Rock'N'Roll Animation

Admerica Infomercial...

2012-01-20T11:55:00.000-08:00

Over Christmas I finished up a small company presentation / infomercial for Admerica... My initial plan was to make a time travel from the 1920'es to the 1980'es american graphics. I actually liked my original idea a lot and was a bit disappointed that the client shot it down. But we agreed on staying in the 1960'es poppy style...

Unfortunately I never received the final speak (only a temp track), so the timing of the animation is somewhat off - and Im not too happy with the intro. The 1920es Art Deco intro had way more character and a way better flow in the animation. But the client was happy and that is what counts.

Heres a bunch of inspirationals, slates and scribbles I did for the Project - And of course the final thing:

Quick and dirties - color mockups

Original design ideas

Moodboards and final slates

Final thing

Cut&Paste Berlin

2012-01-12T14:14:00.000-08:00

Oy, every kingpin of 3d and motion graphics in Berlin. Cut&Paste are about to take off. So get off your hands and sign up. It is going to be a blast!!! So all you geniuses out there, get the funk on and sign up for the faceoff!
It is a day long live battle on graphic skill and excellence, and the winners will be shipped off to represent Berlin in NY later this year!

It is still possible to sign up for the challenge. Cant wait to see you all there!

Some quick doodles from a pitch once..

2011-10-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

Ladies...

2011-09-08T03:38:00.001-07:00

911 Post mordem...

2011-09-08T03:36:00.000-07:00

A few months back i did a blog post about the 911 video I made for Canal+ for the 10th anniversary of the 911 tragedy. I didnt post it though out of respect for the good people at L'Oeil de Links who paid for the thing. But it was shown 2 days ago and now Ive uploaded it to share with the world. The video is a scattered array of memories from the day rather than a strict narrative. I only had 1min11sec at my disposal so I decided to go with a rather expressionistic kind of storytelling. The deadline was quite short as well, so I slipped back into my good old 8 bit suit in order to be able to produce it in a snappy manner...

"10 past 911"

Looking through the file folder I stumbled across a couple of the initial boards and sketches. They are pretty crappy, but when Im doing things for myself it doesnt really matter how pretty my initial sketches are, as long as I can read them theyll work just fine...

Portrait

2011-08-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

The kickass Russian artist Ludmila Letnikova just uploaded a charicature of me on her facebook profile a sec ago. I am super flattered, not only because it is an awesome drawing, but also because she is sooo cool. We share a love for graphic design and David Bowie. Ive only met her a couple of times, and every time I see her she is in a new crazy costume and has a new incarnation and character to play. She surely rocks!

Ill take all of you on in a heartbeat!!!

2011-08-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a really weird notion struck me: What would happen if I meet everyone of my friends in a one-on-one cagefight? Who would I beat, and who would beat me? The funny thing about this is that the further out friends are, the harder I find it to guess the outcome of the hypothetical match. Because the thing about man-to-man combat (as if I knew) is that it is not only physical appearance (strength and swiftness) that it is important in the mix but also hardcore mental strength...

I had a series of really exiting battles lined up in my mind, and apparently I am a really cocky combatant in that imaginary place, because I am pretty sure I could kick the ass of most of my friends. There are a few in the bunch though I would think twice about taking on.

The group I think would severely kick my ass includes (I wouldnt take it without a serious fight mind ya):

Mads Juul - that guy is a machine in everything he does. Not only is he in stellar physical shape, but he has the scary ability never to miss a goal he sets for himself. There is no one I have more respect for on a personal and professional level than this man. So much intelligence, determination and strength.

Bennett Richardson - Every time I see Bennett he never seizes to amaze me. Not only is he a good friend but he is also one of those cats that party hard and works even harder. Every time I see him I do not seem to sleep for days in a row and get involved in the weirdest things. His mental stamina combined with his sheer size (and the skills Ive seen him display on a dancefloor) definitely puts him in the "To be feared" category.

Mike Lind - Mike is one of my old friends from when I was living a hardcore rock'n'roll bachelor lifestyle in Randers, a small city in Denmark, that was dubbed the city of violence back then. Mike is a really good guy and super nice, and even though Mike has settled down with a beautiful wife and 2 kids, I still wouldn't like to get on his bad side. I know he packs a serious right... Him and his band of boys got me out of many a pickle back in the days.

And then there is a series of contestants which would be interesting to fight because Ive got no idea of the outcome. I thinks these fights would be super exiting.

David All - Now this is an impressive guy. I have so much respect for David out of a series of reasons and even though he is smaller than me in size, he is in a freakishly good shape and really determined in everything he does. He just ran a marathon for Christ sake, picked up surfing and has an iron lock mindset as well. You dont get sleeping to building an empire like the David all group. I think it would come down to the shape of the day.

Daniel Buck - This leans towards a victory for Daniel. Yet another really determined friend of mine who just came short of beating the world record in rowing when we were in our late teens - Now Daniel has a stature as a Greek god when he's in prime shape, and he can be determined as hell, but he is also the sweetest guy and we've been best friends since our teens and I think that that might give me a slight mental edge (+ Im still holding a grudge from him beating me in a triathlon when we were 18)

Maxwell A. Oginni - The reason why Ive got no idea who would win this match is because me and Max never actually met. We worked together on the Animation Tag Attack and as with all the cats from that project Max has definitely become a friend. Judging from pictures though he is a well build guy and judging from the looks of his work (animation) he is a hard badass worker. But again the lack of info on my part sets this match totally open...

So bring it on everybody. I am sorry if I hurt anybodys feelings here if you are not on the list and you think you could kick my ass. If I didn't just had my teeth fixed Id take on each and every one of you as a token of my love and appreciation of our friendships.

Rosto AD / The monster of nix

2011-07-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

My mentor and good friend Rosto has been hatching his tale for kids all ages for quite a while now. I remember hanging out at Studio Rosto AD back in 2006 sketching on the Virgil Bird Character and singing all the numbers backwards from a 100 to 0 for the storyboards and now it is finally out. The film had its world premiere at Annecy Animated Film Festival this year and hits the festival screens this summer. I haven't seen it yet, but knowing Rosto Im sure it is going to be Amazing. I worked with him on his Jona/Tomberry back in 2004/05 and he is such an inspiring surplus of creativity and inspiration and a master of his craft. That is probably also why talents like Tom Waits, Terry Gilliam and the Residents signed on to play along on the project. Have a look at the teaser and judge for yourself. Cant wait to see it...

Back from the States

2011-07-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

Plus One

2011-07-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

I have been a fan of Kevin Smith for quite a while now. The indie movies he did in the 90es was a testament to everyone that you can make unique and personal films without a big budget. And even though he shot on film his aesthetics and take on moviemaking helped spawn the indiewave of filmmaking on the threshold of the digital age. Now, you can debate how good a filmmaker Kevin Smith is (and a lot of people do) but one thing is for sure he is an AMAZING verbal storyteller and a really sympathetic character.

I have been following his Smodcast for a while and over the past few weeks while preparing preparing for the exhibition in LA I have been listening to a bunch of his other podcasts at the Smodcast Network site (and there are a lot to choose from) like Highlands; a peephole history, Smoviola, Sminterview, Hollywood Babble-on & Plus one.

What is really interesting about his work as a Podhead is that everything goes on without a filter and nothing is off limits in the debate; his sexlife with Jen Schawalbach, how he grew up as a kid, the way he got threwn off a plane for being too fat etc. And everything is told with a lot of love and a lot of humor. Now what I find really fascinating about this is the question about the public and the private Kevin Smith. There is no doubt that the lines are hard to distinguish because of his complete honesty on the air and the fact that he is constantly joined by a tight group of good friends all chipping in with their stories from their lives with and around Mr Smith, and what a charming bunch. Through the podcasts you get to know everyone really well & you get the strange illusion that you are a part of the gang. Almost every time somebody calls in to the program they are talking like they have known 'Kev' forever - even using the same lingo as him and what not. And a bunch of times in an almost awkward misplaced way, as if he is supposed to know them intimately as well. Yet, I havent heard him complain about his fans one single time, and he seems truly grateful to everyone supporting his growing empire of the Smodcast.

The night before leaving Berlin I had a few hours to kill and since all the Smodcasts are for free, I decided I wanted to give a little some thing back to Mr Smith and his beautiful wife for sharing their truly charming universe with everyone and putting a new spin on the old campfire storyteller tradition packed with a lot of sincerety and humor, so I sat down and spend a few hours to do a quick & dirty painting inspired by his Plus One Smodcast, a Smodcast he does on a daily basis with his wife, talking about life in the Smith home. Not only is it a highly entertaining piece of day, but also a beautiful testament and a legacy to their Tween daughter Harley Quinn. I wish that my parents had had a podcast telling the world about their history, their thoughts and their everyday life while I grew up. It is a beautiful documentary project indeed.

