Magnus Igland Møller

Sketches

2012-02-12T07:18:00.000-08:00

I wish I did more sketching regularly, but for some reason I tend to do it mostly when I travel. Here's a few samples from places I've been sketching at the last half year.

"ISFIT 11", a music festival on "Valøyene" outside my hometown Grimstad, in Norway:

"ASF" Stuttgart, mostly from "der blauer angel" cafe (if my german is correct)

Lastly, some sketches from Peru. Tumblehead went for a two week trip where we got to visit Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley and a four days trip into the Amazon Jungle.

Tonights Sketch

2011-09-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Tested out the new dynamesh function in Zbrush R2, works like a charm!

2011-09-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Another work in progress render. Used zbrush's "Best Preview Render" for the first time, YAY!

Zbrush model, work in progress

2011-09-13T14:42:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this sculpt in my sparetime. You'll have to excuse the symmetrical expression, as I'm still sculpting :) It's still work in progress, but I though I'd post it here anyways. Everything is retopologized and UV'd, so next up is texturing. I intend to render the basterd and set up hair/mustage/beard etc with "shave and a haircut" inside Maya. Let's see how far it gets before I get another idea for a character I wanna do :)

2011-08-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

ANNECY
I went to Annecy this summer, and I got do some skethes. Most from Cafe Des Arts where we oddly enough spent a lot of time :)

2011-08-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

Oh man... how I love cowboys!

2011-08-21T10:28:00.001-07:00

Z-Brush
I've wanted to learn Z-Brush for a long time, but havn't really got a grasp of it until now. I'm still a very basic user, but at least I've figured out how to move the camera around :)
Big thanks to Frederik Storm for showing countless of zbrush tricks!
I don't have photoshop on my home computer, so a screendump will have to do for now.

2011-08-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hjertebarn

"Hjertebarn" is a project I'm working on in my spare time together with Cristina Bojesen. The word means directly translated "Heart-Child", it's a danish word used for children who have gone through a heart surgery. Cristina had a heart surgery when she was 5 years old, and from that experience decided to make a film to help children have a better understanding of whats going on when they have the surgery. The concept that you can have a hole in your heart, can be difficult for a kid to understand.

In english:

"A 2D animated informational film about "Heart-children" and their thoughs about heart surgery - for children, parents and relatives."

These drawings are made for a brochure including information of the project. I will post it here when we have it ready. I used col-erease and water color for these ones.

2011-07-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

Doodles!

2011-05-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

What's going on at the Tumbleheads...

In january this year I started up an animation studio together with Peter Smith, in Viborg, Denmark. We called it "Tumblehead". It's been a truly delightful experience so far, and I've been lucky to be a part some really interesting projects.

"The Children's World"

At the moment I'm storyboarding on Paw Charlie Ravn's "Børnenes verden" ("The Children's World"). Paw have earlier made the short films "Nima" and "Two friends", where the last of the two got him a "Robert" (Danish version of academy awards), for the category "Best short Fiction".

I'm boarding together with the amazing Mads Juul, and the banjo playing, and extremely talented, Peter Smith.

The film is being produced by "Eyecandy Film".

Length: 25 min

Medium: 2D animation

Still from the pilot of "The Children's World"

"Final Call"

I was lucky to meet the incredible and lovely Sara Barbas in January when she was in Viborg for the ASF course. During the stay she found out about the "Open Workshop", and she applied to get funds to make pitch material for her new short film project "Final Call", which she has written and is directing herself. Her application was of course granted, and now she's back in Viborg, yay! I've been helping out with brainstorming character designs for the film. The deadline for the found Sara is applying to is mid next week. Fingers crossed!!

Lenght: 15 min

Medium: 2D animation

A mix of Sara's and my sketches during a "brainstorm dinner".

"The set-up"

Short-film, produced by Tumblehead.

From the homepage:

Is it all really about finding the meaning? The dinosaurs didn't, and look what happened to them! Is there a God and does it in fact matter? How come the ansver to existence is hidden from us and what would happen if we were to uncover it?

A conspiration-theroretical short animated fictional nightmare.
A tumblehead production in developement.

We have been very lucky to have Sara Barbas on board to help us out writing a beat board and maybe a treatment as well. We've also got some funding from the Open Workshop to be used on developing the story. If we are lucky we'll get Mads Juul on board for brainstorming and drawing out a beatboard. Let's see what happends :)

Length: Unknown at this stage

Medium: 3D/CGI, Stopmotion/claymation, handdrawn.

Concept art for "the Set-Up", by Magnus Møller

2011-03-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

Le Sheriff!

Still in "Western" mode. Used photoshop CS5 with some custom brushes for this one.

