MeBot — MIT’s most expressive telepresence robot yet.
Xbox Project Natal Painting Demo — Xbox are for sure doing some interesting stuff with their Natal Project!
The Mill’s “Apples” — Amazing use of an iPhone and a custom tracking rig together with CGI

The Wired Tablet App — A video demonstration from Wired and their thoughts.
Mag+ — Nice research project from Bonnier R&D. And great move to launch it a week before iPad :)

Nitendo Facetracking — This is cool. 3D combined with facetracking on a DS. I think we will see lot of this in the future.
3D Face Technology — Little old footage taken from Japanese TV. But still very good!

“And Then There Was Salsa” — Very cool Vimeo takeover!
Macro Kingdom — 5DmarkII and a MP-E 65mm lens. Amazing!
Rhonda — A new cool way to draw stuff in 3D.

OK Go “This Too Shall Pass” — A really cool music video by James Frost.
Three reasons why storytelling is the key to success — Great and simple article about storytelling online.
10 Big Marketing Predictions For 2010 — Let us see how much will be true!

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.

For the moment I’m working with our corporate identity which is very important for companies in our branch. The idea behind our clean, sophisticated black & white style is to make an identity that don’t take focus from our projects and that we can keep for a while. Ok, we have already kept the logotype and style for a while but we have never had a complete package which I trying to finish now. My study was actually focused on print so it is fun to do that kind of job now and then…

I have always enjoyed listen to music meanwhile I work creative, specially when I’m sitting at the office or at coffee shops. For me it’s so important that I can shut down everything around me to find my creative mood, my creative “capsule”.

Here is my playlist on Spotify for you who also like to work with easy listening music: Designchapel — A creative day at work

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 have to recommend the latest issue of Computer Arts Projects, “A decade of design”. It’s about how the design industry has changed since 2000. A decade where myself have been most inspired by Büro Destruct, The Designers Republic and Attik. It’s sad though that I have not seen so much from these agencies the last 5 years, and the worst is that 2009, after 23 years in operation, TDR closed for business.

I started to work as an Interactive Art Director back in 1998, so the section “Decade of web design” gave me some reel nostalgia because Computer Arts have chosen one site/project/agency from each year that they thought woiuld represented that years internet evolution best. Who didn’t remember when 2Advanced entered the scene 2001 or Praystation back at 2003? Facebook represented 2006 and 2007 by Wordpress.

The coolest thing was to see our own Vodafone Future from North Kingdom represented 2004! If you would told me that back in 2003, I would think you where insane! I mean, we where just a tiny tiny agency up in the north, doing our job.

“When this website launched, it portrayed the future of technology through a progressive and innovative design that went on to be one of the most highly awarded sites of all time. It was also the only site ever to pick up both the FWA Site of the Year and FWA People’s Choice Award in the same year.”

And to correct CA; it’s not true that Vodafone is the only site ever to pick up both SOTY and PCA the same year. Our “Get the Glass” did the same 2008, not to forget :)

Yes we have moved into our new Stockholm office but it’s still a looot of work to do before it’s all set. One thing I’m looking at right now is a fireplace we will build in the foyer. We talk lot about storytelling within NK, the work we do and what we want to accomplish with our projects. The picture here below did I take in Svansele, where we had some teamdays 2008. This picture gave us the idea to actually build a fireplace in our office (with gel fire ofcourse), where we in a near future, hopefully, will gather around for storytelling and to create new great ideas.

Svansele 2008. North Kingdom tell stories…. Hans Eklund, Daniel Illlic, Klas Kroon, Mikael Forsgren, David Eriksson, Mathis Lindgren, Daniel Wallström and Lucian Trofin.

Inspiration for the design have been found from old fireplaces in north and from the lovely “Zero” from Ak47 in Italy.

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.