I would have loved to hand over this sloppily done painting personally. I could probably spend a nickel and buy me a map to the stars and hunt them down, but the preparation for the exhibition has been so busy, and to be honorest I dont want to invade their personal lifes for a petty fanboy handshake. I know that he is a good friend of the owner of Gallery 1988 here in LA so Ill pop by there with the painting a bit later and see if they can slip it to the Smiths at some point. Then they can keep it or auktion it off to support one of their many good causes if they please. I just wanted to give something back & say thank you for hours & hours of beautiful entertainment.

It is quite flawed because of the tempo of creation but kind of works in a comicbook kind of way. I wish I had had more time to work on it to really nail their features, but the exhibition (opening tonight) has had priority #1 - and what an opening it'll be... Come to the Royal T Gallery in Culver city tonight to the opening of Party Animals and see my works hanging with the works of Takashi Murikami, Jeff Koons, Friends with you, Yoko Ono and a whole bunch of other amazing people - The Royal/T is the center for cosplay chicks in the area so dress up as your favorite animal. Itll be grand!

Webcuts Interview with yours truly

2011-07-01T13:27:00.000-07:00

I had a blast of an evening at Webcuts.11 a few weeks back where both the Animation Tag Attack and Bear Untitled got screened. Then last week I got an email from the good people over at EFORS who documented the evening who send me a very flattering piece from the event featuring not only a very ranting interview with myself and some great shots from the Animation Tag Attack (including the not yet published E12) but it even starts out showing the entire Bear Untitled. What I am most stunned about is how wild my beard looks in that light. haha. The ATA segment starts from 3:18.

Webcuts 2011 - Internet Film Award Berlin from EFORS Berlin on Vimeo.

Exhibition LA

2011-06-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

These past 8 months has been so extremely crazy both work wise, career wise and personally and a TON of stuff has happened. I flipped through my sketchbooks this morning, and it is seriously mind blowing how much has happened in this very short stretch of time. I am truly grateful to all the cats who has made a ton of this happen like the good David All & Bennett Richardson from the David All Group, Rob Rollinger & Johan Koning at Intel, all the guys and girls from the Animation Tag attack and a ton of people more.

And on to that list goes Lindsay Scoggins as well. I met Lindsay during the Guggenheim Mayhem last year. She is a really cool redhead/mashup video artist. She was there with her Wonderland Mafia video, mashing hardcore hip hop with Disney's Alice in Wonderland - and we hit it of immediately (We met at the airport as I landed), and just hung out chillin' during that short week in NYC.

During that week she got a lot of hype on the back of her video (and rightfully so) and got snatched up by the owner of the Royal T Galleri in Culver city, LA, where she got hired to make a promo video for the gallery and curate an exhibition starting on July 7th (next week). And I am really honored to have been asked to be a part of the exhibition alongside artists like Takashi Murakami, Jeff Koons, KAWS, Yoko Ono & Yoshitomo Nara and the list goes on...

The Exhibition is entitled "pARTy Animals" and is a celebration of the Animal kingdom.
For the exhibition I have created 2 of my UV paintings entitled "Anatomy of a Party Animal", playing with the notion of life and death, fragility, animal instincts and the joy of living.

And here's a quick video portrait of the UV layers:

I am leaving for LA on monday if all goes well, to take part in the opening. Cant wait to get away from the computer and out into the real world. I have been stuck here for months now. and yes: Im going to the party...

Intel Visual Life - Post Mortem

2011-06-27T05:03:00.000-07:00

A few months back I was approached by the good people at Intel about being a featured artist in their Visual Life series. The project is truly amazing; It is a video series trying to inspire people to use their technology in an intuitive way and push the creative envelope. Previously they've featured a handful of really cool designers, musicians and photographers who all uses the computer as a center pillar in their creative process - And I am really honored to be a part of that group of cats.

Now since I am a videoartist by trade they called me up asked me if I would be up for the challenge of creating my own profile film, and I virtually jumped with joy of the thought; cause lets face it it is a dream assignment to be asked (and payed) to do a 6 minute narcissistic piece on yourself and your work. Haha. But it proved to be be one of the toughest and most frustrating assignments I have ever done out of a series of reasons...

I come from an animation Sfx background and unlike a lot of other vidoartists I hardly ever portray myself in the stuff I do - because I normally say what I want to say through fictive characters and constructed universes, and I pretty quickly came to realize that self image is a bitch. Apparently I am as overly self critiquing as a 15 year old girl - I love giving interviews and you cats who know me, know that I love talking, but in interviews the stuff is edited by others who has a clear vision of how they see me. I think it is interesting how different other peoples vision of you is compared to your own.
In the beginning of this Odyssey I had a sitdown with one of my good friends and collaborators, Peter Ruschel, where we talked about what to include in the video, how to structure it etc. And it became quite apparent that my vision of myself isnt quite the way I am perceived by the world around me, so before I could dig in and start the actual filming and editing I had to figure out who I am, and define myself as a character. As I also state in the clip; It is a caricature of who I am and what I do because the reality is way to complex to put down in a 6 minute portrait. And since I have never really worked with that caricature of myself before it took a bit of time to define this persona.

My second headache was to condense everything I do down in 6 minutes. I had so many things I wanted to show in this clip that my first edit was around 16 minutes (I had 8-10 hrs of footage) that had to be condensed down to 6, so there was a lot of stuff that got cut like my music for instance.

All in all the project has been a really crazy learning experience, because it has been so different from all the other projects I normally do. It was so much fun editing an almost pure live action clip without having to think in terms of Sfx shots and animation and as I mentioned before the self definition part was such a crazy eyeopener as well. My only regret is that I had to push the deadline for it a couple of times. and I normally NEVER miss a deadline, but I am really grateful that the cats at Intel was flexible with the schedule & had the attitude that it wasn't a school assignment, but a clip where quality is more important than the deadline.

I would also like to give a short shoutout to the cats who stuck around and pitched in helping me with this huge piece of work. Most of all Schumann/Bach who did an amazing job on the sound design, wrote a bunch of the music and helped me arrange the stuff I wrote for it.
Mo Jäger who helped me edit all of my of footage & Peter Ruschel who helped me shoot a ton and structure it all + my dear Eva who helped me out so much by holding cameras, filming bits and pieces, doing interviewsessions, making me food and telling me off.

& a shoutout to my sister Julie Bach who designed the yarn puppet I ended up animating in the plant in my livingroom...

911 Retrospective...

2011-06-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back I was contacted by the good people at L'Oeil de Links at Canal+ about making a piece on my memories of September 11th 2001. We are closing in on the 10 year mark for when it happened, and in memory of the tragedy, they have hired 11 artists from around the world to each create a video of 1 min and 11 sec to be shown in a special later this year...

It was really interesting to wrestle with a subject that is so personal and subjective to a lot of people. I had quite a debate with one of my long time collaborators (and best friends), Kim Svarer, whether or not I could show the actual event (the hit and the towers crashing) because it is such a sensitive topic to a lot of people. Kim is higly intelligent and a provocateur of the first rank, and we almost always agree on everything, so it surprised me that he was very cautious around this particular subject - but I am a very visual cat and the visuals of the day had a huge impact on my experiencing it, so it was out of the question not to include them in one way or another. - so if anybody out there are taking the imagery to heart, I apologize, It is not meant as offensive; It is just part of the way I remember the day.

I would have loved to do a visually complex treatment of it because as before mentioned the event opens up to a very rich visual memory bank. But the time restrictions and the budget on the piece set some quite strict limitations on me, so I ended up in GraphicsGale making it in 8 bit which is a super fast and quite intuitive way of going...

I will be posting the video and a proper post mortem on the clip when it airs on french tv. I do own the rights for the clip, but out of courtesy to the hard working boys and girls at L'Oeil de Links (that actually hired me to do it) - I think they should have the right to the first showing. I will however post a few frames from the clip...

WINNER OF WEBCUTS.11

2011-05-31T17:38:00.000-07:00

I just got back from WEBCUTS.11 where we won in the category "best collaborative online project" with the Animation Tag Attack. It was the first screening of the movie in its entirety (WorkInProgress) with the mask sound and no score, and it was horrible to see a non finished piece on the big screen, but really interesting to see it with an audience. And on top of that getting all the work we put in it awarded over 2 other awesome projects was a great feather in the hat. Although I have been the front for the project it really hasnt been my project at all; every month a new episode from somewhere in the world has surfaced and blown my mind.
I felt bad for taking all the glory at the ceremony - because it truly is a bastard baby in the most positive sense of the word.