2011-03-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

Sculptris

I have been testing out Sculptis the last few days, and I have to say I'm really impressed with what you can do in the program, considering that it's free. It's also extremely easy to learn the interface, which imo is much better than both Mudbox and Z-brush. I wish it had better painting tools though, that would make it the ultimate 3D sketch program. But seriously, I shouldn't complain. it's a brilliant little program (and I say it again, it's FREE).

2011-03-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

Teaching photoshop this week, and made this sketch in class today to show some workflow possibilities.

I can't get enough of "western" bad guys :)

Just a quick overview of the process from thumbnail to valuepainting.

I used again a split complementary palette for this one.

2010-12-13T10:41:00.000-08:00

Billy Mitchell caricature

Here's my last assignment from the caricature course. This is Billy Mitchell, famous from the film/documentary "King of Kong". I think he is the best character I have ever scene in a movie. (I know it's supposed to be a documentary, but it's cut together like a movie to give the story more impact). Have to admit I'm not too happy with it overall. I think the pose is a bit stiff, and I would liked to polished the shirt and pants more... but hey, at some point you just have to go to the next painting.

2010-10-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

29th SketchCrawl - Viborg

2010-10-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

Tried a new painting technique today, a more intuitive approach where I started out with a broad paint brush picking colors by gestimating. No palette used, or valua painting. I worked very much in only one layer, which made the process more fun I think.

Above is some anatomy studies from the last sketches. I was supriced how different the skulls actually was.

2010-09-24T13:26:00.001-07:00

2010-09-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

2010-09-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

Boris the bandit is asking himself "the big question".

-"Who am I, and why am I here?"

2010-09-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

I know that feeling... Poor guy.

2010-09-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

...aaand yet another one!

Sketches from reference...

Step by step, starting from sketch, value painting, and lastly adding colors.

The last value version before adding colors.

Final illustration.

I used a split complementary palette for the colors:

Orange, blue-violet and blue green.

2010-09-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

Sketch dump!
I went to Barcelona together with my girlfriend this sommer. It was a lovely two weeks, hope get back back soon. It was so inspiring to go around in the streets, there was so many unique characters everywhere! Since I'm taking the charicature course, I focused on drawing faces this time... For the next sketchbook I wanna try to do more illustrative sketches, but this is what I have for now :)
Most of the sketches was drawn with brush pen and acvarel, some retouched a bit in PS.

2010-09-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

"Elk Hair Caddis" goes to "Hollywood Film Festival".

Just a little (shameless) announcement; the graduationfilm i worked on, "Elk Hair Caddis", has been nominated to "Hollywood Film Festival" It will take place October 22-25. Fingers very crossed!

I'm also happy to inform that we recently won for "Best Animation" at Bornshots International Festival 2010 :)

2010-09-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

...and another one. This time monocromatic. Next up is Forest Whitaker, can be interesting :)

2010-08-25T05:48:00.000-07:00

Caricature Course
I'm taking a caricature course over at Schoolism.com. Every week I get a lecture and an assignment that has to be handed in, which I get a personal critique from the teacher (Jason Seiler). It has been really great so far, I feel I'm learning a lot for every assignemt. The lectures are great too, highly recommended.

Here's some of the drawings I've handed in so far:
(Some better than others, but that's hopefully a good thing :)

2010-08-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

"Beetle und Cheval"

Old news, but me and my good friend Peter Smith won the 48 hour 3D animation JAM in Stuttgart in May this year :D It was arranged by the Stuttgart Trickfilm festival, and there where six teams with two participants each, from countries such as Egypt, USA, UK, Austria and Denmark.

The "short" was made entirely in Maya, using polygon objects and surface shaders. The final version is a playblast. No rendering or post production was done in this project...

2010-03-06T15:48:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, finally my graduation film "Elk Hair Caddis" is online. We have a webpage up running as well. It's not much yet, but if you're interested check it out here: www.elkhaircaddis.com

Elk Hair Caddis on vimeo.

Screenshots:

2010-01-13T11:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a doodle of three of my classmates from todays class. They look better in reality by the way. I just don't have a clue how to draw people pretty, but hey.

2010-01-12T14:58:00.001-08:00

This happy woman was observed at "Café Morville" earlier today...

2010-01-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

From todays life-drawing session. Still experimenting with colors.

Medium: Brush Pen and PS

2010-01-10T16:23:00.001-08:00

Batman never looked so fearsome!

Medium: Pen and Photoshop

2010-01-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

This is the little doggy of this guy. I hope to some day make the dog as a stop motion puppet, and ultimately make a little short film with the two of them. Let's see if it will ever happen, it's so easy to have a lot of ideas... But I hope so...

Medium: Pen and Photoshop

2010-01-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

Testing different coloring techniques on some recent lifedrawings...

Medium: Ink, coffe and Photoshop

2010-01-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

Keep an eye out for the epic feature "Hjalmar and the attack of the cold" from Møller Productions.

