The Pæst
The Pæst is a shortfilm animated in after effects. This film was made by Peter Alain Clayborough, Audun Andreas Løkås, Simon Brandal and me. It's inspired by the fairytale Frederico by Leo Lionni. We all did a bit of everything, and so in this film I've been partly a scriptwriter, layout and conceptartist, character designer, animator, voiceactor and background artist along side the boys. Here are some images of what I made for this film.
Finding Fredrik
We decided early on that Fredrik would be smaller than the other doctors. When I designed him I wanted him to seem sad and poetic and yet have a subtile heroicness about him. His tunic is simple and clean, but it's also similar to to the tunics knights would wear over their armours. The hood is supposed to give him a mysterious look. The big eyes makes him look sad and like he's observing the wold around him. The rounded shapes that makes up his body makes him more likeable. He is an underdog type of hero.
This pest doctor is based on a "know it all" type of person. When I drew him I imagined that nothing could be more creepy than a plague doctor with long fingers. Making his body fat and his arms and legs superskinny contributed to the strange pathetic mediocracy of this character. He is supposed to be completely ignorant.
The last character I designed was "The Coal kid", I also had the pleasure of voice acting for this character! I also animated all the shots featuring the coal kid, so he is my favourite character in the film.The coal kid is drawing on the walls aspiring to become an artist too. He sais "When I grow up, I'm going to be like you Fredrik". Later in the film he is the one to help Fredrik show his magic book, indicating that he has seen it before. We can also see this when he's drawing on the wall. Did you notice when Fredik takes of his mask he looks a lot like the Coal kid? Secretly they're brothers.
I designed a few different backgrounds for this short-film, this is one of them. All the backgrounds are made in photoshop, but we were inspired by lino-prints and charcoal drawings so we went with this style throughout the movie. This background is designed using only one brush, It gave the perfect coal-like texture.
The Northern lights are ment to represent Plato's cave allegory. The people underground only see the shadows of what's going on, on the surface. And this illusion is enough for them to be happy. It's strange to look back at this film in the light of the corona crisis. This is the role of the artist in our society: we soothe the anxiety while the world outside is in chaos. Or in the words of Juvenal: Bread and Circus.