Btw. If you happen to be around tomorrow (1/6 2011) I will be giving a speech about the project at 6 pm at

Hotel Maritim proArte Hotel

Friedrichstraße 151

Berlin, Germany

I will be taking about creativity with the Internet as a platform and collaboration across boarders + of course all the personal artistic choices tied into making a movie with others without any kind of rules of form and style. I am looking forward to talking about the project in a crowd - and most of all hear some of the reactions from the public + questions etc. It will be so much fun. Here's a picture from the award ceremony where they highlighted tomorrows events. Stop by it is open for the public and FREE:

Wrapping up the Animation Tag Attack

2011-05-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

We have been at it for around 1,5 years now, and now finally we are closing in on the finish line. If all goes well all imagery will be done by the end of this week and the sound will follow shortly after. We will screen it as a sneak peak at this years Webcuts.11 where we are nominated in the category best online collaborative project. On top of that Bear Untitled is going up against Brendan Carroll & Francesco Giroldini's "the Monk and The Monkey" in the Webcuts Classics category. For you non die hard fans of The ATA, I can reveal that they are the Dreamworks legion who created Episode 11 of our bastard baby.
I will be giving a speech about the project on the first of June as a part of the festival, so if you're in Berlin and aint got no idea what to go and do - stop by for a chat.

Ive been tinkering a bit with the footage of course in order to do the final edits and Ive been painfully aware for a while now that the hookup between Brendan and Francesco's Episode 11 and our E12 didnt work, so finally this weekend I sat down and tinkered up an 8 second bridge of mr Umbrella flying. Now theres only a short stopmotion shot, a bit of grading and the end credits left, and the final sound mixes... Cant wait to have it all finished - and to see it on the big screen...

Happy Birthday Noémi

2011-03-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

A few days ago my dear friend Noémi Besedes had her birthday and keeping the tradition in awe I created a small birthday Aquarell for her in the midst of the night. If she seems familiar to some of you it is because she played the stellar role of the Duck in my last Episode of the AtA (That hasn't been published yet, but a ton of photographs from the event has...)

She is Swizz, hence the mountain theme...

Some background WiP

2011-03-15T02:21:00.000-07:00

Last night very late I got over a stressfull deadline for a big company. Unfortunately I cant tell you much more about it than that. Not unlike secret agents us creatives also sometimes need to walk the path of secrecy and bear the burden of corporate secrets. I will however post a couple of the backgrounds I did for this particular project. Even though it was a lot of work it was so much fun to do. Everything was kept very rough and for the first time in a very long time I was actually enjoying creating a commercial spot. Maybe I am fooled by my hormones and the spring.

I can tell you this: Projext X is set in a 1940'es filmstudio. Here is a finished background and a background from first sketch to final composite:

Work, some bad news and some pretty awesome news...

2011-03-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

These days are just melting together. I get up ridiculously early in the morning and go to bed way past the wee hours all due to a melting pot of projects laying on my table. All of them are so much fun but I must admit that right now I am looking forward to getting some of them pushed off my plate so I can start focusing a little bit again.I will tell you all about it at a later point but right now there is no time to dwell. Must work.

Yesterday I got word that our Animation Tag Attack didn't get selected to Annecy which totally bummed me out. They received a very rough cut of the film and I can totally understand why it didnt get selected, but I would have loved to go, and I totally believe that it deserves exposure on the big festivals. But after spending a day in the studio with the composers for the last episode I am so psyched about the final product that Im sure everything will be alright.
Half an hour after my short term depression over the Annecy selection I received an email from the Vie Network informing me that Bear Untitled got selected by the Director's Guild of America for the very first New York digital short film festival:

"The Festival will be hosted at the prestigious Director's Guild of America Theater in New York City at a World Broadcast Gala Event in March 28th, 2011, with doors opening at 5:45pm. A selection of Chosen Digital Films that display excellence in the progression of the Digital Revolution in filmmaking will be shown for a World Audience LIVE on THEVIENETWORK.com."

Although slain in work I made a poster for my little film this morning. Nothing revolutionary, granted, but then again neither is the graphics of the little flick...

Heavy Heads

2011-02-21T10:14:00.000-08:00

I have been away from the blog for quite a while now due to a series of crazy work incidents - amongst them the very last Episode of the Animation Tag Attack + all the producer work it apparently takes to get a bird like this of the ground. But what a ride! And on top of it all a series of commercial gigs I unfortunately cant share with any of you at the time being due to signed papers and corporate secrecy.

Next to this hectic work schedule, these past 1,5 weeks featured the Berlin International Film Festival - and I am so tired after spending all my nights hobnobbing and my days working/watching movies that Im close to falling apart right now, but inside my heart is breaking - My make-up may be flaking - But my smile still stays on... To quote the good FM.

There are two reasons for this Festival madness:
1) I did the compositing on the amazing Helena Frank's Heavy heads. A dark comedy about loneliness.
2) My good friend Esben Toft Jacobsen had his feature film debut, The Great Bear, premiering on the festival. An animated fairytale about the friendship between two kids and a giant bear... + Andreas Normand grøntved who did Episode 3 of the ATA did the production design on the movie and my good friend Petter Lindblad produced it. And since they were all in the city there were no rest for the wicked.

I must be frank and admit that I was a bit skeptic after seeing the trailer for TGB, but it is so well told and the universe is so well rounded that you totally forgive and forget the minor flaws that a 2 million Euro 3d production is almost bound to have and just enjoy the great story. Heck I was entertained!

And now enjoy the trailer for Helena Frank's Heavy heads...

Animation Tag Attack Episode 11

2011-01-26T04:26:00.000-08:00

Now we finally got Episode 11 of the ATA up and running. It is made by Francesco Giroldini & Brendan Carroll, both currently working at Dreamworks, and is an orchestrated piece of violence and humor with the title: The Attack of the BearDuck.

As always you can read all about the project and see all the episodes in their entirety on the project blog:
http://animationtagattack.blogspot.com/

I am currently in full production with the last episode of this Bastard Baby which will be online in about 4 weeks, so stay tuned it will be epic:

Picture courtesy of Peter Ruschel

Postcard from Las Vegas

2011-01-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

From Vegas with love

Christen & Henrik

Las Vegas, 2011

2011-01-06T03:32:00.000-08:00

I held a talk for the 24/7 creative, Visual Life, today at the Marquee Nightclub sponsored by Intel & HP, arranged by the David All Group. It was a rocking evening only leaving me with a ton of questions: Why wont the Lavo allow man-bags? Where is the Las Veags machine gun shooting range? And how the hell do you remove glitter from a suit.

Hers a couple of clips I made for the event:

Intro 24/7 Las Vegas from Christen Bach on Vimeo.

Test, Las Vegas 2010 from Christen Bach on Vimeo.

We will always have Vegas!

Vegas

2011-01-03T12:37:00.000-08:00

I am leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow to give a speech at the CES for HP & Intels 24/7 creative. I am really exited. There will be music and haunting clips from my past, and a big bulk about the AtA and Guggenheim, Its gonna ROCK. Thanks to the cats at the David All group for letting all this happen! I have a few more hours of prepping to do and then to bed...

Kængurulommen

2010-12-30T03:27:00.000-08:00

A few months back "Dansk Videnscenter for Ordblindhed" (Danish Knowledge Center for Dyslexia) hired me to create an intro for a series of interviews, designed to inspire parents with dyslexia to read with their smallest children - to stimulate the future reading abilities of the toddlers. It was made in a couple of days, and was a really funny small project.

The series is called Kængurulommen (The kangaroo pocket), because most parents are sitting with the offspring on the lap while reading - Hence the Kangaroo metaphor. You can see all the interviews on NOTA's homepage or on youtube.

And here is the 8 sec intro I created for the project.

Kængurulommen from Christen Bach on Vimeo.

A merry Christmas to you all!

2010-12-23T09:08:00.000-08:00

Shooting Animation Tag Attack E12.

2010-12-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

We just wrapped up 2 days of shooting the AtA Episode 12. It was an awesome weekend with an amazing group of madly talented people. And now Im tired. See you all tomorrow...

Photograph by Peter Ruschel

Guest on Zibb - German Style

2010-12-03T03:29:00.000-08:00

The evening show Zibb on the German channel Rbb invited me in the studio to talk about art, the hype and the Guggenheim. It was a really fun experience and everyone there treated me so nicely. They even send a taxi through a snowstorm to come pick me up, I had my own little dressing room with fruit and beverages and had a really nice talk with Britta Elm in the studio. It is the first time ever Ive been in a talkshow - and as a bonus live in German. haha.

