For a couple of weeks ago North Kingdom, and myself, won FWA People’s Choice Award – one of the finest acknowledgements in the interactive industry. Earlier PCA; Get the Glass and Vodafone Future (these two sites did also won FWA Site Of The Year).

1 Year Long Global Competition
365 Site Of The Day Winners
12 Site Of The Month Finalists
1 International Public Vote
1 People’s Choice Award Winner

“Part of the goal was to move and inspire the creative community. Therefor it feels extra good to receive the FWA PCA 2011.

A big thanks to everyone involved making this happen: Chris, Aaron, Doob, Sandra, Thomas for giving us the opportunity. Special thanks to Branislav, Eskil, Bartek, Micke, Klaus and the rest of the guys involved pushing the limits. Full credits here – each and everyone on that list deserve a shout out for being so dedicated.”

Read more about the project here (North Kingdom) and about my stuff in the project here on the blog.

I have now found the perfect vinyl and technique for the Black Leakage project. Here are some photos from my own apartment on the final product. I will hopefully have the shop with five different motives up and running before the end of the week when I only have some instructions and documentation left to do.

IN PROGRESS — A wall art decal (vinyl) made for my apartment that soon will be available at my online shop. You will find them in two different shapes and two different sizes.

For a couple of years ago I found a screenshot on the net, showing a broken screen from someone’s MacBook . The upper right corner on the diplay had got a punch and some liquid had start pouring inside the screen. It was something in that abstract shape I liked so I saved the picture on my hard drive for another day. This winter I started to think about my living room’s big white wall. I’m not so fond of placing prints or frameworks behind the TV so a vinyl print felt like a better solution. Therefore I made this print based on this crashed display. I liked the idea to have fine shapes with a little bit of attitude.

Right now I’m waiting for the real prints, so it will be great to see how it works. The idea is to add these to my upcoming online shop if it turns out well. Black Leakage will be printed on matted vinyl and available in two different shapes;

Black Leakage No. 1 (Portrait)
Black Leakage No. 2 (Landscape)

If you want a Black Leakage for your home as well, just send me a mail and I will notice you when it is available. And of course, you will get 40% OFF just because you read this! And if you recognize your broken display I will send you one for free! :)

If you are interested, just send me a note here. It will be available in a couple of weeks.

I have made the illustrations in Adobe Illustrator. More to come when it´s available and I have test it in my apartment.

Concept art by North Kingdom (Robert Lindström & Mathias Lindgren). Deer by Mirada.

Three screenshots from the final work and the landingpage of ROME, everything made with webGL.

Read more about the project here and check out the huge making of article at our North Kingdom blog here. This post on Designchapel only concerns my involvement and my personal notes.

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A couple of weeks ago we launched a little different project from North Kingdom called ROME, an interactive music video made in webGL from Google Chrome. To learn more about the technique you can read more at ROME technology site.

I wasn’t so super involved myself unfortunately when it was the music director who was in charge of all the visual stuff. I only did some early concept drawings together with our 3D artist Mathias Lindgren and some design directions on the website. These pictures will I show here below.

The beautifully Norah Jones, one of my favorites, is singing “3 Dreams of Black” in this interactive music video with Jack White from Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi’s album ROME.

Some really early concept drawings. I had an idea of a mirror world underneath the surface, a more twisted version of the dream world.

“A dark world is found under the surface, as if you would look under the water’s edge. This dark, odd, bizarre world contains a mirror image of the “real” world but within another shape. Here will you find the dark soup. A soup that could have same style in all three dark worlds.”

   More pictures and information here.

Tonite I have modified my illustration from the wallpaper “En kopp kaffe” to match a 50×70 cm print for an upcoming exhibition. I will definitely play around with it more later, regarding colors and graphic elements. The print will be a limited edition of 25 or so…

Work in progress — I’m drawing new arms for Woodbot Pilots…

Got a mail from Shawn Pucknell, Director at FITC Events, today; “Just got all the prints today and sorted them all out and hand numbered them. They look great. Attached is a shot of the prints and album…”

My print is the one in the lower left corner. Great to see how the other artist solved the assignment. My favorite is the one by James Paterson.

