Animation...

My interest in animation came in 1975 - I was 13,
when I had to write a free essay in school, the day
after I had seen an episode of 'Walt Disney's Wonderful
World of Color'. I tried to read all I could find about
animation, and found that it was very interesting indeed -
though I could find surprisingly little. I started collecting
Disneyana, and got Finch's Art of Walt Disney as a
present from my parents. Now, nothing could stop me.

In 1978, my parents - I am for ever grateful for their
unwavering support - organized a trip to the United
States, where I had the pleasure to meet and talk with the
legendary Woolie Reitherman, director of all Disney's
animated features between 1961 and 1978, at the old
Disney Studios in Burbank. My, was I ever nervous!
In my autograph book, he wrote this,
which has become my creed:

On the same trip I met Stacia Martin in the Disneyana
Store in Disneyland, and we became great pen-pals.
Really nice to find a person with similar interests, even
though she was so far away. Last time I saw Stacia was
on the extras of the Disney Polyanna DVD set...
(Stacia, if you read this, 42OCT 2 U, and email me!)

It is my pleasure to count among my friends the greatest
names in animation, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston,
whom I had the pleasure of entertaining in Holland
in 1984 and in Denmark in 1986, and who are my
inspiration in all my views on entertainment. Their book,
'Disney Animation: the Illusion of Life', is still my bible.
It has been since I bought my first copy in 1981.

So... what then have I done, myself? Well...

After leaving school and a year of art history at the
University of Amsterdam, in the end of 1979, I moved
my animation table over to Børge Ring's house and
worked there assisting him (for free) for most of
4 years. The first work I did in a movie was for the film
'Heavy Metal', ruff inbetweens and effects animation
(dust, curtain) in Børge's 'So Beautiful...' seq. (1981).
After this, more stuff for Børge in 'Jan Zonder Vrees',
and several commercials, and some minor animation
and quite a lot of assistant work on the Bommel movie
'Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel' 1983, as well as 17
different functions incl. animation, inbetween, cleanup
on cell, painting, editing, preparing sound mix lists and
assistant direction on the Academy Award winning
short 'Anna & Bella', directed by Børge.

December 1983 I worked for Mark Schopman on a pilot
for a belgian TV series Diogenes, and shortly after I
animated a commercial, and then we finished the final
soundmix and colortiming on Anna & Bella.

One day in late July 1984, Børge asked me to come along
to Denmark, afraid of falling asleep behind the wheel
in his car. Two days later I was Directing Animator
on Valhalla. Just had to get back to Holland to guide
Frank & Ollie through Holland for a week. Then I animated
about 8 minutes of Valhalla. Exiting times...

Loke by Jeff Varab
Directed by Jeff Varab and later Peter Madsen.
Not a great film, but a fantastic experience!
And great to work alongside Stefan Fjeldmark,
Jørgen Lerdam, Karsten Kiilerich, Jeff and Peter,
as well as Kim Annweiler and Vibeke Andersen.
We still wait for it to be released as a DVD...

The so called "Hans' Unit": standing from left are Søren Larsen (Assistant),
Lise Urwald (Clean-Up) and me - sitting are Lars Pindal (Clean-Up) and
Bent Nielsen (Animating Assistant). Lise later quit and was replaced by Rigmor
Tokerød. Lars went back to Canada and Nancy Carrig replaced him.
Not long after the move from Nansensgade to Sundholmsvej, around maj 1985.

After Valhalla, we started a series of shorts with Quark,
and we started preproduction on Troll Story. When
the producer behind our backs stopped this, we quit
to make Troll Story ourselves. (We stayed on for
three more months to get our assistants in shape to
continue Quark - so they didn't loose their jobs.
Stefan prepared some classes. In one of them, he had
the pupils animate a fish, a star-fish and a jelly-fish.
Sounds familiar? This was in 1986...).

We (Stefan, Jørgen, Karsten and myself) worked as
'Scandinavian Animation' with Henning Kure
on Troll Story with Frank and Ollie as writing
consultants, with Ken Anderson as their artist, from
December 1986 through the first half of 1987.
After 7 months, the money ran out, we had to stop.

Started doing commercials for Gerhard Hahn in Berlin,
worked with Jeff Varab for Gerhard. Struggled a bit...

Then we decided to start our own studio. The danish TV2
had just started as the countries 1st commercial TV station.
First we got hold of Anders Mastrup, for we needed a
first-rate producer. We officially opened Aug. 1st. 1988
as A. Film I/S. Jørgen, who was in Ireland animating for
Don Bluth at the time, joined us after some weeks. Not long
thereafter, we began a fruitfull relationship with Poul Kofod
from Kofod-Schiller Film. And we started producing. Films for
Stryhns, Sadolin and TV-License-Lars.

In the start, we did pretty much everything ourselves.
Inserts, pack-shots, public announcements - soon
we got quite well-known. Started working for Don Bluth
on 'A Troll in Central Park', then 'FernGully' (some of the
animation I am most proud of myself, eventhough they cut my
best 44-foot scene before they even saw it - we just got a
note saying it had been cut out of the storyreel, after I had
finished animating it - boohoohoo!), a Carlberg Lemon
Commercial (among others) that had me working in
Los Angeles with Bill Kroyer (great fun - and Jørgen and I
were shown around Disneyland by my pen-pal Stacia!).
Visited Frank and Ollie while in L.A. in 1991...

And, of course, our very own first full-length
feature 'Jungle Jack'. But actually, I only worked on
pre-production of that one, since I had taken a year (1992)
to work with my friend Anders Sørensen of Tegnedrengene,
as co-director and animator on the 2 x 26 min. films on the
'History of the World', which was fun.

After that, I directed and animated some commercials,
and edited the second Jungle Jack feature. In the mean
time, we had sold 50% of our company to Egmont, one of
Europe's largest publishing houses, which opened a new
world of opportunities. (So while I'm writing this, in 2002,
I own 10% of A. Film A/S, as our company now is called).
Officially, I have become the Tech VP (for no-one else
wanted anything to do with computers in 1995) - doing
anything from keeping the systems running, converting
sound and picture files, taking care of our internet
stuff, compiling showreels, commenting and advising on
our productions, devising new ways of making tedious
things faster and easier to do, writing programs etc. etc...
All this means that I don't get out much anymore...

I'm credited on Quest for Camelot and our own 'Help! I'm
a Fish' as 'Technical Wizard', which to me is the
most precise description of what I'm doing (Someone
described me as a modernday Ub Iwerks, but that is
MUCH too much honour, though I like the praise ;-).
I thank the stars that I have an assistant, Hakim Chergui.
Click image to see Hakim in 3D (Look at it cross-eyed!)

Celebrating my 40th birthday 19 days after the fact, on
Friday Jan. 18th, 2002, I got to look back on a lot of great
times, and I hope that a lot more are to follow...
Below is a picture from the party.
With a great big Thank You kiss to Aase and Teresa!

You can meet me in Annecy, France, every other year.
It's sort of my tradition - since 1979, I managed to
go there every 'odd' year. I recommend it sincerely!

Last revision: August 10th, 2003.