This is me hanging in the Vip beforehand.

And here is the interview - complete with synchronized video and yours truly in the hot seat.

Interview on NRK2

2010-12-01T06:08:00.000-08:00

I recently got news of a really nice small segment from the Youtube Play on Norwegian TV. I am sorry about the quality of the clip, but it was only possible to see it in Norway and it was undownloadable, so this is a live stream from my monitor. I speak about my video and Youtube from around 2:00...

My little book of buisness.

2010-11-29T06:38:00.000-08:00

Before my trip to New york I ran out of business cards (Or at least nice ones). I didn't have time to get new ones printed, so upon leaving I borrowed a saw from one of my friends and sawed up a small sketchbook in 3 parts - So all along the trip I basically produced business cards on the fly every time I had a moment to spare. Most of them were just silly random stuff that came to mind, but everyone took such a pleasure in picking out the exact right one for them. And I've never felt so much gratitude from giving out business cards as with this little booklet. Each card is a small personal piece of art, I guess.

My sister is part of an amazing store called Højkant back in Denmark (Århus), where they sell amazing handmade art & design. I have had a few prints for sale there over the times, but with inspiration in the business card book I recently sat down and created a series of aquarells based on my favorite motives on the cards... Here are a few. If you are interested in purchasing one of the original drawings, please get in contact with either me or one of the good girls in Højkant. Christmas is around the corner, and there are some nice motives amongst them for your loved ones.

Barcelona - Untitled BCN - round #1

2010-11-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

I am currently cleaning up my desktop and fell over a folder with my photographs from the collective exhibition I participated in at the Untitled BCN gallery in Barcelona about a year ago. For all you good souls (Probably most of you) who doesn't have any clue; I exhibited a series of UV-sensitive paintings. You can see my pre-Barcelona presentation of the paintings HERE. Following are a series of snapshots from the trip - mostly from the opening night:

Here I'm hanging with Sebastien Mansfield a good friend of mine and an amazing artist. Unfortunately He doesn't have a homepage, but he turns out strange, surreal, Joe Sorren'esque paintings by the hour.

And finally a snapshot of Jess & Xavi, the two gallery owners, behind the legendary courtyard bar. (They make epic Mojitos). Every time I leave those cats in Barcelona I feel like flipping around and straight up returning there. It is a pleasure every time I'm back.

Doing Layouts by day - Paintings by night

2010-11-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

Once again I am insomniac, So I'm killing my late nights and early mornings with painting.

Croquis

2010-11-15T15:40:00.001-08:00

Space rocket poster design - Making of

2010-11-14T04:33:00.000-08:00

After we left the Copenhagen Suborbitals building site (see previous post here), I was so fired up with inspiration by the ingenuity of Peter and Kristian that I promptly started doodling in my sketchbook; hell bound on making a small poster as a tribute to the grandeur of the project. During a trip to my girlfriends parents in Holland we went to see the famed stained glass windows in the Sint-Janskerk in Gouda - and there in the church I got an epiphany inspired by one of the gorgeous led framed windows: Instead of only illustrate it. I could build the poster motif in cotton and wood...

These are some of the poster doodles in my sketchbook. I was about to base my design on the ones encircled in red.On the way back from the church I doodled the part marked: "After Gouda I drew this"

And this is the window that inspired the final design:

A few weeks later I went to my parents place. They have an amazing farm in the northern part of Denmark, with a lot of space, tools and excess wood (& love). Ideal conditions to embark on projects like this. And I got busy on building the skeleton, and rolling the cotton balls. Yes, I spend 2 days rolling cotton balls and sewing them together. This is the top of the rocket while assembling:

Please notice the holes in the top board. In order to create the lighting conditions in the cotton smoke, I borrowed one of my fathers Christmas light chains and used it to set a skylight.

Heres a quick and dirty turnaround of the finished rocket (Before i prolonged its height for the finished shot):

And then it was basically just to play around with the lights in order to find the most dramatic lighting for the project. I ended up using my old Nokia 3200 Cellphone as an additional lightsource to create the cool blue light in contrast to the glowing yellow. Here are some lighting examples:

And here is my dear mother supervising the project (I use her for scale). She is wearing the obligatory make-belief safety goggles:

And here it is once more; The finished bi-product of my endeavors:

The space race poster child.

2010-11-13T10:38:00.000-08:00

My very own handmade Copenhagen Suborbitals poster (Click picture for larger scale).

It sounds like the ramblings of a crazy man, but 2 guys in Copenhagen are currently building a non-profit spacecraft in a shed at the outskirts of the city. Their plan is to send a manned vessel into space within the next couple of years.

I know one of the guys, Kristian Von Bengtson, very superficially through Copenhagen Bombay and his wife, director Karla von Bengtson, with whom I had the pleasure of working this summer. Through that link I had the great pleasure of stopping by their work site where Kristian showed us around and told us about this crazy project in detail. I must admit that it has been a long time ago I was this fascinated by a project. It was like being 9 years old again and taken through one of your favorite Donald Duck stories.

Everything in that shed just blew my mind. First of all 2 guys decide that they want to send a human being into space, and just get started building a rocket. To be fair to this story I should mention that & Kristian is a spacial engineer and used to work for NASA where he amongst other things build lunar landers and helped create their design manuals & Peter Madsen previously build his own submarine (3 actually).

Kristian told about the process of building a rocket out of things from your local hardware store. Yes the rocket is build out of old washing machine parts and pieces of blow driers etc. The heat shield for instance consists of super glue, some cork floor tiles and plastic wrap.

The nature, scale and ingenuity of the project makes it quite cheap compared to traditional space projects (the initial test launch is calculated to cost around 50.000 €). The project is funded by private donations and companies + art funds.

But don't take my word for it. Got to their homepage, check it out, donate, get exited and share it with your friends. Initiatives like this are so worth sharing:

http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/index.php

After my visit to the work site, I was so on fire with enthusiasm that I was ready to pull on a jumpsuit and get busy welding for those guys. Soon realizing that that probably would end in disaster for the Astronaut to be and his family, I decided to make them a poster instead.

It took me all and all about 4 days to create the poster. The motif is build out of wood, cotton and one of my fathers traditional Christmas light chains. Ill post a little making of segment elaborating further on the process behind building a jet stream in my parents garage a little later.

Interview with Canal+

2010-11-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a very early morning interview I made with L'Oeil de Links on french Canal+ about the Guggenheim experience, the cooperation of the Animation Tag Attack, and how to create things in a hurry. Go HERE and check out from 11:00!

Animation Tag Attack - Episode 10

2010-11-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

We reached episode 10 on our strange little epic. Made by Mikey Please in Paper. If you are unfamiliar with the project please go to the project blog and read all about it and see all the episodes. Hosted by me and created by cool cats from all around the world... But for now dwindle on Mikey Please and the energy Bear/Duck:

ATA- Episode 10 from Animation Tag Attack on Vimeo.

Test #3: Il Tempo Gigante - Woven Wings

2010-11-03T03:50:00.000-07:00

Rolf is one of the most amazing musicians I know, and it doesn't matter if he's alone on stage or together with his full 10 - 15 person setup. He never seizes to amaze me. A part from being one of the sweetest persons I know, he excels in his musical expression and he lives every tone of the music he delivers.

We shot his video in his rehearsal room in Copenhagen a late afternoon a few months back. As with the other videos we shot both picture & sound live on the spot, unfortunately we couldn't get the output from the mixer so the sound on the video is the room recorded with my little Zoom H2N. So I apologize that the mix and levels aren't 100% on the sound - But it adds to the live presence of the clip and thanks to the grandeur of Il Tempo Gigante, I think it catches every bit of nerve in the performance.

The song is the opening tune from his latest album, "Lost something good". If you like the music on this video I cannot emphasize enough how amazing the studio version is. It is one of my favorite albums of 2010 - so go peak a listen and enrich your music collection. It is worth every penny:

itunes.apple.com/dk/album/lost-something-good/id375642109
And of course the Myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/iltempogigantes

8 minutes in the presence of Rolf & Il Tempo Gigante; Blow it up full screen and put on your headphones. It doesn't get better than this:

Il Tempo Gigante - Woven Wings from Christen Bach on Vimeo.

Katy Gunn - My new found superhero!

2010-10-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

Upon returning from Quebec, Canada I spend 24 hours in NY without being caught up in the Youtube Play exhibition before returning to Europe. In this layover I hung out with a bunch of cool people counting Monica Cook & Sean Metelerkamp amongst others.