“As part of our celebration for the ten year anniversary of FITC, we selected ten FITC Speakers from the past ten years and asked them to design a print with the theme ‘TEN’”.

Read the whole post at FITC.

This weekend I have modified another nun illustrations from 2001/2002. The original illustration was never mentioned to be bigger then 800 pixels high so I have done some adjustments now in Photoshop, so it will work better in print. Work in progress…

“Designed Swedish Religion — The Red Nun”. 50 x 70 cm, 300 dpi.

   More pictures and information here.

I’m have started to prepare some stuff for an exhibition this spring in Stockholm. Two of the prints will be modified versions of my nun illustrations from 2001/2002. These illustrations where never planed to be used bigger then I had them on my original website from 2002, but they have been printed up to 140 x 140 cm which is insane when all details looks pretty bad. However, I thought it was an excellent way to both improve my painting techniques and fix these old illustrations for print.

This is still work in progress but it will end up pretty close to this I think. I have some stuff left to do in her face and neck and I’m still playing with the design. And yeah, the logo is not set yet as well.

Size 50 x 70 cm, 300 dpi.

The original illustration was never mentioned to be bigger then 800 pixels high.

Last month we launched a pretty cool project at Times Square for LG on their huge LED screen. A project within the project was to create a character, a process I will show here below. Usually I don’t work as an illustrator but sometimes it happens…

Overall we created over 50 characters during two hectic weeks…

A — Final direction from client B — My redesign and modification of the character when we wanted him more mature and cool C — Klaus Lyngeled (Character Designer och Animation Director) did some tweaks on my sketch D — The final character made in Unity 3D

When a project have a character in focus it’s of course super important to give him a look that works both for the brands philosophy and the project itself, a combination that can be very tricky sometimes. This autumn I helped one of our teams with some early concept ideas and development of a character for LG. The character was going to have artificial intelligence and “live” inside the biggest LED screen in NYC; a huge 15×25 meters display (1984×1136 resolution) on Times Square. His name is Gil (Life Is Good backwards) and he’s LG’s Good News Ambassador. Gil is animated in real-time 3D (Unity 3d) which means instead of using loops of pre-rendered animations, he actually can respond differently to messages, weather reports or news feeds so that he feels really alive

   More pictures and information here.

WORK IN PROGRESS — This autumn I got an amazing assignment from Rob Ford at FWA; to design four prints for their awards.

The basic idea was to make something that would look good on your wall, and even better if you would have a collection. Rob Ford wanted to have a different award certificate for FWA, a vision I liked very much. However, the design have to be simple in a way, when it still is an award. You should be proud of it, and not feeling that you have a piece of art on the wall you maybe don’t like. The typeface and the design are taken from the FWA digital award ribbons, which made me start thinking of knitting, which also looks like pixel art in a way. Both knitting and pixelart are just handcraft, which matched the idea perfect when the projects you see on FWA are filled with that

Some lines from the brief;

“They could all be the same format but with a slightly different colour style to resemble the level of award. I’ve attached all of the award ribbons in case they help in any way and I have also attached the FWA logo in eps format.”

“I have thought in the past how it might be cool to have a 3D trophy image on the award certificate but I really have no requirements on the design style or idea. Of course, FWA is all about being progressive, original and innovative so I’m sure you will have that in mind anyway.”

(The award would not come with a wooden frame btw, I just wanted to see how it would look like.)

The four certificates — SOTM (Site Of the Month, SOTY (Sity Of The Year), PC (People’s Choice) and SOTD (Site Of The Day). I added some awards from us at North Kingdom to see how it could look like.

SOTM, SOTY and PC will be printed and sent over. SOTD will be available for downloading. Some test prints will be made next week.

— This post will shortly be updated.

