Arne Kaupang:
My initial goal was to make a funny little short for all ages. I tend to like and remember best the short humorous animations myself, so that's what I wanted to have a go at. "For The Birds" by Pixar is my all-time favorite but coming up with such a simple and effective story is incredibly hard!

I had about 10-15 very different ideas that came out of a brainstorming process where I tossed around different concepts with my wife. She was a great sparring partner in that regard. To get ideas to grow and spawn you need someone to throw them back and forth with. 

From those pretty loose ideas I narrowed it down to 5 which I developed a little more and those I pitched to a lot of my friends, colleagues, mentors and classmates. Humor is a very subjective thing and the two ideas that were best liked from the group I continued to explore and develop even more. Luckily I liked those the best too!

Finally it narrowed down to the weightlifter story, mostly because I thought it appealed to me and would be a very fun movie to make, and it wasn't too complex and it should be doable within the timeframe available. I had no special interest in weightlifting to start with, but I know a guy who used compete on a national level. That was what spawned the idea to begin with.

Arne Kaupang:
That making shorts take a lot of time! Much longer than you think. The school recommends a max 30 second limit in 3 months but my short stretched out to almost a minute of animation. And in order to get things refined and polished in that time, I had to be very disciplined and focused. I set up a strict production plan and followed it rigorously. Luckily I was able to take some time off work to only concentrate on my film, but I still felt I ran out of time in the end. As they say, animation is never finished. Only abandoned. You get out what you put in.

Another important thing is to be open to criticism. It is easy to fall in love with your story and ideas, but sometimes they don't work as intended, and others may see it better than you. I altered my story and tried different things several times due to feedback from my peers, mentors and friends. And it all worked out for the best.

Arne Kaupang:
I spent 12 weeks on developing the story ideas, animatics, layout and modeling the props. Then I worked 12 weeks night and day on the animation. It was very intense. After that it just sat on my harddrive for a couple of months. I needed a break, mentally and physically and it did me good! It is sometimes necessary to live a little too, and not being stuck in front of the screen ALL the time. Later I revisited a few shots and gave them some more polish from feedback I got after the film was "finished". 

Finally during a two-month period I textured, lit and rendered the film during evenings after work. This took much more time than I originally had planned! I quickly discovered that you can't put up a light rig and expect it to work on all the shots. All the separate shots had to be lit individually and it was very time consuming. The final fun part was to make all the sound effects and voices, and the music was bought from a music publishing company.

Arne Kaupang:
I planned a lot! And it was essential in making me complete the film at all. Had I not planned I'd probably be stuck with the film for years, and would maybe not complete it at all. Making the animatics and layout was extremely helpful to see how things work in context, getting timing on animation and editing. It was so much easier to play with drawings and rough animation, and it gave me a very clear roadmap before I even had started on the animation. Once my animatics and layout were done, I knew almost exactly how to approach the shots and get it going inside Maya.

I had to do a lot of research as I had no clue about professional weightlifting. Luckily the World Weightlifting Championships were broadcast on TV just a few weeks after I had started my project, and I taped about 10 hours (!) of weightlifting which I studied in every detail over and over again. How the stage was set up, how they walk, approach the bar, mannerisms, techniques etc. 

I struggled a lot on the shot when he is lifting, so I brought some of the reference video into my computer where I frame by framed it, drew out poses on paper and studied every bodypart and timing in detail. After that my animation worked a ton better! Research and planning is your friend. I did some cheating in my final film, but I think you need to be a weightlifter to spot that one... lol

Arne Kaupang:
The story pitch was my original presentation of my idea to my mentor and classmates. They gave me a lot of feedback which I again put into the revised story for the animatic.

I chose to make a very simple animated storyboard/animatic in After Effects, were I animated my simple drawings in order to get more a feeling of the timing of the shots to see how it all worked. At first I just put in still images, but I found it hard to read. Once I added a few more drawings and animated them a little, it all clicked.

Layout is where I first moved into 3D and started placing props and characters in the shots. To get a basic feeling of camera composition and movement.

In rough animation I started blocking out the shots in more detail, to get the general timing of the animation and trying out different acting choices. This again laid the foundation for the refining and polishing passes, and the final film.

When I now compare the different planning stages to the final film, they are really quite close. There has been a lot of changes of course, that's the point, and it helped me stay on track and keep a very clear vision through the whole process.

Arne Kaupang:
There were a couple of shots were I really struggled a lot. Couldn't get the movements to look and feel right and it plain looked unnatural. It wasn't until I put myself in the situation, filmed reference of myself doing it, analyzed it and drew thumbnails, I solved it. What I had tried to animate wasn't a very natural way of doing it, but the reference I did helped me solve it. I wasted several days on trying to get it to look right, but if I only had filmed the reference earlier I had saved a lot of time. So if in doubt, film reference of it!

Arne Kaupang:
I probably wouldn't have been able to do it without Animation Mentor! Well maybe, but it would have looked like crap and taken forever... lol! I thought maybe I had some knowledge about animation before, but I know now that I just didn't have a clue. As I had no character animation experience at all prior to starting at the school, I have learnt the basic animation foundations and kept building new knowledge on top of those. It has been the best learning experience I have ever had and I am extremely grateful! And I even managed to do it at the same time as I had a full time job. Except for the last few months when I took some time off to finish my film.

It has been an extremely tough but fun ride. My mentors have been awesome (thanks Kyle, Pepe, Sean, Fredrik, Michal and Michelle) and my peers and the global community has been very supportive and inspirational. The animation fire in me has truly been lit! And the fact that I am now moving to London to start working as a professional character animator on Hollywood blockbusters is something that truly was a distant dream just a couple of years ago! It takes a lot of hard work, but Animation Mentor makes it all possible. Thank you! :-)