But my favorite encounter of the 24 hrs was undoubtedly the amazing Katy Gunn with whom I spend the entire night debating men as predators and women as prey, superpowers, what makes a good cocktail & how hats smell. She is one of those few people I feel like I have known for years even though my only previous encounter with her was a brief conversation after one of her concerts in Copenhagen about a month ago...

Apart from being my newest old friend she is also a stellar musician and a wonder of a girl radiating a strange magnetic mix of PJ Harvey & Jesca Hoop. Her new album will be out shortly, and I cant emphasize enough how good she is live. So if you have the chance forget about anniversaries, life threatening illness, heartbreak & favorite tv. Go see her!

This is a poor substitute for reality but nevertheless

2010-10-31T06:43:00.000-07:00

Monica Cook and Lindsay Scoggins both send me a link to this blog post from Hrag Vartanian on hyperallergic.com treating the event - featuring me as: "people whom I didn’t recognize" - There is video footage prior to the event and a series of beautiful snapshots from the evening: HERE!

And of course my good friend and allied mr Wolfgang Reimers has been so nice as to make a little something on the wuoau blog, where there is a great picture where I look positively drunk. HERE!

Me entertaining the press (from Hyperallergic.com):

And here a further list of blogs and news feeds talking Guggenheim, Bear Untitled & Youtube Play:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack/2010/10/the_youtubeguggenheim_play_bie.php?page=2

http://archiv.mopo.de/archiv/2010/20101022/deutschland-welt/kultur/youtube_videos_aus_berlin_im_guggenheim_museum.html

http://niger1.com/?p=3514

http://blog.analogsoul.de/?p=2029

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=359398

http://www.globe-m.de/de/boulevard/hund-auf-skateboard-jetzt-offiziell-kunst

http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/youtube-takes-over-the-guggenheim

http://www.rp-online.de/digitale/internet/Das-sind-die-besten-Clips-auf-Youtube_aid_921550.html

http://www.pnn.de/kultur/342651/

Basically they all say the same thing, so it gets old pretty quickly. But now I have them in my archive here on the blog, so I can dwell in my 10 seconds of mentioning on the internet when I'm gray and lonely years from now...

Guggenheim extravaganza - Youtube Play

2010-10-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

Last week was such a crazy ride. This post might seem quite chaotic, but even now 5 days further the dust in my brain really havent settled yet - and I am not convinced it will before I get back to Berlin and sit down with my girl and my gang for a beer or two.

What all this fuzz is about is YouTube Play - the first Biennial of creative video arranged by YouTube & the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in cooperation with HP & Intel.

Henrik Sjoerslev`s and my video Bear Untitled appeared on the shortlist about a month ago and last thursday it was revealed as one of the final 25 at a big event at the Guggenheim museum in NY. And what a trip. All 25 of us were flewn in from around the world, picked up at the airport and installed in grandeur at the St Giles Hotel in Manhattan to take part of the event. And everyone stretched to the limit to make us feel welcome.

There is a story from the hotel that summs up the entire experience:
I was standing in the lobby and everything around me was a chaos. Everyone were on the phone, asking me questions replying to the phone to figure out when I had to be where. And I had to go up to my room to fetch a bag. As I got into the elevator this little old lady got in next to me: gray hair and half my hight. And as we started going up she looked at me and with a driven english accent she said: "Excuse me... But are you a rockstar?"

That was basically how it felt. A ton of interviews, good people telling me where to go and what to do, drivers driving me around. I had the pleasure of meeting Stefan Sagmeister and Marilyn Minter, OK GO and a ton of other awesome really cool cats (You know who you are!)

Basically I have so much gratitude towards all the people behind this. I simply cannot thank everybody idividually, but you all know who you are: Youtube, Guggenhein, HP, Intell, the other directors and the David All Group - basically everybody I met on the trip exelled in being so nice to me. (Exept the Curator at the Guggenheim that tackled me for drinking a cola too close to a priceless Picasso, but then again she was only doing her job)

Ill do a post when I get back to Berlin that treats the show a bit more in detail. But for now I just wanted to get the initial gratitude off my chest...

Here is a bit of press from the evening. I havent been able to find it all, but if you stumble across something Id love to get word on it - Apparently Im a press hore:

First of all the emission from youtube that was broadcasted live on the evening worldwide. I havent seen it yet, but I am in there somewhere waving like the queen. CLICK!

The amazing exterieur of the Guggenheim on the evening + an explanation what it is all about:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6987266n

Review from the New York Times: Click here
(Not friendly towards the exhibition, but very positive towards my piece)

I had the pleasure of meeting Van from killahbeez.com . We had a chat about creativity and creation and upon returning he wrote THIS article where he even highlights the Animation Tag Attack.

And a great little spot from N-joy Highlighting Henrik Sjoerslevs amazing sounddesign on the clip: http://www.ndr.de/n-joy/audio47921_podcast-podcast2950.html

Une reportage de la Soiree de Arte:

Go vote!

2010-10-12T03:31:00.000-07:00

This is a shoutout to EVERYBODY. Those of you that follows my blog have gotten to know Christina Maria a little bit, and as some of you may know she is one of the last men standing in a big Canadian music competition called the Peak Performance Project.

She is up for winning 105.000,00 Canadian $ - Which would mean a big kick to her career. But she cant do it alone - It would mean 20 seconds of your life, but the world to her if you would go to http://peakperformanceproject.com/vote/ and vote for her.

If you are yet unfamiliar with CM you can check out her page:

http://christinamaria.ca/

Or one of the videos I made for her:

-This is a live clip of her playing "Travel back in time" last spring.

-And here she explains what the PPP is all about.

On top of supporting CM in her quest for fame and fortune (which is much deserved, I don't know many artists that are working so hard for their goals as her) There is also an added bonus for me. Ill let CM tell her by herself: Go here and check 6:10 - 6:25!

Just VOTE!

Croquis

2010-10-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

About a month and a half ago I got both my hands infected from too much work, and I haven't really been able to sit in front of a computer since then. They are almost 100% back thank god, but I am passing my time sketching and doodeling and doing some good old 2d animations as well. As part of this retro wave of mine I hooked up with one of my buddies, Peter Ruschel, to go do some croquis. I am quite rusty I must admit, but it is great exercise, and its a nice crowd to hang with...

Here are a few of my doodles from last weeks sessions...

My girlfriend gave me a black eye...

2010-10-11T03:36:00.000-07:00

Just another day with an abusive make-up artist girlfriend...

I feel like DAAACNING!

2010-09-24T03:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i had a streak of sudden and intense happyness: My hands are healing, the weather was so nice, then there was all the Guggenheim fuzz and i just FELT LIKE DANCING. I was dancing a little, but the people in the U-bahn didn't think it was cool, so I grabbed my sketchbook and doodled this very very quick little comic on the way home to watch Flashforward with my loved one (Click on it for biiig):

The Guggenheim and me?

2010-09-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

The craziest thing just happened. Yesterday The Guggenheim and YouTube, in collaboration with HP and Intel announced the shortlist of 125 videos for the youtube/play exhibition at the Guggenheim museum in NY and Bear Untitled is holding a spot on that list. I know that it is only the shortlist. Out of these 125 videos, only 20 will be entering the grand halls of Guggenheim, but I am pretty darn exited about it so far, and baffled that mine and Henrik's silly remark on a harsh teenage breakup made it through the initial 23.000 videos submitted to the exhibition in the first place. Now it is up to a hardcore jury of awesome artists to select the 20 final videos. Amongst them are such names as Darren Aronofsky, Stefan Sagmeister and Animal Collective, just to mention a few.

Read the Guggenheim press release here

The announcement of the final 20 will be made on the 21'st of October.

And here it is in the youtube version

The Chandelier Story

2010-08-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

Eva and I live in an awesome old fashioned Berlin apartment with 4 meters to the ceiling and tall wooden doors. Ever since we moved in we wanted to buy a Chandelier for the living room. But those Devils are expensive and even a cheap one would be at least 150 euros, so we never got around to buying one. Then around 2 weeks ago I was on my way to do some good old fashioned grocery shopping as I passed our garbage container and somebody had thrown out an old chandelier. It was pretty worn and all the crystals were hanging in laces, laying around it or missing. Just for the heck of it I picked up the pieces and brought it home with me. We spend the entire evening polishing crystals, dissembling the chandelier and putting it back together. I took all the crystals off and rearranged them and now we have an awesome light source in the middle of the living room. Unfortunately I don't have any before pictures but feast on an after-shot. Now we can go towards darker times heads high. Heck yeah!