Kenny Lindström’s and my wallpaper is finally on place at North Kingdom’s kitchen in Stockholm. I named the work “En kopp kaffe” which means a cup of coffee in Swedish. I also added some lines to the illustration to make it more as a part of a story;

Her coffee smelt nice, but it felt like somebody was watching her. Even if the morning was chilly, she didn’t understand why her coffee had a touch of salt.

Like a deep lake of oil, her drink now took on a new dimension. The other side of the kingdom was now presented.

More work in progress here.

We ordered the wallpaper at Your Wallpaper here in Stockholm. Decorator was Lina Fall.

When the wallpaper arrived a week after my order, I put it directly on the floor to see how it looked like. And yes, the quality was good! The color range was not perfect but for that price I would say it is ok. The price for this wallpaper was 1317 SEK plus taxes.

Last week I worked on some character design for an ongoing pitch. The client wanted another direction thou so it never went further than this. So today it is just garbage, but that’s life. At least it was fun to do. The cool typeface is called CAPSET, made by my friend Andreas Philström.

   More pictures and information here.

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.

On Monday FWA will publish our wallpaper kit to their special edition 10th Anniversary collection. We where invited by Rob Ford together with 9 other great agencies (FWA 10 top winning agencies) like Goodby, B-Reel, Big Spaceship and EVB for this special occasion. It was of course a big honor for us, but also a chance to make a quick piece of art which is always challenging and fun.

Get the wallpapers here — FWA 10th Anniversary wallpapers by North Kingdom

If you like the font I have used and made, you can download that one here.

When we had no time whatsoever we made a quick collaboration in house. We didn’t have any directions among us more then just go “bananas”, to make something we wanted to have on our own desktops, and to keep it black and white as our graphic profile.

The directive from Rob Ford was; “The wallpaper should include the FWA logo, your own logo, the number 10. I am happy for the FWA logo to be manipulated in any creative way rather than having it placed, as is, on a nice image.”

   More pictures and information here.

Air France did I finish last week on my flight from Paris to Miami. I have again used the Brush application which have been updated with layer function since last time I used it. You can also import photos from your photo library. That´s how I did the copy; I took a photo on a page at the airplane, imported it to Brushes and painted Air Fran(ce) on the top layer. The color & contrast correction is made with the Mill Color application.

Some sketches from a concept I’m working on right now. The characters had to be very simple so I continue to work with the style I made for The Lodge showreel a couple of years ago. I have no idea if we will use these small fellows but they where really fun to do :) Next step will be to build them in 3D if choose to continue. The project will be launched first after the summer so it is a very early sneak peek.

Another drawing I made on my iPhone with the Brush application. I made it when I spent some nice days at the Stockholm archipelago this summer.

When we did our showreel for North Kingdom last year we also made our own soundtrack together with Andreas Lundmark. I have used his music before when he was a part of Elodie, a great group from Skellefteå with a original style. The last thing I wanted for our showreel was a high tempo pop/rock/techno tune which almost every showreel uses today. Instead we wanted to give our reel an odd story with a calm pleasant feeling.

The soundtrack turned out so good so I wanted to give it a proper record cover with our Dear Deer Lady. I tried a new, quite fast, technique where I painted (with Wacom Cintiq 12wx) on top of a photo I took a few years ago. To fit the graphic profile of North Kingdom I made it black & white.

Download wallpapers — Dear Deer Black, 1920×1200 px (zip)

Download soundtrack — Creatvt (North Kingdom) (mp3)
Download typeface — Black Nun Bold (Illustration file) (.zip)

I spent this Sunday at “String” on Söder, Stockholm, with a thermos of coffee and my sketchbook because I needed to come up with some ideas for some wall paints to our new North Kingdom office. Damn nice day btw, “String” is a really great place. This is a first concept drawing for the kitchen. I will make the paintings with Kenny Lindström, who will work on the jellyfishes (or whatever we do there) on this one. The idea behind it? Well, I just wanted to continue to work with our strange, odd nature, which we presented in our showreel from last year.

