home&amp;post=41</link><description><![CDATA[  Working in animation I first encountered the word "sweatbox" during an interview in New York with the american director Chris Weadge, who has done Ice Age among many things. At that time it was explained to me about the story of sweatbox at Disney and how it is used today and how the word is still used today at a tribute to the old days of animation. 
 As I recall the story it is from the days in at the early Disney studios were Walt had invested in an invetion called the moviola, where you could actually see your animation test before it went to coloring and became a film. Yes, before the moviola animators animated saw it the first time they say it was in the movie theatre. But this new modern tool changed animation and improved it becouse you could acually see the animation move in realtime, and this was the birth of sweatbox. Apparently the moviola machine was large and generated allot of heat, and Walt had placed it in a small room under a flight of stairs, so the heat it genereated made the room together with all the animators very warm - hence the word sweetbox. Adding the nervousnes of actually showing the film to a very demanding Walt made every ones tempreture rise even further. 
 Today I use it always in my production becouse it is is necessery to actually show the animation to other animators in the production to get input, but equally importent to change to another media then the computer screen. That is way I always have sweatbox meeting in the small cinema at the film school so that the animators gets to experience thier animations outside the realm of the computerscreens. I have learned that is makes a big diffrence for them, and the fact of actually seeing your animation in the real format makes a huge diffrent for staging and so on. 
   
 At my production we know have 4 weeks left of animation production, and we are right in the middle of sweatboxmeetings(two every week). So this time I wanted to share some of that work. Making 3D-animation, is a process in stages: first the animator makes thumbnails, then poses, then blocking out movement, refining blocking, making smoothing and finishes them. These first animation is still in different stages of the blocking phase, some of them just "pop" from one position to the next, to show the main story poses, others are kinda in the beggining stages of smoothing. 
 So, work in progress folks! 
 R 
 ps. All the scenes with humans are Mocap material. The point is that you should not see there face, but now you can still see a little bit here and there. 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:28:01 +0100</pubDate><category>Rickards Blog</category></item></channel>
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