Fimoland

2010-08-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a week in Barcelona. Untitled BCN celebrated its 2 years birthday and Jess and Xavi invited me back* to take part in their birthday-exhibition. I made a series of sculptures called "The Vovels and F". (They are for sale so give me a shout if interested)

*I exhibited my fluorescent paintings there in january.

The night before leaving Eva didn't get too much sleep and I hardly any. I had 3 deadlines to finish before leaving and on top of that we were busy on finishing the last of the sculptures for the exhibition. Luckily Eva was a trooper and did most of the preparing work for the sculptures.

Here's a short pictorial making of. Eva looks a bit tired but to her excuse it was around 3 o'clock in the morning:

Some kid drew this fan drawing in the gallery guest book, describing which ones he loves the most. That is just straight out flattering!

While we were in Barcelona, we stayed with Jess, one of the Gallery owners, and her fierce cat Derrek in their cool apartment in Gracia. During our stay they had a street fiesta going on, so all the streets were decorated in the most amazing ways. I normally don't post too many vacation photos on this blog, but the labor these good people put into decorating their respectful streets calls for a bit of sharing. It was so amazing walking the streets at night. Everything is made out of 100% recycling stuff. Old water bottles, boxes etc.

What a trip. And thanks to all the guys in Barcelona for yet another rock'n'roll stray!

P3 Making of... sort of....

2010-08-22T00:40:00.000-07:00

Haha, Christina Maria just posted a small making of featurette on youtube. For all you tech nerds out there dont get too exited; it is basically just me, Peter and Christina rambeling through strange situations during the process - and everything in the video took place before the digital process of it. But it features how to build a mountain, an ecological beard and how awkward I am on camera...

Peak performance project - Challenge #1

2010-08-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

Before leaving for Barcelona last week I finished up Christina Maria's Promotion clip for the peak performance project. Unfortunately it is suffering on the sound side and would have sparkled through some more editing, but for beeing made in only 3 weeks by me flying solo in my bedroom, It is allrigh. But a few days more would have done wonders. It had to be uploaded and I wont be back in berlin for a few more days - theres sweet life for you...

But go check it out, and blog and pass on. And go vote! It is so important that she gets a ton of hits on this thing so she can win the Peak Performance Project. Details are all in the video!

BAAAARCELOOOONA!

2010-08-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

It has been a rough night. I had 3 deadlines I had to pass before going to Barcelona. My temples are pounding, but I just finished the last one. No need in going to bed now. It is 4 o'clock in the morning and well be leaving for the airport in less than 2 hours.

This is part of what happened here throughout the night. It is an early stage of F from my "The Vowels and F" series I will be exhibiting in Spain over the next couple of weeks.

I will keep you posted when I get home in a week or so...

The Peak... Getting there!

2010-08-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

Sunday Morning, 8 o'clock; these are my windows in After Effects and Photoshop at the current time. If all goes well I will finish all graphics (except the arms) of the spot today. Its a long stretch, but with a little luck it'll happen...

Wooow - The Attack Returns!!!

2010-08-01T05:38:00.000-07:00

The so far 8'th episode in my bastard baby; The Animation Tag Attack, just hit the internet. Kudos to Scott Benson who completely lifts the project to a whole new level...

Beautiful!

2 more backgrounds to go

2010-07-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

Yet another background in the bag. Here it is - featured from initial sketch to Photoshop background till the final AfterEffects composite... Ill dedicate this background to Jens Fussan who was the cool cat yesterday and helped me out with setting lights for some additional greenscreening for this spot. Later he took the picture of Peter Plock's head I used for the guy working the keyboard. There'll be more to come very soon...

The daily update...

2010-07-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

Yet another shot of the CM promo-clip in the bag - Still 2 sequences to go...

Another day another shot!

2010-07-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

I keep on trucking on the CM spot... A bit of fake 2,5d in After Effects...

Stockholm...

2010-07-26T02:10:00.000-07:00

After a quarter of a years crazy work haze - me and the misses went to Stockholm for a few days to enjoy life (and shop fashionable Scandinavian clothes). I just went through the Photos from the trip. Heres my absolute favorite:

P3 WiP

2010-07-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

Freshly returned from Stockholm, I am now back behind the computer at 00:11 local time slaving away to get Christina Maria's promo-clip for the peak Performance project done, so she can become world famous and I can tell stories about me once knowing her...

New Blog!

2010-07-15T01:29:00.000-07:00

Just for the hv30 or music fanatics in the crowd. I just put up a new blog for my Hv30 music sessions. I will still post all the videos on this blog as well, but if you want the purity of the project run for the new blog. There are only 2 videos present at the moment, but more will be uploaded in the nearest of futures.

Pancake almighty!

2010-07-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day in a week where the temperature hasn't exceeded 35 degrees Celsius. Yesterday we had 42 degrees here and our apartment was hot as an oven, with the result that I haven't done any work the past couple of days - I've basically just been laying around in my underwear sweating. But holy glory almighty, we have had 28 degrees today and what a day that has been. We closed the day down by inviting everybody over for pancakes!

Christina Maria - Peak Performance project - Intro shot

2010-07-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

Ive spend the past 3 days trying to figure out a way to extract a killer intro-shot from some very hasty handheld camera flybys of a paper maché mountain on a poorly lit greenscreen-backdrop. My struggles simply comes down to a severe lack of planning. We met up at 11 pm on Friday evening to come up with an idea for the clip and we had to shoot it Saturday morning at 10 pm. I encountered 3 main problems due to this poor lack of planning;

1: We only had 3 lamps to work with which resulted in a poorly lit greenscreen, a poorly lit subject and a white paper maché mountain standing way too close to the backdrop = Green spill light on the mountain and lots of it.

2: Motion blur and grain on the footage: Due to the "low light" conditions I was left with footage that was both grainy and had a lot of motion blur, and the fact that we did a hand held shot with a miniature didn't help my 3d tracking process much either.

3: My worst nightmare: OLD TAPES! I cannot emphasize this enough; DO NOT use old tapes! Always have a stock of tapes for your camera laying around (if you still use tape). Because of the time pressure and my very hectic work schedule over the past months, I simply hadn't thought of buying new dv-tapes for my small hv30. And because I keep most of my footage in an archive, I didn't have any empty ones, so one of my friends borrowed me a bunch. Unfortunately they are quite old and packed with pixel errors and digital noise. That is even worst than just ordinary noise. It leaves great big squares on your shots and tends to cut out parts of your footage...

I tried every possible angle available: 3d tracking, camera projection, I even went as far as to try Nukes 6x's excellent 3d tracker/projector, and I actually managed to get got somewhat of an OK result out of it, but the hand held motion of the camera was pure horror and I quickly realized that it would take several days of work to fix the camera movement, key and roto out the mountain, build Vancouver in 2,5 d etc. etc. etc.

So instead of sitting crying in front of my computer I simply decided to cast away the footage of the Paper-Maché mountain that Peter and Christina so beautifully built - and simply make a graphic solution instead of a high grade one. I still used the Mountain though. I just extracted some closeups from the flyby and put it back together in Photoshop. And I will use some of the shots for a later scene in the clip. Ill see if I cant get around to edit a making of at some point after finishing this clip...

The intro (around 10 sec) took about an afternoon to piece together...

A screenshot of the "P3 Christina Maria Viral" intro:

ATA episode 1-7

2010-07-07T16:39:00.001-07:00

Yes, the new episode off the monster is online...

Episode 1-7 from Animation Tag Attack on Vimeo.

Helmet Girl

2010-07-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

Another quick'n'dirty sketch from the ol' book. It is a photorealistic rendering of my girlfriend... Thats right... She is HOT! Thats why you get an exclusive closeup as well...

3 finger piggin'

2010-07-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I scribbled a banjo playing pig in my sketchbook for the dueling banjo pigs blog. - Try repeating that sentence 5 times fast!

Here you can see it in its home environment.

Zoo!

2010-07-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

I spend the entire Saturday with my favorite veterinarian at Copenhagen Zoo. Her name is Michelle and she is currently writing her thesis on how turtles reacts to anesthesia. So she has spend 3 months in a dark room putting almost asleep creatures to sleep and afterward ultrasound scanning them to see how the heart etc reacts to the drug + dosage she has been giving them. It was pretty awesome. She knows a load about animals and I got to pet a sloth and hold a salmonella infested gecko. After Michelle left for home and her awaiting thesis I spend the evening wandering about the zoo scribbling in my sketchbook... What a day!

Update and the female upper lip...