Personal Work. I have vacation right now and tried do something on my Cintiq 12WX meanwhile I was listening on a e-book. I had no plans what-so-ever when I started, except that I want to build him with ZBrush one day.

I am not sure what he/it is. From the beginning this character was looking totally different but when I flipped a copy of the original horizontal and multiplied it on top; a new character appeared which felt much more unique. Then I took this new character and finished the work.

On my flight back from Munich yesterday I did a new small drawing on my iPhone with the Brush application. I felt very very tired on the trip home so I guess that’s why the guy ended up like this…

Finally, DCHPL-2 is live! These three picture is my first of a series I will continue work on during 2009 and probably 2010. They are found at my Cover Art selection if you have not seen them.

I have had these illustrations almost ready for over a year now but I have never had time to finish my website so therefore I have kept them in my drawer. I’m sure you know how it is… there are thousands other things to do then finish your portfolio. However, I came up with a pretty easy solution in the end but still very open creative with the cover solution. The base of this WordPress blog and my portfolio on Cargo. Thank you Andreas Philström and PM for helping me out with the WordPress programming. I really like this solution where it will be more focus on creating stuff for my portfolio instead of recreate my website.

I have actually been working on the content for the site during several years. The main idea for the site was to try out new techniques and medias that I never have been working with earlier. For example fashion drawing, learning Painter and concept drawing, creating a font, learn more about After Effect and so on.

My goal was also to make everything myself but as I said, the time issue is pretty big in this branch, so instead of making the photoshoot myself I worked close with a photographer, Håkan Moberg, and Mathias Lindgren (North Kingdom) helped me out with making the robots from my concept drawings.

You can download the pictures as wallpapers here.

Close up — Father Robot

Close up — Black Black Sunday

On my way back home from New York I tried this new iPhone app. called “Brushes”. It’s a program where you can paint with your fingers on your mobile! Very easy to use actually. I drawn these two robots here below on the plane (shown in three steps each);

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 illustration did I actually start to do the autumn of 2006. Back then it was made to be a part of my upcoming portfolio. However, I felt after a while that I wanted to learn new stuff instead repeating myself. Therefore, I have put it on hold until now. This autumn I where invited for a new illustration book called Monarchy Series (will be released 2009). My idea was to take my old unfinished illustration and add new technique and elements to it, because I realized I had to little time to start over from scratch. In the end the illustration wasn’t that different then the old one when I wanted to keep it clean and simple.

The model is my ex-girlfriend (who also is the model for all old Designchapel illustrations) and to make them more unique we borrowed some wigs from a hairdresser shop in Skellefteå called “Torsten”.

The main idea behind “Royal Nun” is the ever ending struggling between having a pretty big company (North Kingdom) on one side and my creative freedom on the other side (Designchapel).

   More pictures and information here.

I was invited by Marcelo Baldin to be one of 28 artists to make artwork for the metal-industrial band The Omega Code.

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.

This is a first glimpse on our upcoming fashion brand MINK / Made in North Kingdom. The logotype of a blinking deer character have I drawn in Illustrator. The hangtags (on the right side) are for the t-shirts and will be printed on canvas. From the beginning it will only be printed t-shirts with Limited Edition. I am not sure though when this project will be launched. Hopefully during 2008 or 2009.

For a couple of years ago I started an internal project at North Kingdom where our different designers made their own version of our NK symbol. It turned out pretty cool actually! Here above can you see 4 of these t-shirts prints designed by Kenny Lindström, myself, Charlotta Havh and Bjarne Melin. More to come!

We from North Kingdom will take care of one module at Hyper Island this winter. It is for their new one-year program called Interactive Art Director in Stockholm. We will give the student a Big Task (subject is still secret) among work shops, inspiration lectures etc. When it is finished we will gather the students work in a printed book. Can be pretty cool!

The illustration is just from a lonely night when I was bored…

   More pictures and information here.