Coming soon: Viborg Animation Festival!!

Dear Patreons,

This week’s post I’ve decided should revolve around the annual Viborg Animation Festival being held from September 25th – October 1st. This year’s theme is Japanese animation as Japan and Denmark are celebrating a 150 years anniversary of diplomatic relations, and as a big anime-nerd that has given me the opportunity to assist the festival in certain aspects. Here are some of the highlights!

KAWAII & EPIKKU Trailer

Over the summer I assisted Moe Koyano in creating the festival trailer that you see above at The Open Workshop. When I came in Moe had already finished most of the animation itself, and it was left to me to color and inbetween a lot of it (although I did get to fill in bits and pieces of animation once in a while!). This proved to be a learning experience for me, since the animation was made using a combination of Photoshop and After Effects that I’m not used to. I got to help a little out with posters and maps as well. In general it was also just super nice and cozy to work with Moe, and I’m looking forward to seeing her again when she comes back to Denmark for the festival!

VIBORG MUSEUM PAINTINGS

I was approached and asked if I could illustrate some of the walls of the local museum in which a big exhibition of Japanese art is being held. It just opened today actually!

This museum, which is otherwise closed down now, was the place where I drew a lot of the illustrations for my portfolio that got me into TAW – so it was quite the nostalgic experience. 

I got a group together and we made illustrations for the walls throughout the last two days of summer vacation when we had the time. We had to be economic about it by excluding colors from the calculation, but I think we did pretty well! The drawing that I myself sketched up was the dragon-like creature inspired by Tatsuyuki Tanaka’s art. The illustration stretches across 3 walls and took a good chunk of the time to make. By the end of the two days everybody else had finished their walls and helped out outlining the giant beast, it was pretty nice!

Pictures of all of the illustrations are attached below.

TALES OF ZALE

A little bit of Tales of Zale news in conjuncture with the animation festival! Episode 3 is still in the works, but in the meanwhile Episode 1 and 2 will get a special screening in the cinema for the festival’s Japanomania program. I guess this marks the first festival screening of one of my animations, although it’s not exactly by conventional means. Afterwards I’ll also be participating in a director’s talk. 

I must admit, with everything that I’ve been learning throughout the past year episode 1 and 2 feel hopelessly outdated to me, and I’m sure my entire face will be turning red when my turn comes up in the cinema. But at the same time I’m of course also very proud of what I accomplished with these two episodes and of all the hard work of the project members involved. I wouldn’t be able to do the things that I can do now if I hadn’t done this much, and I’m looking forward to showing and sharing my passion with the people who come to watch. I’m gonna take it all in and enjoy the experience!

So those are the highlights of my involvement with the festival. It’s going to be a crazy busy week once everything gets started, but I am really really looking forward to it! 

Till next week!

- Sif