2010-06-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

Finally there is 5 seconds of breathing room in these hectic days. Im off to Copenhagen tomorrow to lay the finishing touches on Karla Bengtsons "Tigre og Tattoveringer" and I have spend the past 4 weeks doing 5 crazy projects simultaneously. This is actually the first day in a loooong time where I have the sensation that I don't have to do anything. And I am freshly rested after a good 15 hours of sleep last night.

A part from exhausting it has been a good couple of months though. Ive been doing a few projects with the good people from Kaiserbrand and has been in and out of Copenhagen to do some things at Copenhagen Bombay + several smaller illustration and animation assignments.

That is the update work wise so far since my last post.

Yesterday I had the immense pleasure of shooting the raw footage for a small promotional clip for Christina Maria. She is currently in the top 20 of a big Canadian music contest called the Peak Performance Project and the runner up to win 105.000 candian $. As a part of the PPP she has to deliver a small clip telling the world about the project, and to go vote (go vote!). It was quite a hectic 24 hrs. I went to see her friday evening at 11 pm to figure out an idea, and at 10 am Saturday morning we hooked up at Studio Kaiserbrand to shoot the greenscreen footage and the models etc for it. I am a bit anxious to start editing and assembling because of the lack of planning though. That will punish me later I am sure, but we had a blast of a day. The following pictures are Christina honing a mustache - and the Female mustache kit making it all possible...

I will post a little bit of a making of when I get a bit further into the project - but until then enjoy the sexual attraction of the female mustache...

More cats!

2010-06-13T09:11:00.001-07:00

Flying cats...

2010-06-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

I promised sweet Louise to design her a flying cat propelled by balloons. These are the layouts. They'll be colored later. #2 is my personal favorite! Click picture for bigger cats.

The Animation Tag Attack Episode 6

2010-06-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

Is there any better way to celebrate my post #100 than with the newest episode of my bastard project "tATT". This time delivered by Maxwell A. Oginni out of London, and the episode is nothing less than a beauty tying some of the loose threads together and letting some of the freaks from the past bump into each other... Cant wait for the next one to hit my screen, made by Ewen Stenhouse. But first episode 6 just one more time..

ATA - Episode 6 from Animation Tag Attack on Vimeo.

Benjamin AggerBæk

2010-06-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

First of all I want to apologize to all you good people who has been tuning into the blog for the past month. I've spend the past month in Copenhagen being supervising compositor on a half-length feature for children called Tigre og Tatoveringer, and between work and seeing old friends there has been very little time to finish anything, yet alone keeping the blog up to date, But now I'm back in good old Berlin and ready to make things happen.

While I was in Copenhagen I took some afternoons with old friends to do a couple of live videos like the one I did with Christina Maria a few months back. The first one is with Benjamin Aggerbæk, one of my old friends from when I was a regular on the singer/songwriter circuit in Copenhagen. Benjamin is the King of the Copenhagen s/s-scene. He is an amazing jazz-crooner and a heck of a nice guy. And If you're into jazzy poppy tunes with awesome musicians, I would definitely recommend getting hold of one of his two CD's, they are both worth plenty a listen.

The video is shot at "Huset ved Kongens Have" in Copenhagen. Unfortunately a few of the shots are suffering from low lighting conditions, my fault entirely. This series is meant as an exercise for me as a photographer and live footage editor, but luckily Benjamin completely saves the clip with his rock steady velvet performance. Ladies and gentlemen: Benjamin Aggerbæk, "Be Together, Apart"...

wall of fame

2010-05-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

This weekend I have been hanging out with my good friend Henrik Sjørslev from the Rudderless Symphonies and his beautiful girlfriend (and one of the absolute best designers I know) Vibeke Valeur. They had just begun the constructon of a mural with sketches from frequent visiters in their good home. So saturday evening while Henrik and I were treating ourselves to some red whine and waiting for our AMAZING carrot cake to finish its stay in the oven, I created this freak of a drawing. It is supposed to go up in the room where Henrik's home studio is located hence the theme of the scribble. Sorry about the quality of the drawing, but I didnt have any of my normal gadgets at hand... And I was slightly distracted by cake...

Souvenirs from Earth

2010-05-13T01:30:00.000-07:00

Just a small shout-out to you good people in Germany and France who has cable: From May 20, 2009 my video, "Abbey&Eva; Carry On", will be on circulation on Souvenirs from Earth - the first TV Station broadcasting a nonstop program of high quality Film and Video Art on the European Cable Network.

Hats off to Alec Crichton at SfE for making this happen.

ATT episode 5

2010-05-07T03:56:00.000-07:00

Uhhh. The newest episode of the Animation Tag Attack just hit the web. Made by Oren Mashkovski out of Tel Aviv, Israel. On the same note I am very exited that Maxwell A. Oginni and Ewen Stenhouse from Angry Natives just signed up to do the next 2 episodes. Stay tuned that is definitely going to rock some boats.

Gefilicitiert AnneLise

2010-05-01T02:26:00.000-07:00

Last performance at the Fire Club, Berlin

2010-04-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

My musical alter-ego, Mr Abbey, played his last wednsday session at the Fire Club, Berlin, this wednesday. A big thanks to Chris Asteriades for having pulled the strings for this amazing arrangement over the past year - And a big thanks to Jens Fussan for taking these amazing pictures at the scene.

Live photos by Jens Fussan, Berlin

Heyaaaa bloggers & Tweeters!

2010-04-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

This has been a really crazy week. First the Animation Tag Attack got picked up by the Cartoon Brew Crew, and now Matt Lambert at Motiongrapher just blogged my "Bear Untitled" catapulting it onto a ton of different blogs and tweets. That is so weird that this silly little 2 days project is getting so much attention. But the reactions has been overwhelming and I am truly flattered by all the positive response. I have even received a few emails from festivals asking if I would submit the movie to their program. Thank you all! I can feel the summer coming up...

AH - Summer at last.

2010-04-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

What a day today! Even though I was beaten and battered by a great Jam Party yesterday containing superb musicians, far to much beer and an evil willed bottle of Jägermeister, I still managed to get out of bed to profit from the late afternoon. It was the first REAL summers day. One of those days where you can bike around wearing nothing but your good mood. I ended up sitting under a tree by the Spree and doodeling in my book. Afterward I stopped by the crazy Open Air Karaoke in Mauerpark, and now I am off to the El Hamra Open Stage together with Eva Adore, Peter Ploch & Christina Maria. It Doesn't get any better than that!

A one hour sketch I ended up doing of the Berliner Dom

Finally new illustration on the homepage

2010-04-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

I have had such a bad conscience about having a crap temporary homepage, that Ive been giving out cards spelling out the name of my blog. And lets face it: The name of the blog is waaaaay to long for someone to actually punch in all the letters. Today after several sleepless nights I finally pulled myself together and redid it. Eventually It will need some specifically designed sub-pages, but for now I am just happy that I am not ashamed of it anymore. Phew! The title is 8-bit skeleton.

tHUMBNAILS

2010-04-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in the U-bahn yesterday and realized that I haven't been doing any background-work for a long time, so I whipped out my sketchbook and my aquarells and just started smearing thumbnails on a page. Here are a few of them. In the book they are around 7x7 cm big.

"Bear Untitled" & hommage to Mr O'reilley

2010-04-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

As I previously stated I have been playing around with GraphicsGale and creating really strange small pixel animations for my own pleasure only. The above video is the result of two days (around 16 hrs) fooling around with the program - and my first endeavor in the 8 bit realm since the early 90'es.

My good friend producer and musician extraordinaire, Henrik Sjørslev, did the sound design and got totally free hands. Unpurposely because of the bitcrusher the sound became very David O'reilley-esque. A thing David figured out quite early, and one of the many reasons his works are so great, is that there is something amazing about emotional conversations acted out in ice cold monotone voices. He has been able to get under the skin and display true emotions on very synthetic characters in very synthetic universes. After a bit of pondering I decided to keep it. Mainly because Henrik did a killer job on it, and I cant stop bursting out in laughter at the end of the clip every time I see it (I didn't have that before the sound, mind ya - I thought it was funny, but not haha funny) + I think it fits very well to the mood and style of the animation.

If you don't know Davids work, you should definitely go check out his homepage - and go through it all! It isn't just his animations that are quite refreshing (especially PSS, that won him the golden bear at last years Berlinale - and about 800 other prizes) but also his approach to animation in general - such as his theories, his dogmas, visual observations and manifests...

What are you still doing here? - GO!

Oh, glorious Cartoon Brew

2010-04-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

It just came to my attention that Cartoon Brew blogged the Animation Tag Attack yesterday. How awesome is that? Calling our work "remarkably fresh and sophisticated" on top. Don't just sit around go check it out!