Medium: Pen and Photoshop.

2010-01-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

Here's some sketches from last life drawing session.

Medium: Pencil and Photoshop

2009-12-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

Water colors and Photoshop.

2009-11-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

Quick sketch in PS, using a photo as inspiration.

2009-10-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

Angry walk from Magnus Møller on Vimeo.

My armature is finally done :) Here's a test I made at Aardman during lunchbreakes. I was trying to give him some attitude, I think I can make the caricature much stronger though. Next time :)

2009-09-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Bouncing ball with tail...

Bouncing ball from Magnus Møller on Vimeo.

and here's a sketch of the armature I ordered from John Wright Modelmaking in Bristol. It's hopefully going to be ready some time next week.

2009-09-12T07:02:00.001-07:00

More tests:

another test from Magnus Møller on Vimeo.

bouncing ball from Magnus Møller on Vimeo.

2009-08-31T14:46:00.000-07:00

Internship at Aardman

I just arrived to Bristol two weeks ago for my internship at Aardman. I have to say it "good fun" and I'm learning a lot about stop-motion (or 3D-animation as they call it here, confusing). I didn't pay so much attention to stop-motion before I came over, but I have to say being here really opened my eyes up wide. I think I found myself a new favourite animation medium :) So the "only" thing I have to do now is to learn it :)

I bought a webcam some days ago and found a freeware animation program and I have started to do some tests with plastecine. I havn't done any acting yet, just testing out animation principles and techniques like timing, spacing, overlap, stagger etc... It's not much yet, but here's my first attempt :)

At the moment I'm in the modeling department of Aardman, and enjoing it very much. This week I'm going to start to build my own puppet. I will buy the armature from another studio in Bristol, and then model the plasticine on top of that. Here's the deisgn for my "man":

Overlap_test from Magnus Møller on Vimeo.

(and it's abstract, so don't get any ideas...)

2009-08-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Elk Hair Caddis

Hi! Finally our graduation film is done! This is a little story about two neighbours and a fly called "Elk hair caddis".

We where mainly a group of four, but in the last month before the summer break we grew up to eight persons working full time doing particle effects, lighting and rendering. Thanks to everyone helping out, espesially you fantastic CGI guys:

Ole Guldbrandsen (cg water research and shader development, lighting, rendering)

Andreas Thomsen ( lighting, rendering, and water effects)

Louie Ishii (lighting, rendering, texturing)

Frederik Valentin (effects research, water and dust effects, lighting, rendernig)

The main group consited of:

Peter Smith (Animation Supervising, rigging, Animatic, Music Supervising, sets photoshoot, render, lighting, compositing)

Alice Holme (Animation, 3D backgrounds, modeling, character design, Animatic, colorboard, compositing )

Anders Jeppsen (Animation, BG/matte paintings, moped/car/submarine desing, sets making)

Magnus Møller (Directing, technical research, animatic, character design, modeling, texturing, animation, compositing)

Stay tuned for the first official screening at Viborg Fotorama 29th of January 2010! Hope to see you there :)

2008-11-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

Back in Viborg again.

We have finaly startet on our batchelor project! Yai :)

We have made a blog that we will be updating with the newest sketches and artwork for the film. You can find it here:

http://elkhairshort.blogspot.com//

2008-09-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

Walkcycle

We had a class in After Effects this week, so this is my result for the "animation assignment"
Walkcycle from Magnus Møller on Vimeo.Frame by frame:

2008-08-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Doodles

2008-07-14T07:28:00.000-07:00

Bayero!
Here's an animation test I made last year when we had Greg Duffel over to teach us. It was a two weeks long assignment, we could use any character we wanted, and we had to animate to music. It was a great experience having Greg, he could so much stuff about animation. Not just the principles, but everything from how it was made back in the early days to all kinds of tips and tricks, not to mention all the stories :)

Bayero! from Magnus Møller on Vimeo.

2008-07-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

Life drawings 2
more arty croquis :)

2008-07-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

Design Class Assignments
Here are some of my hand-in's from Lawrence Marvit's (brilliant) design class last year. Duration; one week.

Assignment: We where handed out some funky chololate ice cream (fresh from FØTEX) that we had to taste, and then make graphic representation of how we thought the taste look like if it would take a shape in space. In other words: Draw the taste :)

The design had to be flat, only pure black and pure white, solid shapes and last but not least; abstract.

Assignment: Make an abstract design that sais "science fiction". Has to be black/white, flat, abstract. This was later reffered to as "the stoner drawing". Wonder why hehe.

Assignment: Volume. Drawing missing. :(

In the last assignment we got to do an illustration for the fairytale "the Ginger Bread Man". No rules in this one, other than that we had to use all the stuff we had learned from the previous days.

