Here’s a cover I’m doing now, “Are kids getting worse at cycling?” (or are parents driving them to school, instead of letting them cycle)
Fun stuff – and they even let me handwrite the magazine name (so far;))

a brand new virtual world
Production over the past 2 years, by two guys and a gal, weathered 4 production babies, the financial crisis and empty pockets – and still, our steely determination has finally brought our project – Tinkatolli – to a bit of fruition. It’s nearly ready for beta testing.

At Nordic Game we’ll be meeting and greeting industry folks, handing out our colourful business cards and shouting out about our TinkaMaker and social media linkups: TinkAbout It (our Tinkatolli blog), Twitter and Facebook, as a bit of a preview.

Let me tell you a bit about why this is so cool.

Creative tinkering – for real
Personally, I have the pleasure of doodling, thinking up, drawing, animating and inventing the world online, on my computer; and then I turn to my sketchbook, my box of household junk – break out the scissors, tape and string, and start actually making stuff. Out of junk.
This is very liberating. No worries about wasting expensive (or mildly expensive) materials on a project you aren’t totally sure of – it’s already waste! Just go for it.

For the whole of my career only a handful of people (outside of my industry) have actually understood what I do for a living. Folks know I draw, and that it has to do with computers, but the understanding drops off from that point. This project unites my creative production online, as it has been the past decade and a half, with real-life production – offline. I can now actually hold something in my hands that I have made for “work”. I don’t have to be connected to the internets to show my Granny what I have done. The “thing” I make gets documented with photos and videos, and then eventually drawn into the world and made into an instructional PDF. This project, on a whole, brings into play all the areas I got into the business for in the first place. Finally I get to really work with real multimedia. And that, for me, makes it so I can’t really get bored. There’s always something to design, draw, write about, photograph and video, and if there happens to be a lull, that means it’s time to think up something new.
I love it.

Sustainability in a virtual world
It’s recycling. Pretty simple. Tinkatolli uses the junk you have thrown away to make toys, games and fun with. This is something I get excited about. Being a young divorced dad with two energetic boys and living in the city, we’d almost always have to plan a trip to Toys’R'Us every week, for something to do, and for them to at least drool over the latest doodad their friends at daycare had (Pokemon was big, Dragonball, some goofy bean thingys that actually had cool characters printed on them – so much stuff). Just GOING there seemed to appease the little rugrats, in itself. I was pretty strict about not buying every piece of crap plastic they saw, and usually cracked out the pencils, paper or LEGO instead. But the pressure was there to provide a steady flow of doodads and fun -and that could cost a bundle, or a load of energy.
Admittedly I didn’t have the energy all the time. During our apartment moves, I’d always have to go through the old toys, and see what would have to go the way of the bin this time, since the boys had outgrown them, and we didn’t have room to store them. All that broken down, tangeld mess of plastic that was so important to have in the moment, shoved into a box and forgotten the next moment. Why? Because those little guys had nothing invested in the toys. They hadn’t bought them, they hadn’t had to care for them, and they certainly couldn’t have made them themselves.
Making things turns that cycle on its head.

Kids make their own fun, and learn how to think creatively.
Once a kid makes a thing – it’s theirs. They might forget about the thing in the long run, but they won’t forget the experience of making, nor the feeling of accomplishment having made something cool and fun. Creativity has long been pidgeonholed as being something creative people are born with, not a skill. I think it IS a skill, one that you get better at – by doing – by trying and failing, and trying again. Doing the action over and over again, demystifies the creative ability, and turns it into a skill, like any other.

I never learned how to dance- but I do it. I look funny doing it, I annoy and embarrass friends when I do it- but I do it a lot. Some folks even think I’m pretty good. I wouldn’t enter a competition or anything, but I have been known to take the floor. I do enjoy a party dance. On TInkatolli we give kids the chance to make their mark in the world they are a part of. They can invent, make, and document their offline creations, upload it to the game – and show off their creations for all the other kids to see and vote on. The best ideas get made on Tinkatolli and turned into activities for all the kids to make. It’s like a school dance – they can take over the dancefloor, without feeling they are entering a judged competition… it’s just their pals looking on, and cheering. It’s not about being the best, necessarily – but having a go at it. Show and tell.

Tinkatolli is a labour of love, and a passionate subject for me. It embodies a lot of good stuff I think kids should be exposed to – creativity, environmental awareness, fun and games, doodling and creativity, funny quirky characters, motion, science and health and it empowers them to shape their own fun time.

Sounds good, eh? I could go on about how instilling creative thinking and innovation, environmental awareness, good eating habits, daily exercise, and social skills are beneficial to your child, and help shape them into well rounded individuals – but I’ll suffice to say; “It ROCKS!”

Go on – give it a try;)
Tinkatolli

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.

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.