During my last vacation I brought my iPhone loaded with movies from TED.com. These short talks (3-10 min) had a big variaty of both quality but most of them are very interested listen at. Here are a few that caught my mind so far:

Stefan Sagmeister — The power of time off
”Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. He explains the often overlooked value of time off and shows the innovative projects inspired by his time in Bali.”
— Very interested so hear about how they are doing at Sagmeister Inc. to keep up the creativity. I love to see people finding their own way to work because good creativity isn’t, and have never been, something you can get from a line production. Just sitting in front of your computer will never make you very successful.
From the sabbatical year Stefan found out that “Everything we designed in the seven years following the first sabbatical, had originated in that year” Of course, it is hard to do as Sagmeister Inc. if you not are very economical independent, but we can learn a lot from their thinking.

Richard St. John — 8 secrets of success
“Why do people succeed? Is it because they’re smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.”
— This is a very short movie about how to success in your business. Lot of humor but so so true! Check it out!

Imogen Heap — “Wait It Out”
“Imogen Heap plays a powerful stripped-down version of “Wait It Out,” from her new record, Ellipse.”
— I just love her!

We had two sites shortlisted (out of 12) for this years FWA Site Of The Year. We did not win this year but finished on second place with Adidas Teamgeist, which is really fantastic! We Choose The Moon took the first place. Not my favourite site but it is nice and it’s great to see something from the lunar landing, cause I love space research.

It has been great to follow Rob Ford´s FWA since it started 2000. I remember the first version cause I had my own Designchapel presented there. Who could foresee that this little yellow site would be “The Oscars for Flash sites” a couple of years later?

I spent last week in Val d’Isère, France, where I have had a great time skiing with some friends! Everything was actually perfect; the weather, the snow, the queues, the food… everything! Ok, the afterski in Åre, and also Kittelfjäll, is much better, but who cares? I can warmly recommend both Val d’Isère and Langley Travel.

Hans Johansson, Stefan Thomson, Anna Hånell and myself…

And yeah, we crashed a lot!

This week is our first week in our new Stockholm office. We have moved from Gamla Stan, where we have been located the last four years, to Kungsholmen. These pictures are from December during the restoration which still is running. The office are hopefully finish in the beginning of March. Here are some cool pictures during the first day by Jakob Nylund.

I will post some work in progress later on. Architect Fabian Wanqvist and Charlotta Havh (North Kingdom) is helping me out with the interior design.

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?

— STORYBOARDS

As usual we start to make some very rough storyboards of our ideas. These drawings, by Anton Eriksson, are showing the prologue. As soon we got thumb up from the client we continue with rough animatics.

A couple of weeks before Cologne and the film shoot I visited Gothenburg and our 3D master Mathias Lindgren to finish the animatics. These rough movies have been an important part of the process in the last year projects when we do more and more film productions.

— DESIGN IN PROGRESS

One of the concept sketches for the environments. Here can you also see an early design of the interface. Not that far from what we ended up with, except we used a fullscreen solution at the end.

It was lot of 3D to be made so we outsourced some parts when we couldn’t manage everything inhouse. If we would outsource we could focus on other parts we thought. However, the first weeks become a nightmare when this new 3D partner, with really good references, wasn’t even close to the artistic level we where looking for, neither possible to work with. After three weeks we unfortunately had to shutdown the collaboration. When the was running out we choose two new agencies close to us in Stockholm; Fido (who would work with the environments in the movies) and Important Looking Pirates (who would make the white takeover effect in the prologue.

Work in progress from Fido, who helped us out with the city and gave us exactly the execution we wanted. We had “Sky Captain” and “Sin City” as our references which would give us the dark style we was looking for.

— FILM SHOOT IN COLOGNE

Director Ted Kjellsson from Direktörn & Fabrikörn (Skellefteå) helped us out with the film shoot in Cologne. Here above he is working with Lukas Podolski and Philipp Lahm, surrounded by a film team that made a Behind the scene movie for Adidas.

Bastian “Schweini” Schweinsteiger is having fun of Ted.

David Eriksson (North Kingdom) is going through the storyboard for the players. Ted Kjellson, David Grehn, Clemens Dopjans, Michael Ballack and the rest of the team are listening.