UPDATE: It seems the coverage of our little pet project is picking up. Several smaller blogs are starting to blog us and some bigger fish are joining in as well. As for instance the all-knowing Dekku over at noFatClips, Ehrensenf online tv (from 1:08) - even Norwegian radio P3 did a small featurette on us.

I must admit that I am extremely happy with this much positive press after just 4 episodes + there is a growing interest from some really skilled people to be part of the project. Hourray for the internet! Imagine having done this back in the era of the videocasette...

GraphicsGale Ver. 1.93.12

2010-04-17T16:57:00.000-07:00

Last week I got an urge to do some pixel animations and I downloaded a small freeware program called GraphicsGale - I've spend the past few days playing around with it, and it is so much fun. Main part of that is the fact that the limited resolution leaves you with a way faster and more intuitive work flow. And limited animation has an old school feel to them - which further reduces your time schedule. because of the primitive state of the program I do miss some tools from time to time, but for now Im just a fat boy in candyland.

Ive already finished one 1,5 minute short and Im playing around with another one right now. The first one is in Odense, Denmark with my good friend Henrik Sjørslev to get a sweet layer of 8 bit sound added. I will post that during next week. Stay tuned.

I just spend the past 2 hours doodling while watching ultimate fighting. These are a few of the endeavors.

Lasulk.a

2010-04-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

As previously mentioned I am currently working on a small 5 page comic based on a short story written by Idyll Wilde for her Luci.a Variations. I just finished the 2 first pages and thought I would share a bit of process with you guys...

The Animation Tag Attack Episode 4

2010-04-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

Once again my baby-pet-project the Animation Tag Attack has been updated with yet another excellent episode. Ned Wenlock, New Zealand animation director, is doing a great job tying the 3 first episodes together. Go check out his stuff! I love his bedbugs odyssey...

Following is all 4 current episodes together... And more on their way, so stay tuned.

To sum up; the creators are as follows:
Myself
Mads Juul
Andreas Normand Grøntved
And of course Ned Wenlock

Talk to the fox - the dwarf wont listen!

2010-04-06T15:09:00.001-07:00

I don't want to go to prison!

2010-04-06T01:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening just before going to bed we watched Scorseses "Shutter Island". And what a ride. But as I woke up this morning this picture was stuck in my head together with the title; "I don't want to go to prison!" - Strange...

This fox is playing cards...

2010-04-04T15:09:00.001-07:00

Mauerpark!

2010-04-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

I spend my entire day today at Mauerpark. Getting up at 5.30 in the morning, carrying a bunch of my originals plus a ton of prints 20 minutes by foot only to get a crappy stand in the most remote part of the marked. I was there for 8 hours and sold...; 1 F"#%¤ print. = 5 Euros. Jeeez.

The upside though was that I had a really nice day outside and I got a bunch of killing-time-aquarells done...

I am a fool!

2010-04-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first of April. The idea was to call up my girlfriends parents, and drop them the bomb that Eva is pregnant... And then later shortly before midnight reclaim it as an April fools day joke - and see how far the news had gotten. Eva found out my fiendish scheme and talked me out of it. Seen in the rear view mirror: Maybe that was for the best...

Graphic Novel

2010-03-31T06:43:00.000-07:00

Ive been hired to do a graphic piece for a short story in Idyll Wilde's "The Luci.a Variations". The Sketches are done and now I'm starting the inking. I did two testpanels today. And here they are for you to take in. Unfortunately scanning and Aquarell-paper seems to be a mismatch so Ill probably end up photographing the entire thing...

The Book of Cousins

2010-03-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

I have the coolest cousin in the world. He is called Lucas and he is 9 years old. Up until a couple of years ago, his favorite past time was to explore the forest and dig holes and poke dead animals with a stick. You know; boys stuff.

Then one Christmas day. I showed him a bunch of my oddball movies. Stuff like Johnny Velour and the Spiders. Mind you he is 6 years old at the time. And ever since then he has been addicted to drawing. So now we've made a book that we can fill with random stuff and send back and forth. I just got it back. And found a pretty cool comic i did a few months back.

And this. How crazy is it that my 9 y.o. cousin has made a perfect drawing of Hunter S Thompson waiting for the bus..?

Biler...

2010-03-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

Remember the 24'th of March? It was the day of days; The day I posted a little blue car. And this post, my dear friend, is the sequel.

The 24th I was bored out of my skull, so I decided to animate a poem my sister, Bulie Jach, wrote in year 2k. Yes, she was 20 and it is 10 years ago, but somehow, I cant seem to shake it. So here it is: The Movie to the words. It took me 2 workdays = around 16 hours to make it from scratch to finish and it is meant as a small stupid experiment inspired by Andreas Normand Grøntved's latest entry to the Animation Tag attack.

If I should redo it - the two first shots would contain the dark as well, but I have moved on, so let it rest in peace for now...

It is in danish, but the rough translation goes like this:

Cars

Cars are driving
Small cars - big cars - are driving
Out into the world...
Do they have the scent
of something over ground, underground?
Or are cars just driving to drive
exactly where the people want to go..?
Or are cars just driving to drive
exactly where the cars want to go..?

Be there or be Bear..!

2010-03-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

It's gonna be an awesome evening this goodfriday. I'm playing a double bill with Christina Maria at the Arcanoa here in Berlin. The music and the people are going to be awesome. The only downside is the slowest bartender in the world. I am serious... the... slowest. But what the fuck. We will hook you up, and get you high on life..!

Car

2010-03-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

I took an hour this morning to build myself the finest car in 3d... Though this gif might as well just have been created in Photoshop alone. But who knows - maybe it comes in handy over the next couple of days...

The showreel Archive

2010-03-10T03:15:00.000-08:00

It just reached my ear that Jaques Alomo over at The Showreel Archive is featuring my 2010 reel on his site. Thank you good sir! If you need inspiration in this gray day and age it is definitely a site worth checking out!

Graphic update...

2010-03-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

I just took 15 minutes to update the look of the Animation Tag Attack blog now the ball is rolling. The old blog-design was just a placeholder and plain ugly. The new design is a graphic mashup between the 3 first episodes:

Old:

New:

Christina Maria - Femme Fatale...

2010-03-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

I met this crazy roller-coaster of a Swiss/Canadian/Singer/Songwriter/Girl about a month ago while playing an open stage at Schokoladen. On top of being borderline nuts, she is just one of those performers you can't help to fall a little bit in love with every time she's on stage. She is just that good.

On the same note (Now that I have indulged myself in this shameless act of promotion); If you have $6.93 to spare you should check out her new CD! - it's definitely worth the Ka-Chiiing!

Enough of this hyping star-seeds.

About a week ago I hooked up with Christina Maria (The girl previously mentioned) to eat doughnuts and make the first of a series of small live-music tests with my HV30 camcorder. It is basically an exercise in filming/recording live-music on scene. I was devastated as I got home only to discover just how messy my camerawork really is. So bare with me; I am by all means no great Documentarist. I am used to highly planned shots, but hopefully It will only get better with each new experiment.

BUT it was so much fun to do - and nice to do a very quick little project that didn't involve any kind of animation or SFX for a change....

Introducing Christina Maria; Travel Back in time (Live)

Der Kaiser

2010-03-06T02:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I hooked up with my good friend Wolfgang Reimers, King and Kaiser of the Berlin based Studio Kaiserbrand, to take a few pictures for the Animators Mustache Society. Wolf is a cool cat and stuck in a time where men were men and a fistfight was an honor. These are just a couple of the pictures I took yesterday before we went to an opening at the Intoxicated Demons Gallery - and what an evening that was!

The Animation Tag Attack Episode 3

2010-03-04T15:42:00.000-08:00

Fucking Aye. Every month I am tapdancing of joy with each new episode of the Animation Tag attack - A play around project that I've created together with Mads Juul and Andreas Normand Grøntved, and that I am hosting over on the ATT-blog.

Andreas just delivered his episode a few hours ago and damn that shit is beautiful!!! The curve is just going up for each episode. Not only is it really well animated, but I just love his style and comping as well... Thumbs up my good man.

The storyline is still somewhat fucked, but hopefully, hopefully Ned Wenlock, next months participant from New Zealand will turn that around for us. But for now im just flabbergasted and struck with awe by what has been made so far...

Andreas Normand Grøntved, digital animation;

And the 3 episodes in a continuous stream of consciousness:

ATT_Episode 1-3 from Animation Tag Attack on Vimeo.

Promoting Sean Connery's Chesthair...

2010-02-28T01:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know it is odd, but someone had to do it!