February 28, 2009

Banjo or freakout

Banjo or freakout
One of the best music finds I've made this year. Really nice lofi music reminds me a lot of stuff that's been coming out of anticon over the years. He released a cover cd that feature covers on artist such as Burial, Radiohead, Sonic youth and a bunch more, I think it's like 11 tracks. It's sold out now but you can find some songs on the internet if you search a bit.
 
Anyway check out his music great stuff.
Here's a link to Banjo or freakouts blog where you can find a lot of exclusive tracks and other nice stuff. And here is his myspace page.

Next life - the Lost Age

Next Life - the Lost Age
They have outdone themselves again. Next Life from Norway, is just amazing!! Can't get much better than this. Brutality and 80s videogame melodies combined into one BIG BANG!

Check them out on myspace and buy the album.
(also available on itunes store).


February 22, 2009

POPCIRKUS - making of...

Hey, finally some new stuff on the blog :)

So I posted earlier about the Popcirkus opening sequence I worked on last month.
So here are some screenshots and quicktime clips I saved during the progress.

The Brief was to make a opening sequence for a new tv program for SVT (Swedish television) called Popcirkus. The program would focus on bringing live music to the tv screen in a 90 minute weekly based program featuring 3 band per episode amongst other things, and the bands / artist would get to play their music infront of a live audience and at the same time broadcasted live on Swedish television. The Brief also consisted of making a logotype for the show and graphics for signs showing artist name and song titel. 

So our idea was to make a rocky and vivid 2D animated intro of different artists morphing from one to another illustrating the adrenaline, power, and enjoyment of a live concert.

Very rough storyboard. I had very limited time to get everything done before the airdate considering it would all have to be animated mostly by hand, so I just made some very rough storyboards to map out my ideas for myself, you probably won't get that much out of them thou.
First rough logo idea sketches. First thing that came to mind was making the logo out of real life objects. At first I thought about making the logo out of record sleeves, vinyl records and cassete tapes but quickly changed to more suitable instruments and objects that could be found on a stage during a concert.
First rough sketch of the logotype made for the initial treatment.

Vectorising the logo and trying a somewhat different approach then the initial sketch.

First test of what the logo might look like in the opening sequence.
Final logotype, above a more rough version in dark blue and below a clean version.


This is a question mark that would be used in a segment of the show, made in the same manner as the logotype.

First look and feel test of the animation. Started out as a very colorful and poppy style.

...then got a bit darker, and added more paintbrush like textures.

Finally decided on going on a more earth-tone color look and reducing the colors.

Below are a few quicktime clips of the work in progress.

Here is the first reference movie witch we then used as a guide when creating the animations.
It's compiled out of different live concert stock material from the television channels archive.
Some rough animations made it into this first version as well.

First look and feel animation test, trying out colors and style.

More experimenting with color and style, as you can see the first versions where very colorful.
Not really knowing where to go colorwise and getting a bit to messy look with all the diffrent colors blending together.

Staring to find the real look of it. Reducing the colors and focusing on a grey / off white background with darker elements and have two main colors red and blue.

A difrent sequence with added background objects from a stage.

First version with the opening sequence in it's whole still lacking a lot of details and final touches.

Here is the final version of the opening sequence, credits below.

Director: Popcore film and Kenny Lindström
Animation and compositing: Kenny Lindström
Art direction: Kenny Lindström
Additional roto scooping: Nils Lidström
Music: Refused - New noise

February 20, 2009

Sugar free no candy...or wait what


Work goes on with the intergalactic cuteness :) more planets and more star. I will post some preview clips soon, and a rough animatic.

February 17, 2009

...1000 miles per hour



Found this amazing live clip on youtube today of At the drive-in, wish I had the chance to see them live looks like a blast.

February 11, 2009

logh - death to my hometown

I recently started working on a new video for the band Logh
The video will be for the song "death to my hometown" from the album north. And it's going to feature a hungry galactic creature eating up the galaxy. I will post stuff continuously during the process, so here are some early sketches from my moleskine to begin with.

On the left are some planet and moon sketches and on the right some creature sketches.

More creature sketches and some early storyboard sketches.

Some verry early and strange create sketches :)

Intergalactic ice cream cone made out of planets on the left and comet and rock sketches on the right.

One of my first sketches of the caracther.

Here are the storyboards for the video, some scenes are in the wrong order.





Trying out some different styles and textures for the planets.

Polka planet :) (don't know if it's called polka in english...)

First comp test of planets, stars and open space.

More to come so stay tuned :)

February 10, 2009

Popcirkus - opening sequence


Popcirkus - opening sequence HD from picnicwithpanic on Vimeo.

Some recent work I did together with Popcore
It's a opening sequence for a new television program for SVT called "Popcirkus". The concept is bringing back live music to the television screen in Sweden. The episodes runs around 90 minutes and feature 3 live music acts, and everything is shoot live at debaser medis in Stockholm.

Direction: Popcore / Kenny Lindström
Animation: Kenny Lindström
Art direction: Kenny Lindström
Music: Refused - New noise