I caught a flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm recently. Dead cheap, much cheaper and a bit shorter than the train these days. It went pretty smoothly- Kevin drove me to the train station, I took it to the Metro, and then walked off the platform at the airport, checked myself in at a kiosk, walked up some stairs I had never noticed before and ended up at the head of the line to get into the security check area.

Last time through security in Copenhagen, I had a left a blade in my ancient safety razor, so I made sure to travel bladeless this time and bought some replacements (to keep in the office in Copenhagen), and emptied the shaver before returning to Stockholm. The razor was not a problem this time. It was the fluids.

Apparently you can only have 100ml bottles of anything in your carry-on. What creams and aftershave or whatnot you have must fit into a baggie. Fine enough. But then I spied this sign while I stood in line- “No containers larger than 100ml”.

I didn’t really pay attention to it, but had a bad feeling I might have to ditch my SIGG bottle (empty). I wasn’t looking forward to that. I got through the detector, and was pulled aside. The usual check of my toiletries, some liguids got placed in a baggie, then the lady pulled out my shaving cream and hair gel. 125ml each. Hmm..

Me: “What if I squeeze out the cream into the baggie?”

Security Lady: “No, you can’t do that.”

“Well, you can see there isn’t even 100 ml IN the tubes- isn’t that alright? ”

“No. You can buy a box downstairs at the convenience store, put the tubes in it, and check it in with the rest of your luggage if you like, sir.”

(They said this about my single razor blade, last time, too.)

“This is all the luggage I have – I wanted to avoid the luggage drop off lines, you see. Am I suppossed to go down and check in that one little box?”

“Yes, you’ll have to check in all your luggage, we can’t check in such a small box on it’s own”

“So- I HAVE to buy a box to put my tubes in, put the box in my hand luggage, and check it all in?”

“Yes, sorry.”

“Well- I just whizzed passed a huge line by using that clever quick-check-in-kiosk, I’m on time, not sweaty, and now I can see my flight is boarding- so no, I don’t think I’ll go back and check in again, thanks. You can keep the tubes.”

“You can just jump ahead the of lines, say you’ve already checked in, you know?”

“No, thanks.”

I walked off grumbling and swearing under my breath.
She was a nice lady, though – I’ll give her that. But the situation perturbed me.

The weird part is – noone seemed to mind my 1 liter SIGG bottle, all bashed up RED and empty. 1 liter! I guess disposing of the gel and shaving cream made my potentially dangerous (larger than 100ml) vessel utterly harmless?

First time I spent any decent amount of cash on shaving cream – it was good stuff – but now it’s down the tubes.

Here’s a story about an illustration I worked on today. It’s a little different from what I have been doing for a long time, purely vector work, in that I added a whole lot of line this time.

Drawing this way felt a bit like the old days, sitting in production for computer games. Sketching, inking, scanning, colouring, etc, back then, was tedious work, but the process was kinda nice. Not if you made a mistake though – it was a long way back to starting again.

I haven’t scanned for ages – even though I have a 3-in-1-cheap-as-they-get-printer-thingy-with-scanner-and-copier (I can barely get the thing to print when I want it to) – I’ve adopted a super fast solution of iSighting. Prop the sketch infront of the iSight camera, get out of the way, click and presto – it’s kinda like a scan. Throw that into Illustrator, place it on it’s own locked layer, and start tracing with the pencil tool.

Here’s the process…

First I got my brief – in danish, which, If I am tired, (usually – now) I can interpret in my own special way. This time I stopped myself before sending off the sketch I made (in Illustrator), and quickly re-read the brief. It didn’t say “musicians” but rather “music lovers”. Whole different ball of wax. the drawing should illustrate music-lovers, and gymnasts riding bikes this year – music lovers to Roskile Festival, and the Gymnasts to their Danish Festival of Sports and Culture. I put them in the same boat – so to speak- with the gymnasts hoking up with the music lovers.

Here’s the -never sent- sketch:

I went with the formation idea rather than the tandem idea – seemed more far out.

So I sketched what a bunch of typical music lovers (they seemed to turn out to be 70’s style Danes for some reason) would look like giving a lift to gymnasts on a “LongJohn”. A little bit like Christiania on wheels:)

Client said great- just hint at there being other cyclists on the same route.
Ok – so I added one more. (I’d already started drawing and colouring while waiting for a reply. I do that sometimes.)

I “scanned” the little guy in – added him to the drawing, and sent him off.
The green rubber boots are standard equipment for Roskilde goers – seems there’s always mud during the festival – and the article mentions something about the Green Footprint, you know -like the carbon footprint…

No word from the client – but Kevin liked it:)

Here’s one that got away – a needle I made for a game we’re making, that ended up, unused, on the studio floor.
I thought it looked pretty good, all graphicky, black and whitey… so- there it is.

