Other

SUMMER DRAWINGS

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Sometimes I need a break and get away from the modelling and animation work on the computer – and one of my favorite activities during this time is to draw. I constantly find inspiration in nature – especially in imperfection – a dead animal, a piece of bark from a tree, an old tree. This is a little selection of some of my drawings from the last month or two:

Hand drawing
Events

IDA RESPOND FESTIVAL

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Earth is calling – please RESPOND. I have just attended the Respond-festival (#respondfestival) arranged by IDA (Ingeniørforeningen) – a three-day festival/conference dedicated at discussing and showing how technology can help to overcome some of the future challenges of the earth (climate changes, loss of biodiversity, food production and more). It was truly amazing and I felt much more positive after seeing that many problems actually CAN be solved if we just use our creative, intellectual and cooperative skills. Looking forward to next year! And… there was free ice cream!

New animations

Sperm Whale Brain

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Next in my series of spectacular brains was the Sperm Whale (or the nicer name KASKELOT, as its name is in danish and swedish). This intelligent predator has the largest brain of all species on earth. Not even the blue whale, which is the largest species on earth, can beat it (this is due to the fact that the sperm whale is a flock-living predator, whereas the blue whale is a baleen, solitary whale).

New animations

The Hammerhead Shark

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I have started a series of animations named “Spectacular brains of the vertebrates”! This will show vertebrate brains that are spectacular in different ways. For instance in shape, size, enlarged regions, density, function…. The first animal in this series was a hammerhead shark, which has a very strangely shaped brain due to its very odd looking head.


News

BLENDER 2.80

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WOW! I have just downloaded the Blender 2.80 beta. And I really like it! A lot has changed since the version 2.79, now I have to get used to left-clicking on the mouse for selection, just as I was getting to really like the rigth-clicking. But there are so many new nice features and I can’t wait to play more with it. My next project is to model many different brains from the animal kingdom (from worms up to humans) and try to animate the evolution of the brain throughout millions of years. I am rigth now doing some research on brains and I am amazed by the many fantastic facts about the morphology and the function of brains, that I was not aware of. For instance the elephant (has a very large cerebellum to be able to control its trunk), the dolphin (has a very large cerebrum), the echidna (has a surprisingly large prefrontal cortex), the hammerhead shark (has a rather large brain with a very funny shape) and the clever birds like ravens and parrots (very compact in neurons) have really interesting brains. And I could go on…

News

BLENDER 2.80 beta

Posted on

WOW! I have just downloaded the Blender 2.80 beta. And I really like it! A lot has changed since the version 2.79, now I have to get used to left-clicking on the mouse for selection, just as I was getting to really like the rigth-clicking. But there are so many new nice features and I can’t wait to play more with it. My next project is to model many different brains from the animal kingdom (from worms up to humans) and try to animate the evolution of the brain throughout millions of years. I am rigth now doing some research on brains and I am amazed by the many fantastic facts about the morphology and the function of brains, that I was not aware of. For instance the elephant (has a very large cerebellum to be able to control its trunk), the dolphin (has a very large cerebrum), the echidna (has a surprisingly large prefrontal cortex), the hammerhead shark (has a rather large brain with a very funny shape) and the clever birds like ravens and parrots (very compact in neurons) have really interesting brains. And I could go on…

Events

Blender Conference 2018 in Amsterdam

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I have just attended the Blender 2018 conference in beautiful Amsterdam, which was very inspiring and motivating! But also; I learned that I still have a LOT to learn.

My most important take-home-messages are:

1) Computer Graphics (CG) based animation and illustration is – despite much technical complexity – still a very creative process, so it makes a lot of sense for me to still also spend time “offline” doing sketches and paintings. And the messages from the old Disney-animation teams in “The Illusion of Life” are still going strong. A computer can help, but it won’t draw for you!

2) I need to learn how to script in Python! I have already started this….but I need to spend more time on it.

3) Open Source rules! Don’t go pro! PRO means PRO-prietary, not PRO-fessional!

4) Like with drawing – spend more time observing! Good reference material is gold, especially real pictures. Other people’s illustrations and animations can be an inspiration, but don’t trust that the way that something in biology is typically depicted is how it really looks. A good example of this is the SYNAPSE, where the typical way of illustrations is not overlapping with the truth.