The difference between the amateur and the professional.

Yesterday when I was strolling around in the centre of Gothenburg with a camera to capture the moment in the inner city. A thought struck me, and it goes like this:

The difference between the amateur and the professional is that the amateur takes the first sketch/photo and goes with it, while the professional makes many sketches or take lots of photos and then choose one of those to continue the project.
A while back one of my friends showed some pencilled comics pages, which I thought were great. I suggested to dash on some ink and they would have been done! But my friend didn’t think so at all! He said that he wasn’t sure about the pacing of the panels and what not... while I was astounded over the fact that he wasn’t satisfied with the equivalent of the sistine chapel in comics... So in this story he was the professional and I was the amateur!
With lots of sketches or photos you can choose what kind of angle you want for your project, and it’s easier to choose the right one when you have tried them out first with a simple sketch.
It needs to be said also that the professional with his/hers experience can probably do a quick project with great result, due to the fact that they have the accumulated experience and the knowledge.

And that was my thought yesterday! I’m not sure if it is a water tight truth, since we are all different and all that, but I think that it has some truth in it!

Take care!

P.s It just dawned on me that this is why my current projects don’t move that fast, because I’m still sketching and trying out things... the character design is going slowly forward, veeeeery slowly...

International Animation Day 2014 in Gothenburg!

Fancy some animation? Off course you are!

Then I would suggest you to attend the IAD screening in Gothenburg, 28th October 18:45 at Hagabion!

International Animation Day, or IAD is an event to celebrate the very first screening of Émile Reynaud’s animated film, which took place in Paris in 1892. IAD is a global event with screenings all over the place. To learn more, check out the ASIFA webpage:

www.asifa.net

This screening will feature among others, films from locally based animators here in Gothenburg. And if that’s not all, these animators will attend the screening! So if you are keen enough you just might get to rub shoulders with live animators! We are planning to have a little chat with each and every attending animator, to get to know them a little more.

The featured attending animators are (drum roll please):

Jacob Stålhammar
Monne Lindström
Adam Boklund

We are also going to show some student films, so you will be able to see what tomorrows animators are doing today!

And if that’s not all, we will also show an international award winning short film!

So I hope you understand now, that you HAVE to be there!

This screening is a collaboration between:
Animation i Väst
Västra Götalandsregionen
Hagabion

For more information about Hagabion:
www.hagabion.se

For more information about Animation i Väst
www.animationivast.se

A published illustration!

Some weeks ago I got an email from Hagabion (a cinema here in Gothenburg). They needed illustrations for their upcoming program. The deadline was really tight, just a couple of days. I gave it some thought but none of the ideas took flight. But then I remembered that I had a quick sketch of a shark, that I had in my sketch book. So I took it, scanned it, and toiled with it in Photoshop, not that much if truth be told... and sent it to the cinema.

I didn’t hear from them so I thought they used some other illustration. Because I wasn’t the only recipient of the e-mail... This week I passed the cinema and I went in to see what kind of illustration they used... to my big surprise, they used mine!

I was extremely surprised by this, because usually assignments like these pass me by. The chain of events usually looks like this: I get a tip, I do an illustration, I send it and get rejected! That has happened quite a lot.

The sketch is done with a blue pen, you can actually see how I have searched for the right form and then taken decisions and then pressed harder with the pen.

Here are some scans of it, so you can see it in all its glory.

Take care!

My text in translation:

Illustrator, P-G Lidström
Jaws, (1975), Steven Spielberg.
A book I haven’t read, that became
a really good film; that got consequenses
for it’s "main character". The first
thriller that I took to my heart! A
cooler antagonist is hard to find...

www.pglidstrom.blogspot.se

Here I put together the two scans in Photoshop so you can see the whole shark.