Some of you may have actually seen the front of my site; “Home” – some of you may not even know it exists – well, now it’s gotten a little bit more life. I think you should pay more attention to it;)

I added a PictoBrowser slide show to show off my Flickr Illustration Set. I came to realize I am really too damn lazy to update my Illustration page with all those codes and thumbnails – so this little ditty will have to do.

Personally I think it’s quite clever; Illustrations and doodles at the top, Tinkering on the side, and work projects on the bottom.

Some day I’ll figure out something else that’s terribly clever to plop on that page… but until then; this will have to do.

Bookmark it! Link to it! Stare at it! Show it to your friends! Why? I dunno… it’s whacky goofy fun; is why!

(next up is the animation page… still not happy with that one…)

Oh.. and whaddya think? Should I take down the original illustration page? Has it become redundant now?

Finally one of our own movies in this series of Monday flicks – this one done in cooperation with Subsilo for DCF’s ABC campaign. This year they are promoting cycling to school partly by having a competion to film/photograph kids’ cycle routes to school. They film potholes, bad crossings, cycle paths in disrepair, and get a chance to win a digital camera.

This is the first of a trio of films – the other two are below. It’s a bit Danish (text) but otherwise it’s Mr. Bean-ish gobbledeegook language. Great for an international audience;)

On a technical note: It was very fun to animate the films in Flash, and export to .mov format. Very easy to do this tme round – through Flash CS3. The quality of the exporting was a bit of a hit and miss experience. 2-3 exports managed to get rid of the glitches though. But still, it was easy.

I’ve been doing a bunch of drawings and layouts for the cyclists federation this year – as I did last year. This time I’ve introduced a few new characters for the kids to relate to, and be entertained a bit by.

This little guy is for the kids in grades 3-6, a temperamental go-getter piglet. Here he is asking if he can participtae in the cycle-to-school campaign. His father, pig that he is, is wallowing in the mud – obviously not paying enough attention.

“Må jeg!!” (“May I?”) squeels the piglet.
“Ja ja” (“yeah, yeah”) says the father.

It feels like there are way too many YouTube videos on this little site of mine right now, and I don’t feel like rushing to find yet another poor quality snippet from my childhood just to post something on monday.

So, instead, I will concentrate more on illustration, design and tinkering.

First up – some canuck wonderboys!

Maybe you never saw the original set up here in Stockholm? No matter – it was the exact same, just located in the living room.
Now I’ve been delegated to the bedroom. Deadlines are approaching, the heat is on, and poor Marie was breaking her back dragging Tilja away from under the desk, off my legs, and off from climbing the back of my chair. Not to mention she is now tall enough to actually reach the keyboard – and makes work a little haphazard, and spelling very inte87kmrestgalsidting indeed. The bedroom affords me a window that doesn’t shine into my screens, and a door! It really is like having an office. No one is in there during the day anyways.

I also have a little Tilja-Sensor. When there isn’t a mad rush for anything, I can leave the door open. The throw-rug behind my chair mutes the slaps of her hands as she crawls- and hearing the muted paws, I know I have about five seconds to save anything important. Then I can take a little break and say hello to my little girl.

One sunny day, last spring, I filmed my usual ride to work from our apartment in riot-ridden Nørrebro, to my quiet little office (UOVO) in Copenhagen center.

We are set up in an artist cooperative (in what used to be a home for orphaned boys, in the 1800’s).

I like to think of it as a mini Christiania. Why? Well, it’s cozy as hell, and someone has potted “herbs” sitting on our window sill soaking up the sun, and there is a dog that roams freely in the courtyard. Her name is Bob. Bob the Bitch.

This was my routine most mornings, back in the day when I’d get to work before Kevin, have the coffee on, and we’d shoot the poop until we had to get down to business.

Now it’s a whole different ball of wax. I miss my bike. Talking baby talk in the mornings suits me fine, though, since I’m so darned tired=)

Is that some handy camerawork or what?
One hand, Ma!

Why do this now? Well, after having avidly followed Copenhagenize for a good while now, and having done so much lately for the Danish Cycle Federation I thought it would be a good time to just mention that I do bike. At least when I’m in Copenhagen I do. I have yet to get me a pair of wheels up here in Stockholm. So I walk, and take the tube.

Miss that bike.

As some of you know, Kevin and I (UOVO) are busy at work on our own, partially funded, super-duper-secret project. Which is great. But, since it’s partially funded, we still have to tend to client work.
We’ve said “No, we can’t right now – but please call again” quite a few times to new, and old, clients. We’ve also tended to some of our bigger clients, and new exciting ones, by working them into our production schedule, or postponing production for them until our own production is done.

