Anne-Sofie Tholander

Vacation time

2012-01-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

It's been way too long since my last update here on the blog.

I've been swamped with work on our bachelor film so i haven't really had the time. I'm the production manager and we're 8 people in the group. Our working title is Memoria and it's a psychological horror. Since i'm the production manager i've been busy with organizing stuff and filling in paper work. Meaning i haven't done much actual artwork. However over the next two months i hope to do some actual creative stuff :) Meanwhile you can check it out here: http://memoriafilm.blogspot.com/

Other than that we are having our christmas break and i've finally had the chance to borrow my parents camera so i could photograph some of the jewelery i've been making. I'm hoping to get some of my latest sketches scannes aswell and upload them here on the blog :)

Anyway here's some of the earrings i've made and they are all for sale:

Bella Sara Winter Festival

2011-11-17T12:11:00.000-08:00

The new series are finally out and here are the 4 that i made. Frosty, Pie, Sleetmane and Snowdreamer.

© 2011 HIDDEN CITY
ENTERTAINMENT, Inc. All rights
reserved. BELLA SARA is
a trademark of concept card and
used by HIDDEN CITY ENTERTAINMENT under
license. HIDDEN CITY ENTERTAINMENT is a
trademark of HIDDEN CITY ENTERTAINMENT, Inc.,
in the U.S.A. and elsewhere.
www.bellasara.com

Bella Sara Summer Camp

2011-09-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

I made 3 illustrations for the TGA Bella Sara this winter and they were published this summer. I usually post my work right after it's officially published but i never got around to it this summer.

Summer time

2011-08-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

We've had a long summer vacation and i haven't really been drawing a lot. I've been with my parents and i finally got around to sewing a dress that i've had the pattern for. I'm very pleased with my result considering it's my first time ever sewing a proper piece of clothes! I did change some things in the dress though. I put the zipper in the back and i took about 15 cm of the length off the skirt plus there was only suppost to be 2 decorative bands in the collar but i made 3. It took quite a while but i think it was more because it was hard to understand the guide that came with the pattern. However.. I did it! :)

I also made this neclace with pearls. White and light peach colours.

I also just want to show you my parents Maine Coon cat Milkiway. He's just so adorable and only 8 months old. I can't wait to see him again in some months..

Exam 2011

2011-06-10T03:27:00.000-07:00

So this years exam was either mattepainting or modeling and i think i ended up doing a little of both. We were given a modeled and rigged chameleon and 2 photo background to chose from. Here is waht i came up with.

The given photo i chose

My concept drawing

model and sculp (before and after)

final composit

close up

exam turnaround from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

New blog!

2011-05-15T07:05:00.000-07:00

I've created a new blog for my online portfolio. http://anne-sofietholander.blogspot.com/ Here i will have the things i feel are worth showing when applying for jobs and internships while this blog will be more random but updated frequently.

I've also created a reel which can be seen on the new blog :) However i'm not really into all that HTML stuff so there are some few things i need to fix in the pages.

Project Q - Final result

2011-05-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

We finnished off our project Q in march and here is my result.

Project Quadruped - Crystal Deer from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

I don't really like the result but i learned a lot that i can use in future projects. I wish i had used more time on my background. In my opinion it is too CG and not very pretty. I might work on it some more if i one day have the time.
I loved playing around with the maya fluids to create fog and particles for the fireflies. :)

The animation is done by Ditte Brøns-Frandsen

sketch dump and new blog colours

2011-03-15T08:46:00.001-07:00

As you might have noticed i've change the colours on my blog. I felt it was time for something new.
Other than that i just wanted to upload some random sketches..

Project Q - matte painting and test renders

2011-03-08T08:27:00.000-08:00

Finally the Deer has been rigged and is now in the process of being animated. Can't wait to see what Ditte comes up with. ( http://dittemariefrandsen.blogspot.com/ )
I have been working on the matte painting for the scene and seems to be going in the direction i want so that's great.

Project Q - textured

2011-02-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

Just a quick test render of my crystal deer with texture.
I haven't really worked on the shaders so the look might change in the end but this is basically how i want it.

