We have continue to make Behind the Scene for our projects. It is a great way for us to build our culture and it is hopefully fun to see for others. Here is material from the making of two recent projects from North Kingdom;

Behind the Scene — Toyota Avalon 2011 (NK Art Director; Kalle Engström)
Behind the Scene — Battle of the Cheetos (NK Art Director; Nils Arvidsson)

I have just finished mine and Kenny Lindströms kitchen illustration, so tomorrow I will send it to the printhouse because instead of paint it we will print, just to save some time. The main idea was to mix our styles.

My work was concept, copy, making the lady and put everything together. The idea is also to make a black stain on the table underneath
where the coffee is pouring. When I wrote the copy I wanted to achieve a feeling that the picture is taken from a saga, a story (not final);

“Her coffee smelt nice, but it felt like somebody was watching her. It was chilly outside and the aroma of the coffee now had a touch of salt. Like a deep lake of oil, her drink now took on a new dimension. Another side of the kingdom was now presented.”

— Work in progress

The illustration is made on a Cintiq 12WX, based on a photography I took a couple of years ago. When the plan was to paint everything we wanted a clean and simple illustration, which we kept even if it now will be printed.

Kenny Lindströms beautiful octopus. Original file in illustrator above. Below after my coloring.

Michael Ballack, the captain of the German national soccer team, concentrating before a film shoot and Rene Adler, the goalkeeper, is doing an interview in front of our scenography. Cologne, September 2009. A couple of exciting days for us from North Kingdom when the film shoots for Adidas Teamgeist took place.

Here is my personal thoughts and pictures from this autumn. These “Making of” parts have been very important for me to me to keep when I want to collect parts of the process, which never is seen in the final result and to have something to look back on when we work with new projects in the future. Working as an Art Director for this kind of projects can be pretty difficult. Big complex game campaigns for big brands, where lot of different parts runs parallel. You need to keep everything in the same style and quality, and you always have a client with very high expectations. Times like that, the most important is to have a well working team, which we have in North Kingdom! Many of us at NK have been working together over ten years so we know each other very well. Nobody is afraid to say what he or she thinks. A project will never turns out good if people in the team don’t say what they have in mind. It is so true that the details will betray you, so when Marcus Ivarsson (our Project Manager) said “Every single pixel need love” I couldn’t agree more.

I’m pretty happy with the final result. The sound and voice overs are absolute fantastic! DinahMoe did a great job! They handled all sound dynamically at runtime, all integrated and affecting each other. Visually it is almost perfect. With little more time I think we could make the game itself a little harder in the last two chapters and with more variations. But still, we had over 500,000 games played the first three weeks, chosen FWA Site of the Month, and a very happy client, which is most important. However, I have to admit I wasn’t totally sold about the game idea, the strategic style, but it gave me even more reason to try to make it as visual outstanding as possible.

My first rough concept drawings from August 2009, showing how the white takeover would look like, how the players would transform to these white “ghosts” without any identity, history or power.

During the project I worked with two very talented illustrators; Therese Larsson (intern at North Kingdom), who did the covers and Anton Eriksson, who was in charge of backgrounds, based on our 3D sketches. The graphic novel style came from 180 Amsterdam who did the very cool “Spark” movie for Adidas earlier this year, which gave Adidas a new mystic, dark feeling. I wasn’t so fond of the rest of the campaign they did, when their graphic novel style was too lame and to regular. Adidas let us make our own style within the genre which we both loved and thought would be necessary for a great outcome. Basically I got free hands with my illustrators. Why can’t all clients be like that?

   More pictures and information here.

Here above you can see the design in progress for the first room: The Freezer. It is a test where you have to save two persons of four, or can you maybe solve the test different? Check out the Behind the Scene part here below.

   More pictures and information here.

The process for making DCHPL-2 have been long, very long. The goal has not been the final result but just the process. To take time and learn new stuff! To sit down and think; what do I want to try? Here is some sketches and ideas I have had during these years I have been working with this. Sometimes it have been three four months between each time I have open the Designchapel folder, sometimes even more. And yes, it can be very frustrating to not launch the ship, to ask yourself “Will I never ever finish this?”, but somehow, you have to tell yourself also “Well, it is just a bloody webpage. Focus on what you think is fun, nothing else!”. It can be hard many times to not be stressed, but during my years in this branch you have to think on your social life as well, otherwise you will never stay long in the business.

   More pictures and information here.

This spring I have been working with our showreel for North Kingdom´s first 5 years. The reel itself has a small story built in with a branded main character who sits down with a magic black flower. On the pictures above you can see my concept sketches on the girl and a picture from the shooting in Stockholm from June.

   More pictures and information here.

When we worked directly with Coca Cola for The Coke Zero Game project, the whole process took a while when we did everything from idea and concept to the whole production. Here will you find photos I took from the filmday and some work in progress.

   More pictures and information here.

Here is some behind the scene peaks from when we made “Get the Glass” for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Fransisco, US. The client was The California Milkboard inc.

Me and David Eriksson (CD/CEO, North Kingdom) had for a long time wanted a project where we could build something physical, something you have not seen earlier, and when we first heard about the new Got Milk? project we understood that this would be the project! I guess Goodby thought we where a little bit crazy in the beginning but when we described the idea they loved the idea.
   More pictures and information here.

This illustration is based of a photo I have got from Vasava (Barcelona, Spain). First I draw all nodes in Photoshop (I like the speed better there) by hand and then colored in Illustrator and finally back in Photoshop for final coloring.

   More pictures and information here.