Mixing in client work works pretty well right now, for two reasons:

Pleasing Someone Else is Easier
Working on client work requires working in a much more objective way. I can’t just do what I want (much of the time), I have to do what the client wants, in a way that pleases them. Personal pleasure comes in second. Being efficient becomes the main goal.

Time is Money
It’s a matter of being economical, too. Working for clients does involve the matter of profit, and the more time spent on a single assignment, the less the profit.
Setting a deadline pretty close to the start date, means you better get started; now.
The old adage: “1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration” (even if it is about “genius”, and not about being creative, per sey… but let’s just say you’re a “creative genius”) is true. At least half of the time. Another one is: “Necessity is the mother of invention”. That’s pretty good too.

Planning, e-mailing, anticipating screwing up; and asking for more time, answering e-mails, taking care of family, eating, making sure you get some sunlight and fresh air – all need doing; and you need to meet that dealine. If you don’t – there’ll be hell to pay.
Well.. not “pay”, really. You won’t be any wealthier if you miss it.

Working for someone else just gets you going. You just do it.

Case in point: when a client says, “no rush” – make yourself a deadline anyways. Otherwise those nice clients’ projects just get pushed further and further into the future.

Working for yourself is a dream. Wake Up!
Working on your own project, unless you are maniaically obsessed by it, working alone, and are doing it soley for your own pleasure, is frikkin’ hard. Now, I am not saying we’re having a hard time of it, ourselves. Considering what we have to cope with, we are coming along fine, really. But I have noticed that we are our toughest client so far.

Personally, we have a lot invested in our little idea, and we want it to work.
At my age, I want to make something that I believe in, that makes a mark, and that leaves an impression for years to come. That’s a tall order. I don’t have a problem with it, really. But after so many years working in production, I know how much time it takes to make something work, and we can’t afford any false-starts. Everything we make has to be useable.

I tend to work off-the-cuff. By that, I mean I work fast and I don’t spend much time sketching in detail before I commit to a design on the computer, and I rarely re-do anything. Instead, I tweek. I move stuff around, add more colour, details, extras. But the base work is there from the start, pretty quickly.

Because this project has so many elements to contend with, and our ambitions run high – I found myself wanting to make something wonderful. I wanted to give myself the luxury of taking the time to do it right. Figure out the details, make it rich. This is where I get in trouble. What I am finding out is; that is not the way I work. And this is not the time for me to start changing the way I work. There isn’t time.

Stick To What You Know
One of the pitfalls of doing something new, (“new” being something big and exciting) is wanting to do it differently; doing it in a way you wish you knew how to, and thinking this is the perfect chance to learn that skill.

Don’t try to learn something new when you have a deadline, or a job, to do. Learn it when you don’t need it. If you see you need new knowledge – get it between jobs. Don’t try something new when your work depends on it.

You know how to walk, right? Do it every day? Know how to run, too? Let’s say you realize you have to be somewhere really soon, and you have to catch a bus to get there. You wouldn’t try to run to the bus stop on your hands would you? That wouldn’t be very efficient. You wouldn’t try to build a bike for yourself (biking would be quicker after all) either, would you? No. You’d miss both the bus, and the appointment. Just run. You’ve done it before, and you know how it works. You know the outcome before you even start.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with enhancing what you can do now. Maybe you can pick up some trick that makes you run faster. Maybe there’s a shortcut to your appointment, that you just thought of. Do THAT. That’s a good use of time and energy.

It’s the same with self-induced work. I mean work that you expect others to actually see, use, and enjoy. You’ll get it out there faster, and better, if you do what you do best the way you know how to do it.

Why do I go on about this?
Well – in starting production, I made that very mistake. We set a deadline for ourselves that was a few months away (usually we have deadlines that are “Now” or a week away), and I felt I had all the time in the world to do what I wanted. I half-filled a sketchbook with fancy sketches of scenes, and embellished them with watercolour. They turned out alright, but what I noticed afterwards; was I didn’t know how to get on with producing the stuff on the computer.

I had thrown a rather large wrench into my own routine.
I don’t know how it is with other creative types, but when my routines get futzed with, I short-circuit. I blow a fuse. I get stuck in the mud. I can’t go on. I have to start again.

Starting again is a pain. But, when you catch yourself early enough, you can get back on track without losing too much time. Now that our deadline is getting closer, I’ve had to reassess that fancy approach to the work, dump it, and just get on with doing what I do as fast as I can, without making anything too fancy.

I figure once I’m done, I can start embellishing. That will be nice.

- I just ran my little picture above past Kevin to see if he understood the reference – and he did – and then he mentioned, “the funny thing about that is; you drew it instead of doing what you were supposed to be doing”. Funny guy. True, though;)

Now- back to those deadlines!