Yep, it's true, this blog has been up and running for a year now! Maybe it's time to do some thinking about what has been and what's to come. Perhaps there are some unspoken questions that needs to be answered? If you haven't already I recommend you grab a cup of tea because this post will be a longer one...
It's been quite active here on the blog, I've made more than one post a week, which in the grand scheme of things isn't that much, but I think that I'll continue with that even in the future.
There's one thing that I haven't really explained and that's why I switched from Swedish to English on this blog. An exciting way to explain that would be to write that I one day woke up and spoke and wrote in English! But that wasn't the case, the truth is that I saw that I had many international visitors and I thought that it's a shame that they don't understand the things I write, all the hilarities you know!
You might wonder what's the deal with the "Weekend update" title on the posts, well, it just kind of started that way and then I thought that it's kind of cool to use that because that's the title of a part in the TV-show Saturday Night Live, the best part! But as you see on the post today that is going to change, yep, it's true, we live in a changing world my friends!
I find it very rewarding to look back and finding that I've managed to make a post every week for a year, sometimes the post has been an animated sequence, sometimes (and more often) it's been an illustration of some sort. Without having some kind of goal like "I'm going to post a great illustration every week", I actually feel quite proud of myself, because every friday I've made a post for everyone to read.
A couple of weeks ago this blog got a sibling, namely my portfolio and demoreel-blog. That blog is a showcase where I show my finest work, here on this blog I can show sketches and what-not, but on the portfolio-blog only my best work will be shown. That is the idea anyway!
Sometimes my posts have been, short with a few words and a picture, sometimes it's been a longer post, and this post as you see will the longest one to date, and I'm not done yet!
Will it be a picture this week? No. Will it be a sketch? No. Will it be animation? Hell, yeah!
This is truly a treat for me and for you, what you are going to be able to watch, is a film with beginning, middle and end! And not some kind of drawn movement or a clip of some sort. No, this is a film, THE motion picture! Of course I'm talking about my thesis film project from my animation school, Diagonalakademin (Diagonal academy)! But before you enjoy it, I have to write something about it, as always there is a story! First of all I want you to know that I'm not making excuses for it, I just want to give you the whole story, kind of the extra material on a dvd-disc.
So, there I was in the beautiful city of Visby on the island of Gotland, the year is 1998. I'm studying animation! This is where the evening courses in drawing and painting and the preparatory art school led to! I'm studying animation, I'm fulfilling my dream of becoming an animator! I'm also young, and have lots of years ahead of me, I still have, but when you are 24 (as I was back then) it's so tangible. One week early in the education we had an assignment where we were to make an animatic, which is a filmed storyboard. I chose for my animatic to be a music video to the song "Min pärla" (My Pearl) by the Swedish pop group Webstrarna. Webstrarna was a group that I listened to a lot in my late teens. They stroke a chord in me that few other groups did. So I made this animatic, and a few weeks later I decided that I'm going to make this video! I don't know why but I didn't contact the group or the music company to ask for permission to use the music, I just knew that I had to make this film. About this time, I kind of land in the fact that I'm studying animation and film and learning to see films in another way, and I like it! I got seized by the film, and I'm going to make THE motion picture! So I begin to work on the film on my spare time, and trying to sort it all out. What I didn't know is that you make revisions all the time when you create something, like a script, you constantly make revisions until you are satisfied! So on my spare time from about february to december (which includes 8 weeks full time animation on the project), I'm working on this animation that's going to be my thesis film. Because I know that it's a lot of animation to do, since the song is 3.47 min long. In the world of animation that is a lot of time. But I thought that if I start work on it early enough I will be able to pull it off.
Then comes Boxing day 1998, I woke up in the morning, realizing that I have to scrap the most of the animations that I've done, and begin anew! I only kept one sequence that I animated autumn 1998, the rest of the animation is done 1999. Even though it hurt to begin anew, I think that was a smart move because my early animations was basically a pearl/ball flying around, and that's not too exciting... From january to may 1999 we worked full time on our thesis projects. So there I was going to make almost 3.47 minutes of animation in roughly five months! Thankfully I was still kept by the THE motion picture, so I started working on my new animatic and making new animations. Due to the amount of animation that I needed to do and the time factor, I had to make some decisions, that today when I see it, I'm not that comfortable with, to tell you the truth. But I finished it! And on time! The finished film has only been shown on our graduation december 1999, and it made a part of my demoreel january 2000, which was sent to about 10 companies in Europe. So it hasn't been shown all that much. Of course due to the fact that I "borrowed" a song without asking... Later I got in touch with the group and sent it to them, both on VHS and later on a disc. I haven't heard from them since...
So without further delay here is my thesis film: "Min Pärla"
Background, animation, editing, sound fx: P-G Lidström
Music: Min Pärla by Webstrarna. Text by Petter Eklund.
Webstrarna are: Petter Eklund, Ola Jameson, Jan Lundkvist, Sten Tjäder
Copyright 1992 Sonet Grammofon AB
Take care!