Two pictures I took on Lukas Podolski and Michael Ballack during the action shoots. Some quick color corrections in Lightroom.

Simon Rolfes gets some make-up.

Our client from Adidas, Clemens Dopjans, in a discussion with Ted Kjellson.

Rene Adler in action.

The days where very intense. Over 130 people where on the call-sheet. Cameraman David Grehn, Skellefteå, is focused.

“Please Mr Lahm, look more badass.”

Before the film shoot it was very important that I had a clear vision of how we would use the material. Here is an early sketch I did before the shooting and how the end result turned out.

— MAPS

Building a regular campaign and building a game campaign is two different worlds. A game campaign is so much complex. This kind of maps help you out a lot for you as an Art Director and for the team.

— THE STADIUM

A round stadium, like Colosseum, felt more unique as soccer stadium. This stadium would be the center of the whole story so it was important to make it as interesting as possible, something that would match a dark graphic novel. From the beginning we had all players running around like a regular soccer game, but it never felt right when this is actually a strategic skill game. To bring more chess feeling we placed the players on small plateaus.

Teamgeist Stadium — Final art.

— CHARACTER DESIGN

The Germans had to replay the three World Cup finals they won to get back their history; 1954 vs Hungary, 1974 vs Holland and 1990 vs Argentina. When we couldn’t use any historical persons we had to came up with something else. I wanted the opponents in the same style as our white German player so I made them with mystical faceless heads with symbols on. They all had to look the same cause of the file sizes so therefore I gave the team members the same number; the number of the year they where represented.

Some other concept drawings to test different solutions, this time from the talented Therese Larsson. In the end it felt best to keep them clean, big and rough.

For the mini games we used a classic motion capture.

— BEHIND THE SCENE MOVIES

Adidas had an own film team in Cologne during the shooting days for their Teamgeist blog.

The Prologue for Adidas Teamgeist by North Kingdom. Sound by DinahMoe. 3D by Important Looking Pirates & Fido. Post Production by Dreamfield.

The three game intros put togther into one movie.

Link: Adidas Teamgeist.

James Robinson, Project Manager. Some great picture by Jakob Nylund from the last days at Gamla Stan. North Kingdom will soon have a new Stockholm office.

Sonja Lakner, Planner.

David Eriksson, CEO/CD and myself…

One of the reason we are moving is that we have too little space.

Daniel Illic, CD.

Cool! North Kingdom is mentioned twice in Contagious issue “Most Contagious 2009″; Adidas (Teamgeist) and Swedish Armed Forces (Recruitment). I worked as Lead AD for both, which was pretty cool too!

adidas — Teamgeist
“Sporting giant adidas used a stylish online game inspire by the graphic novel genre to allow fans to explore the true value of the adidas jersey worn by the German national football team. Through Stockholmbased agency North Kingdom, the Teamgeist site placed captain Michael Ballack and star players in an augmented reality, interactive comic book. Visitors helped the team win back its identity after players became lost in ‘blank’ jerseys. The game was played 500,000 times in the first three weeks. Contagious 21.”

Swedish Armed Forces — Recruitment
“In order to recruit exactly the right calibre of candidate amongst the country’s 18-25 year-olds, the Swedish Armed Forces used a dark, complex website that sent users through a series of psychological tests assessing intelligence and motor abilities. Direct mail provided personal feedback on the online tests, resulting in a response rate of 72.6%. The average dwell time was almost nine minutes and the site (www. mil.se) received record breaking figures during the campaign. Via DDB Stockholm, with North Kingdom, Skelleftea, Teenage Engineering and Stopp, Stockholm all contributing. See Contagious 20.”

Project: Showreel for North Kingdom. My work: Concept, Art Director & Designer. Client: North Kingdom.
Information: Selected cases 2003 - 2009.

Behind the scene.
Fullscreen at Vimeo.

Since yesterday you will find me on Twitter as well. A little late, yes I know, but better late then ever! Hope to meet you there! You will also find North Kingdom here.