I decided to make an illustration from the place where the little gingerbreadman is chased through the woods by a big nasty pig.

My thumbnails for the last assignment...

2008-03-31T02:59:00.000-07:00

Crystalline
Here's a poster and a DVD-cover I made for the DADIU computer game "Crystalline". Today is the last day on the production and we are struggeling (mostly the programmers) to get all the content into the game and make it work in general. I'm looking forwoard to see it done, it's gonna be good :)

More info about the game on "moddb.com".

2008-02-27T15:48:00.000-08:00

Life drawings
I know... This is old stuff, but my hand currently out of order for the moment. I think it has something to do with Maya hi, maya ha, maya ho, maya haha, dragosta din tei....

2008-02-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

Indianerne Kjem!

The advantage of never cleaning your desk is that you can suddenly run in to a lot of stuff that you can't even remeber to have drawn. This guy I actually remember, I think it's about a year and a half old, and it has been lying on the same spot on my desk all that time heh. I wonder how it looks under my bed, hmmm...

2008-01-15T10:29:00.000-08:00

Moleskin sketches
Here are a few of my scrimblings from my last sketchbook. They are drewn on the ferrey and on a fieldtrip to "Randers regnskov". The ferrey was espesially interesting I think because there's so many strange and funny people there. Every thing from old women playing on slots-manchines to truckers filling up their bags with cigarettes from the TAX-free shop.
P.s: I hope none of the victims of my caricatures will feel sad. I could have drawn them so you would've looked nice, but...well, you don't! No no no, sorry, they just turned out that way, and Christina Aguilera sais you're all beatiful!

2008-01-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

I drew this little guy the other day. I basically based him on Calvin (from Calvin and hobbes... duh). So I have this little story for him, and planning to do a little 2D animation, but... Well it's probulary not going to happen, I know myself that good... Maybe :)

2007-11-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

Schoolism - "Character design with Silver "

This fall I attended a character design course teached by the skilful Steven Silver (Kim Possible, the Clerks Animated, Danny Phantom,+++...). It was a 9 week course with one handin each week. It was a great experience, and I would defenately recommend it if you are interested in working with character design, no matter wich level you are at. Steven always has something to give you... I thougth I'd might post some of the drawings that I turned in. Here's the first assignment:

You can check out Schoolism here.

Assignment 1 - "Fat Joe"

The description given to us:

"You are to design a concept sketch of Fat Joe based on the play, The Long Voyage Home. Take it as far as you like.
Description:SCENE—The bar of a low dive on the London water front—a squalid, dingy room dimly lighted by kerosene lamps placed in brackets on the walls At the far end of the bar stands Fat Joe, the proprietor, a gross bulk of a man with an enormous stomach. His face is red and bloated, his little piggish eyes being almost concealed by rolls of fat. The thick fingers of his big hands are loaded with cheap rings and a gold watch chain of cable-like proportions stretches across his checked waistcoat."

2007-05-23T05:32:00.001-07:00

"Birdlands"

This is a little concept sketch for a scene in one of the few (and short) cinematics in an andventure game I'm working on. It has been going slow the last months, but hopefully me and Jonas (the norwegian guy...) will finish a beta-demo this spring...

2007-05-22T07:58:00.001-07:00

The main character in "Birdlands"!

2007-05-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

2007-02-19T15:02:00.000-08:00

Adventuregame backgrounds WIP

2007-01-30T16:50:00.000-08:00

Character concepts

2007-01-08T15:22:00.000-08:00

Character design - Ed Wood

2006-12-04T15:10:00.000-08:00

More Sketches

2006-12-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

Sketches for an animatic

2006-11-05T10:31:00.000-08:00

New character concepts

2006-09-23T05:46:00.000-07:00

Hero

Breakfast doodle.

2006-09-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

Staurday Zoo!

I went to Aalborg zoo today with three friends of mine from the school. It was a really nice trip, have to repeat it soon.

Tools; Acryl, Ink, Pen and Graphite...

2006-09-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

Weekend :D

2006-09-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

Perspective week

This sketch is from todays perspektive class. Arh why does it have to be so hard to draw buildings...

2006-09-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

Doodles!

2006-09-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

I`m very exited right now. I`ve just startet my education two days ago. I was lucky to be accepted at "the Character Animation Education" (bachelor) at "the Animation Workshop" in Danmark. Jihu! Can`t wait to start learning this amazing craft. It`s going to be a lot of hard work and many hours by my light table the next three years, and I`m really looking forword to it :)

2006-09-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

A quick sketch with acrylics and pen...

2006-09-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

First post!

The last couple of years blogs has exploded in the animation community. For me it has been a great resource of inspiration. There are so mane awsome animation/character design-blogs out there! Thank you guys :D

Anyway, welcome to my blog! Hope you enjoy it.