Modeling with Armando Sepulveda del Toro - part 2

2011-02-02T08:45:00.001-08:00

We are now in the 3rd and final week of modeling of our creatures. Last week we worked alone but had a 4th year student helping us in the mornings. I worked slower than i thought i would but i'm slowly getting there!

This week i have been sculpting the last details and today i started on texturing. I've only worked on the body so far so tomorrow i shall start on the crystal parts :) If i have the time i would like to refine the shape of the crystals and make them a bit less symmertric.

Modeling with Armando Sepulveda del Toro - part 1

2011-01-21T08:36:00.001-08:00

This week we started modeling our Quadrupeds. Our teacher is Armando Sepulveda del Toro http://www.asepulveda.com/ and he is fantastic at teaching. It is really great to learn new tricks and how the topology should be for the best results.
Next week i shall start on the crystals and teeth plus all the small details.

Back in school and Project Q

2011-01-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

We are back from our christmas holiday and have started the next project were we are going to make a 4 legged animal/creature.

We worked on the designs with an animation buddy and that was really great to try. I got so many useful inputs.
The teachers we had were Florian Satzinger and Willie Real. Don't forget to check out their blogs! http://williereal.blogspot.com/ and http://paperwalker.blogspot.com/

Here is the Design that Ditte and i came up with. It's a crystal backed deer. The crystals glow when the animal is going to attack and has nasty sharp teeth with a black tongue.

Trailer Project - finnished!

2010-12-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

We have finally finnished our project! I hoped that i could have updated my blog weekly but suddenly all my energy was spent on the project. However now we are finally done and i have time to update my blog :)

After the character modeling we had environment modeling with Jericho Green. It was a lot of hard work since we had so much to model. It was great to learn a new things and we had a great week.

When all the modeling was done it was time for the rigging. We had Nico Sangrejka and Nicolai Slotshuus. I would never had thought that i would like rigging that much but they made it understandable and fun! I can't thank them enough :)

At last we had the final 3 weeks with texturing, lighting and compositing. For this we had Max Böhm. It was actually very stressfull and i spent all my time at the school. It's always the last part of a project that's the most busy. Luckily Max was really fun and he gave a great mood in the class. Eventhough a lot of us was under time pressure.

Jules ét Jim - Trailer Project from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

and again thank you all for making this happen!

Jim - turnaround from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

Props from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

CG artists:

Nikki Starostka
Martin Hjelholt Brun Pedersen
Me (Anne-Sofie Tholander)

Animation:
Benny Søhave Sørensen
Kenneth Ladekjær
Stine Agerskov Frandsen

Special thanks to our teachers:

Uwe Heidschötter (character design)
Christian Puille (storyboard)
Cyrille Caron (cameras and layout)
James Stone (character modeling)
Jericho Green (environment modeling)
Nico Sangrejka and Nicolai Slothuss (rigging)
Max Böhm (texturing, lighting, render and comping)

Also thanks to:
Anja Perl (coordinator)
Lana T. Nikolic (coordinator for the animators)
Alex Williams (tha animators teacher)
Magnus Møller (supporting animation teacher)

Character Modeling with James Stone

2010-11-05T04:09:00.000-07:00

In week 39-41 we had 3 weeks of character modeling and texturing with James Stone.
We each modeled the same characters as in our blockout so i did our grasshopper Jim. It was really fun and we had a great time.

I made a short turntable with Jim

Trailer Project Character Jim turnaround from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

3D animatic with Cyrille Caron

2010-10-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

The next step in our project was the 3D animatic. We had 2 weeks to block out the sets, characters, layout and cameras with the help from Cyrille Caron.
It was really fun and Cyrille was very helpful.

Trailer Project 3D animatic from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

Back in school and Trailer Project

2010-09-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

We have finally started school again and we have a Trailer Project that will run untill december 2010.
The assignment is to re art-direct the movie and make a trailer in 3d. My group have been given the french movie Jules ét Jim.

“Jules and Jim” is about two guys, whose friendship is put to the test when they both fall in love with Catherine. In the beginning all was well, Jules marries Catherine and Jim promises to keep his hands off of her. Everything changes when they all reunite after WW1 where Jules and Jim fought on opposite sides. Jules and Catherine’s marriage is now falling apart, and in attempt to keep Catherine in his life Jules asks Jim to become her lover. However after a while Jim rejects her and she becomes desperate. When she realizes that she will never have Jim, she drives them both into the water. (And they drown)

Our analyzis of the 3 characters:

Catherine: Dominant, attention seeking, selfish, drama queen, manipulating, control freak.

Catherine is naïve and dominant. She thinks that she can have it all, and she has many men caught up in her web.

Jules: grey, queer, introvert, heavy, goofy, reasonable, dependent, forgiving, naïve, self-destructing, weak.

In the beginning Jules is a cheerful and happy guy, but as time goes on he gets addicted to Catherine and he becomes more and more concerned about losing her and their child.

Jim: Proud, French, self-secure, outgoing, selfish, player, strong.

Jim changes character as his and Jules friendship is at risk. Throughout the story Jim gets more mature in his decisions as he realizes, that his and Catherine’s relationship can’t work, as he will never get her for himself.

We have chosen to make it an action movie and have turned the characters in to insects. In our analyzis of the 3 main characters we found that Catherine was very similar to the female insects.

The first two weeks we had character design/concept and storyboarding. Our teachers were Uwe Heidschötter and Christian Puille.

I mostly did storyboarding though i would have loved to do some character design. However it just wasn't my week but luckily Nikki and Martin from my group had better luck with that.
It was a great start and we had so much fun and generally a very good mood in the class. Both teachers are very talented and are so nice.

Here's our animatic:

Trailer Project animatic from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

sketchbook

2010-09-17T07:56:00.001-07:00

Some random pages from my sketchbook

Summer 2010

2010-08-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since i've last updated my blog. I've haven't been in school for so long. However we start up again on monday and i just can't wait! In my opinion the summer holiday has been a bit too long.

I've recently started making jewelry again. I haven't really been drawing that much to be honest.

I've also made a set of invitations for my mothers birthday in september. It doesn't show here in the photo but the paper with the printet text has an iridescent shine to it. The white butterfly is also covered in iridescent glitter.

I spent a lot of my summer at home with my parents so i haven't really touched a computer for 2 months! However i had some great days in the wonderful sun at the beach and spent time with some of all the friends from Copenhagen that i've neglected since i've started school.
Also it was great to see my to beloved cats again :) Here's Mille sleeping.

Exam 2010

2010-06-11T04:16:00.001-07:00

Our exam this year is to choose one of the 5 given characters and model a bust of it. We will be judged in the translation from 2D to 3D and the ability to retain the character of the 2D concept. Also on the topology and ability to detail the character.

I've chosen to model the mother.

We wern't suppost to texture the model but i couldn't help myself :) I'm not completely satisfied with the result but i don't have the time to remake it. I think the mouth in my model is a little too big and the teeth are too small compared to the original drawing.

Besides the model we were given an written assignmetn and suppost to make a showreel. I will update this post when i've gotten my "grade" on Monday.

Peter Chan

2010-06-11T03:51:00.000-07:00

The last week of school before the exam was Concept Design with Peter Chan. This was one of the best weeks of the year. He checked out our blogs and learned all of our names before having us. How cool is that!
We had a lot of repetition of the things we learned with Lawrence and it was really nice. Words can't explain how awesome Peter Chan is..

Our assignment was to make a concept with to given references and 1 or 3 references we found on our own. We were to make a character, creature and environment. In the end we were going to have a drawing of an event that showed a story. I have so much more to learn.

These two images were my references from Peter:

My idea was to make a desert like alien planet with robot creatures and destroyed cities. Peter really made us try to do something we find difficult and since i never draw techinal stuff i thought i should try it. However i didn't really succeed but at least i know what to do to fix it!

My event was that two characters had fallen into a pit and the parasite creatures were coming to get them. The parasites would live off the mechanical characters and then turn into butterfly like creatures.

If you try to google Peter Chan you will find a lot of art and that is not the Peter we had. Peter doesn't upload anything to the internet. He dean't even have a mobile phone.

However i have found a bit of his work for Brütal Legend.
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/01_Lounge.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/03_Bridge.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/04_TireRoad.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/05_Vista5.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/06_Cathedral.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/07_Mountains.jpg

Matte Painting with Daniel Cocauoult

2010-05-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

We've started on a week with matte painting and i'm simply loving it. One week is just not enough. I really enjoy painting and drawing. Sometimes i almost forget how fun it is with all the 3d.
This is my first matte painting:

I wanted to challenge myself a bit more so i started on a second matte painting. Daniel helped me a lot though and i'm far from done.

