A traditional Hans Christian Anderson fairy story will get a contemporary new therapy in Magnus Igland and Peter Smith’s Annie-nominated brief, The Swineherd. The unique story facilities on a prince who disguises himself a pigherd to win the guts of a egocentric princess who is barely prepared to provide him kisses in trade for his magical trinkets. (Gene Deitch tailored the story into one other animated brief again in 1975!) The challenge which debuted in Europe in 2023, is produced by Tumblehead Animation Studio (Tales from the Multiverse, Ron n Ron). Møller and Smith had been type sufficient to reply a number of of our questions through e-mail.
Animag: Gentlemen, congrats on the Annie nomination which provides your work new visibility this 12 months. Can you inform us a bit about how your Swineherd got here to be?
Magnus and Peter: Thank you. This nomination actually means the world to us. It’s what we’ve been working in the direction of the previous 13 years of our studio’s existence. Tumblehead was commissioned by Fleng Entertainment to create this brief. It is being distributed within the Nordic territories as a part of a Nordic Christmas TV program that consists of movies from every of the Scandinavian nations. It was an actual deal with to work on it, and to see it aspect by aspect with different goofy Christmas shorts. Scandinavians have fairly a particular form of humor, 🙂
What was the inspiration behind it?
The movie is definitely primarily based on the brief story The Swineherd by the well-known Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes). However, we needed to adapt it a bit to suit fashionable requirements whereas nonetheless aligning Andersen’s timeless themes of affection, self-importance, and self-worth.
Did you begin engaged on the challenge and which animation instruments did you employ to create the particular look of the characters?
The challenge began in spring of 2022. The complete factor is produced by our studio Tumblehead in Denmark. The crew consisted of 12 individuals all in all. We used Maya for many of the preproduction and animation. The complete factor was rendered in Redshift through Houdini.
Can you describe the visible model of the brief?
Well I assume it’s form of a 2,5D. It’s a method we labored with since our commencement movie at The Animation Workshop in Denmark. Very closely impressed by the work of the Swedish studio Meindbender, we wished to discover how you can make 3D animation extra versatile and expressive. It turned out {that a} form of flat UPA-like design lended itself very properly to that form of dogma. We’ve been engaged on refining that model ever since.
Who are a few of your largest animation influences and idols?
We like numerous traditional stuff like Tex Avery, Fred Quimby and Maurice Noble. We additionally actually like numerous the actually goofy cease movement animation from Aardman and actually loopy stuff like A Town Called Panic.
What are you engaged on subsequent?
At Tumblehead, we’re at all times engaged on a number of commercials, and just lately launched a extremely wacky Nike Commercial with form of a Nightmare Before Christmas meets The Grinch form of theme. It’s at all times numerous enjoyable engaged on these types of productions the place you’ve a extremely strong reference, and also you’re confronted with the duty to twist it into one thing of its personal, that actually stands out.
We’re additionally been commissioned by SideFX to do a brief movie as a showcase of a full manufacturing finished within the new Houdini 20.5. The movie known as Turbulence and it got here out in January, so hold a watch out for that. We’ll even be releasing a ton of documentation and coaching materials on how you can use our pipeline in a full Houdini pipeline.
On high of that, Fleng Entertainment is growing the idea of The Swineherd right into a TV collection in collaboration with 13 European broadcasters, together with France Television, BBC, German SWR, RTV, Denmark Radio, and extra. The working title is Pig & Andersen, and we’re offering our designs and inventive enter and anticipate to affix the manufacturing, so keep tuned for some thrilling Swineherd information in 2025! We can’t wait to see what this 12 months will deliver. One factor is for certain! The Nomination for Annie Awards gave us a improbable begin in 2025!
Watch the trailer under:
For extra data, go to tumblehead.com.
Leave a Reply