Client: Astrid Lindgren Company
Mission: Bring the iconic character Pippi Longstocking to new generations of children through modern takes on the classic songs, by creating four animated music videos.
Roles: Character animation, Mocap directing/recording/cleanup
Produced by: Konkret Animation
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In this exciting project, I was tasked with animating characters and props in four music videos featuring Pippi Longstocking and her friends. Using a mix of mocap and keyframe animation, I brought the characters to life in new renditions of the classic songs from the movies.
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In this exciting project, I was tasked with animating characters and props in four music videos featuring Pippi Longstocking and her friends. Using a mix of mocap and keyframe animation, I brought the characters to life in new renditions of the classic songs from the movies.
SETTING
Growing up in Sweden in the 90's, Pippi was obviously a big part of my childhood. Having the opportunity to help new generations discover the magical world of Pippi Longstocking was a real treat, and I wanted to do her justice.
The whole project was animated inside Unreal Engine 5, but as the time constraints were tight we couldn't keyframe animate the whole thing. There was no access to a fancy mocap studio, but we did have a Rokoko suit and a cramped office space.
With these limitations, we needed to get creative and spend our time wisely.
THE CREW
With the cartoony and colourful art style of Pippi, the animation needed to match to create cohesiveness. However, taking a lot of inspiration from the classic live-action movies from the 60's and 70's, we didn't want the animation to look full-on stylized cartoony.
There needed to be some grounded realism to the way the characters moved. Sure, a monkey doing a backflip is perhaps not exactly realistic. But as in this example of Mr. Nilsson, while I really liked the over-the-top layout backflip in the first version, it was toned down a bit in the final version to less crazy levels.