I've also worked some more on one of my drawings after briefly learning about colours.

character project process video

2010-05-05T04:33:00.000-07:00

Finally i have the video of my process for the character project. :)
Special thanks to all the great teachers!

Character Project CGA09 from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

Modeling with Adam Dewhirst part 2

2010-04-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

We've now had 3 weeks of modeling and sculpting with Adam. We were only suppost to have Adam for 2 weeks but he ended up staying a week longer because of all the flight cancellations. It was a real pleasure to have him as a teacher.

I only have some minor details left to do. Nothing much really so that should be a quick fix. I've started on texturing because i had the time for it but i also still have a lot of work to do on that.

Maya render with texture and displacement map:

Screenshots from Mudbox:

Maya renders of full character:

Modeling with Adam Dewhirst part 1

2010-04-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

We've started on modeling our characters in Maya last week and i just wanted to show some work in progress. I still have a lot to do like all the clothes for example. I also need to do some more tweeking in the face but i'm going to do a lot of that in Mudbox.
We've just learned about Mudbox today and i'm really excited about it. I can't wait to get started on sculpting all the cool details!

Sculpting with Damon Bard

2010-04-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

The second week of the character design project was sculpting. It was really fun and i hope to do more sculpting in the future.
We started out with printing the pose we wanted to sculpt roughly in the size it should end up with. Then we made a solid armature using the reference drawing. I had some difficulties with figuring out how to approach it with out having an extra support but with the help from Damon it turned out great. Damon was a great teacher and don't forget to check out his website: http://www.bardsculpturestudio.com/

My maquette is still really rough and i could probably work on it for ages. However i don't really have the proper tools.

Character Design with Craig Kellman

2010-03-19T09:19:00.001-07:00

This is the result from a fantastic week with Craig Kellman! He is just an awsome teacher and we had so much fun. I really hope that he will come to The Animation Workshop again sometime.

My character is based on the naked Sphynx cats and i really love how silly they are. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Week 10 - Light, Texture and Render

2010-03-12T02:00:00.000-08:00

This week we have been rendering from Maya and compositing in Fusion. Here are some frames from the animation.
I had a lot of trouble with the lighting and especially the curtains. I did not have time to fix it in Maya so i tried to fix it in compositing. Maya can be so strange sometimes and i still don't really understand what i did wrong.

Week 8 - Light. Texture and Render

2010-02-26T06:17:00.000-08:00

Oliver is back to teach us about lighting, texturing and then render. 3 weeks in total. The assignment is to make a time-lapse in a room. This is my room. I still need to fix some stuff like the curtains.

Update:

Week 5 - Storyboard

2010-02-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

Week 5 of our 2. semester was storyboarding with Tod Polson. I really enjoyed it and look forward to be doing more storyboarding in the future.
Our first assignment was a short animatic. We were to make a commercial for popsicles with a space theme. We were given the characters and some backgrounds. I worked with Ida and it was really fun :)

The other main assignment was storyboarding of "The Hound" by H.P. Lovecraft. My seaquence was when the narrator returned to Holland and descovered the amulet was missing. He was actually suppost to be on a boat but we changed it to a train.

Colour

2010-01-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

Last week we had Colour with Lawrence Marvit. I see the world in a whole new way.. :)

Design with Lawrence Marvit

2010-01-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

We're back from our christmas holidays and started on design. It's really tough and we're not getting that much sleep at all. However it's still fun and we are learning loads of great stuff.

The first asignment that wasn't abstract was Giant monsters attack ancient Rome. This is what i chose to make:

I have retouched it in photoshop and might do it again when i have the time. Next assignment is Junkyard Romance.

I have some corrections to make but i'll do them later on.

