Yup it's finally time for another one of my Pointless Ramblings. This one might actually not be entirely pointless.

This time I've tackled the media's role in the upcoming election and I think it should be worth a look for just about anyone. Enjoy!

A higher quality Quicktime-file is available here.

Coffe Time

As my former Superanomalies-clip was an outstanding success. (At least in the scope of this blog). I figured it was about time for another one.

Monkey business?

This one is all about coffee and is not recommended for the squeamish coffee-drinker. (Don't tell me you weren't warned). A higher quality Quicktime-file is available here. Any positive sensible feedback is welcome.

Since my last post about the LSD project I haven't really made that much progression. Being more than a tad under the weather, finishing the first of my ramblings-films, bloging and my work at my dayjob has taken most of my time. When I in addition to all this played my first football- (soccer-) game for more than a decade it has obviously not been much time left for animation.

Some rough pencil sketches to guide me through the upcoming sequences

I have done a little work though. I've finished sketching out the opening tune for the titles and opening sequence and I'm fairly pleased with the jolly little accordion-waltz I've composed. In my own humble opinion it has the right "french" sound to it, which fits perfectly as the film starts in Paris. I have also done some rought pencil sketches for the next couple of sequences and got some new ideas for the title-sequence that seems to push their way to the front of my attention.

Finally in case you were concerned, LSD (my film) does not have anything to do with drugs what-so-ever. It's actually an acronym and I promise to reveal the title the next time I mention the project.

Cheers!

Phew, it's hard work sorting out those a's and o's in anamolies anamalies anomalies!

I've been working for some time on the first installment of what I've chosen to call "Pointless Ramblings". No, that is not the new title of my blog. The idea behind this, and hopefully future ramblings, is to make a quick video about uh... something. I prepare a text relatively quickly and get a soundtrack in place based on the text. I then more or less improvise by making illustrations, animate text and put together a visual to accompany the video. In lack of a better term it could be called video-jazz.

Yes it does say superanomalies...

I don't nitpick on every detail, everything does not have to be great. OK is good enough. This is the only way I'll be able to get stuff like this out while still having some time left for more ambitious projects. Now, hopefully this should still mean that the "ramblings" are both watchable and mildly entertaining. I think #1 is, but I'm obviously biased. It has been said that _a picture is worth a thousand words_, so if my calculations are correct this film should be worth nearly 5 millions of them. Happy viewing!

A higher quality quicktime version is available here

As we approach the end of the first month of 2008 I figured it's about time setting some personal goals for the new year. One of MY goals for the year MMVIII is to complete to short-movies, the first one an animation called "L.S.D.".

Now, I'm not a trained animator. I have however always been extremely fond of animation and the magic behind it and I've dabbled a little in these black arts since childhood with my father's super-8 camera. I also have several books on the subject and am not a stranger to running animations frame by frame just to get a clearer picture of the techniques used.

My current project really came about as I was expermenting with my new computer. I was curious to see how well it could cope with HD-video so I made a few rough sketches, a couple of frames of animation and made a composite. It all worked out very nicely and these humble beginings soon developed into a full-fledged idea for a chaotic, but hopefully entertaining, short-animation. I am also using the project as a learning tool to see where I can find short-cuts that doesn't ruin the experience as a whole. I must constantly remind myself not to spend too much time perfecting every piece and rather go for a raw but charming quality that I'm fairly pleased with so far.

If I were to describe the style/theme of the animation I think Tex Avery-meets-Terry Gilliam-meets-Scandinavian children animation is about right. Perhaps in the future this could simply be known as the T. Benjamin Larsen - style…

I'll return with more posts on the projects later, where I'll discuss techniques, tools etc. For now I'll leave you with the first public image from the film. See you later!

OK, this one is probably akin to "Lennon lives, McCartney is dead" but hey, this is my blog and I can write what I want. And as it happens I'm still not quite done with Apple's new portable, the Macbook Air.

As I wrote in my last post I have a hard time seeing the potential market for this product, but perhaps this is just the way Apple planned it? The ultra-thin enclosure and solid-state drive is new stuff for Apple and maybe, just maybe, they're not 100% confident that everything will run smoothly with this first generation product.

So, to avoid risking extreme expenditeur and an outright scandal, it would make sense to roll out a product that only sold in relatively modest numbers. This would give them a lot of valuable feedback about how this stuff works in the real world.

Perhaps it all started something like this:

Following the US primary elections on the news is at the moment surprisingly entertaining. Polls seem to be based on coin-tosses and any predictions might as well be created by a random-prediction-generator(tm). Still, this doesn't stop the "experts" from weighing in with their opinion about the prospects of the different candidates. Upon closer inspection there seems to be a fairly clear-cut pattern to their analyses and it looks something like this: