Lene V

This was my most recent project. Lene V is a women's wear franchise in Norway. I was contaced by a director who had been asked to do a pilot for a tv commercial for them. He had this idea of making a surreal environment in 3D mixed with live footage of a girl model, and asked me if I could be the 3D supervisor for the project as well as doing all the 3D work involved. I said yes, but at that time I didn't really have a clue about the amount of work involved (as I hadn't done a project like this before).

The director gave me a list of shots that he wanted, and I made storyboards from them and some 3D previz to see what it would look like. Then I modeled, textured and lighted the 3D environment in LightWave, and got approval of the look from the client. The footage was then shot in a large studio on a 50 x 60 feet large greenscreen, using 35mm film.

I set up a lot of tracking markers everywhere on the set, and made sure to take exact notes on what lenses were used on which shots. The director of photography used the lighting info from my virtual set, to set the lighting on the real stage (normally it is the other way around). The film was later scanned in HD resolution and I got a final edit from the director so I knew the exact length of every shot - 15 shots in total.

The shots were then tracked in Matchmover, and now the lens information I had taken notes of earlier came in handy. We used very wide angle lenses (10 and 14mm), and there was no way the tracker managed to make proper trackings without the lens info. Trackings were then exported to LightWave, and everything was adjusted to fit with the scene. Rendering took about two weeks to complete on my two G4 Mac's, with all the 3D layers I needed for every shot. Compositing, keying, colour correction and some flare effects I did in After Effects, and I later added an effect on the end of the commercial where the girl dissolves and disappears, making some smoky whisps using Hypervoxels.

All in all a huge task to complete by one person alone, and I worked night and day, seven days a week for about 5-6 weeks to finish it all. The client loved the finished product and wanted us to do six more films, but unfortunatley it all ended in a big disappointment, as the client couldn't raise the money involved and the campaign has been put on hold until further notice (probably never). This causing my pilot to never be aired... Depressing of course after so much hard work, but looking on the bright side it was a huge learning experience to me, as I had never done anything like this before, and it will probably look good on my showreel later.

Quart Festival

This was a very fun job to do. The past few years I've done nearly all of the marketing and design material for the Quart Festival, which is Norway's largest music festival. It is held in the city of Kristiansand situated on the south coast of Norway, and features a lot of the major bands from all over the world (David Bowie is a headliner this summer). Very much a summer festival, always with great weather, sea, sunbathing, party and pure fun.

My idea was to give the main design expression a very summer, water feel to it. So I decided to make a bubbly underwater version of the "Q" of the original festival logo. Again I turned to LightWave and Hypervoxels. The image was used on flyers and posters, and an animated ident was used for TV commericials and TV channel coverage. The ident was surprisingly also nominated as one of six finalists in the category "Best animated logo/ident" at the European 3D Festival in Copenhagen last year.

Galaxee

A CD album cover made for the techno trance band Galaxee. My brief was "make some cool, dark, mysterious 3D stuff." Sometimes you get insane deadlines, but you have to deliver the goods anyway. I got the assignment on a Wednesday afternoon at 2 p.m. and on Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. the album cover, with a 8-page booklet, double sided tray and CD label, was delivered to the CD plant for printing... So there wasn't much time for modeling or rendering, basically just to find a cool look that worked, in the style they wanted. But it turned out OK, and the band and the record company loved it.

Adam & Eva

This is really a favourite of mine. It is the froncover of a catalogue I made for Adam & Eva, which is Norway's best group of fashion hair stylists. It has kind of an eerie feeling to it due to the position of the girls neck. Originally she is standing up and looking down, but once I tilted the picture it had a totally new emotion about it. Sort of an alien feeling. To add to this strange feeling I added 3D "crop circles" floating in front of her, and made sure the colours and the film grain made the objects a true part of the image itself.

The picture is taken by Knut Bry, a good friend of mine and a long time photographer of Condé Nast Traveller Magazine in the US.

Kenneth Sivertsen

He is one of Norway's most talented contemporary musicians, but has also been surrounded by a lot of controversy in the press. Personal problems, financial and drinking problems, but still considered a musical genious. "Blod & bensin" (Blood and gasoline) was a very personal album he released to confront his past and was critically acclaimed when it was released in 1999.

I was asked to do the cover and made a very strong personal graphical approach to it, to reflect his problems and previous controversy. Kenneth nearly cried when he saw the finished cover, and his comment was "it portrays me and my past spot on."

Bambee

Another candy-like CD cover I did for the Norwegian pop artist Bambee. Not much to say about it really, but that it was a fun photoshoot to do, as she was totally nude... ;-)