7 week project done

2009-12-11T02:39:00.000-08:00

This is the end result of the last 7 weeks. It's been really awsome and i can't wait to get back to school after the christmas holidays :)

Teachers for this project;
Kevin Dart & Chris Turnham (concept and character design)
Anna Kubik (Lights, texturing and composition)
André Bergs (Modelling, UV-mapping, and Rigging)

Circus freaks - the final week

2009-12-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

The lights should now be pretty much done.
I might do some minor adjustments if i have the time. So the final week. We are making textures. I'm probably going to add some bump-mapping here and there just to get a nice feel. I just need to figure out how to though..
Oh.. i also moved some objects around since last time..

Lighting

2009-12-03T07:48:00.001-08:00

We've been doing lights this week. I'm slowly getting there, and i still have no idea hov to do the lights chain lights. However i hope to learn it at some point..

Rendering, Texturing and Lighting

2009-12-01T06:31:00.000-08:00

Now we've started om the last 2 weeks where we are going to finnish up our projects. The lighting is probably going to be quite a challenge.

Posing Bob

2009-11-26T09:36:00.001-08:00

Aaaaargh! This is killing me.. My model has so many wierd bumps and stuff all over... And i haven't even adjusted the saddle yet..

Update:

Bob - now in 3D!

2009-11-23T13:31:00.000-08:00

I've finally finnished modeling and UV-mapping Bob. Next step is to model the scene and make UV-mapping of that too and then the fun comes! colouring, texturing and lighting :)

More pictures will come.

Modeling

2009-11-17T07:15:00.001-08:00

We have started modeling our scenes and characters. We have 3 weeks for this and need to have modeled everything and made the UV-maps.
Modeling is a lot harder than I actually thought, especially when you're not allowed to have anything else than squares in your mesh. However i will probably learn it someday..at least I hope I will.

Week 9 - Camera angles

2009-11-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

Our 9th week here at CGA09 was about camera angles. I couldn't really see how it fit in with our project but we learned some nice things. We also made a rough model of our background and character.
I changed some things in my background and realized how bad i am at drawing perspective.

week 8 - Concept Design

2009-11-05T03:11:00.000-08:00

Our 8th week at CGA was the start of a 7 week project. At the end of the 7 weeks we are suppost to have a nice picture made in maya.
The first week was some concept design with Chris Turnham and Kevin Dart. Two really awsome teachers. The theme for the project is Circus Freaks and we started off by finding a bunch of references.
My original thought was "what would a circus freak look like in Futurama?" and i figured that an really old PC would be a freak in the future. Also because i wanted to do something completely different. However i was struggeling to make it work and at thursday they told me to start over. So here is some of the stuff i made.

The final concept:

This is Bob. He is an ordinary horse with a circus fetish.

My 3. idea of the computer thing.

My first character was a computer tower but i moved on to make a pc instead. Later on i actually made it an old macintosh.

references for my first idea:

Week 7

2009-11-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

The 7th week of CGA was Design with Lawrence Marwit. It was really hard and challenging but useful in so many ways. We are definetly going to use the stuff he tough us for the rest of our lives. We had to illustrate different things in an abstract way.

The last assignment was a quick one. We only had 3 hours to make an abstract picture of Hell.

The third assignment was to draw jazz. Drawn with shape, lines and tones.

The second taste was Dark Chocolate drawn with both lines and shapes.

The first thing was the taste of Strawberry Icecream drawn only with lines.

Maya intro part 2

2009-11-03T09:09:00.000-08:00

This is what i made in the last 2 weeks of our Maya intro.

We were also suppost to learn some rigging and animate it afterwards but my rig broke..

Week 4 - Maya intro

2009-11-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

This was the start of a 4 week intro course to Maya. The first two weeks we had Carla Heinzel and the last two was with Oliver Kirchhoff.

Group project. I made the background and yes, Octocat IS in one of the pictures behind the Giraffe.

My sketch for the project.

My first charachter in Maya.

My first thing ever to make in Maya.

3rd week

2009-11-03T08:32:00.000-08:00

Our 3rd week of CGA was with Julia Bracegirdle. She introduced us to something she calls Happy Accidents. Basically we made characters out of ink and paint splats.

We also made some silhouette films in groups of 2.

First 2 weeks

2009-11-03T06:17:00.000-08:00

Our first group project at CGA. Each group was given a text to base the animation on. It was fun to try. However i still don't really understand Flash yet..

test

2009-10-30T05:50:00.001-07:00

test indlæg