DCHPL/BLOG

NOTE! NEW BLOG LAUNCHED!

2009-07-28T15:57:00.009+02:00

This blog is closed since a time ago. Please visit my new Designchapel or go direct to my new blog.

Work in progress II / North Kingdom Showreel

2008-09-21T21:48:00.009+02:00

We are almost done with our showreel. As usual it is hard to find time for internal project like this but here is finally some picture from the shooting which we did in Stockholm now before the summer. I worked as Art Director and David Grehn the Film Director, who was using the amazing RED camera. The model for the project was Emelie Fjällström.

Showing some work in progress of the flower. From early concept drawings to an almost finished 3D rendering.

I and Mathias Lindgren (our 3D Artist) did make the scenography by ourselves which was really fun!

A picture on myself and our beautiful model Emelie Fjällström from Skellefteå.

New stuff from North Kingdom

2008-09-21T21:03:00.006+02:00

Two sites we released this summer:

Get That Look for JC Penny, USA. Photo by the great David LaChapelle.

Kiss Fight for Mentos.

Work in progress / North Kingdom Showreel

2008-05-19T22:44:00.004+02:00

The last weeks I have been preparing a little for our new (and only) showreel. North Kingdom will turn 5 years this summer so I thought it could be a good idea to finally collect our work.

This concept drawing (which I have made with Poser & Photoshop) is showing how the dress and the main character will look like. The dress will be made by Omoi Form in Umeå and the horn will be built by Mats at Popcore Film.

Some rough first sketches for the storyboard. I have wanted to build a little story around North Kingdom instead of just showing all projects as all other showreels look like. The story is about our North Kingdom Godness who connects to our flower.

A first animated test of the flower from our 3D artist Mathias Lindgren.

Gold both at Clio & One Show

2008-05-19T21:37:00.007+02:00

The last week our and GSP´s Get the glass where competing in awards shows around US for the last time. And it ends as it started; totally incredible. It has won every single competition it has joined. Winning awards should never be purpose of its own ofcourse, but still it is a good way to show that your company exist and it gives you more work. But most important is that the campaign actually are doing some purpose for the brand, and for Get The Glass it have done that to;

Visitors: 3,3 millions (9000 visits a day in average).
Unique visitors: 2,5 millions.
Time spent: 9 min in average.
Browsers: 63% IE, 28% Firefox

From where?
Direct: 37%
123spill.no: 170 000 visitors (5 %).
Minijuegos.com: 118 000 visitors.
FWA: 85 000 visitors.
USA dominates with 1,2 million visits, and then Norway with 250 000 visitors.

(Data from Feb, 2008.)

Clio Awards 2008 Miami Beach, 49th Annual; One Gold (Get The Glass for Animation), one Silver (Get The Glass for Brand Building) and one Bronze (The Coke Zero Game).

I had the chance to be in Miami Beach in person together with Roger Stighall and his wife Sofia which was ! In the ceremony, placed at the great Jackie Gleason Theater, I and Mike Geiger (from GSP) went up to the stage together which was something else! Great feeling to go up there! It was the first time I have actually went to an award ceremony, and I hope it won´t be the last ;)

Roger and I after the Award Show. BIG thanks to Mike Geiger and his very nice gesture when he told us to keep the statues! Thanks a lot! I hope to work with you this winter! :)

Great also to see that almost 25% on the shortlist where from Sweden.

The One Show 2008, New York; One Gold (Get The Glass for Microsites Corporate Image)

Sweden finished on third place after USA and Great Britain.

We won a Yellow & one Black Pencil!

2008-05-16T14:48:00.013+02:00

The successful fairytale continues! Absolute amazing! Last night in London our gettheglass.com campaign we did with Goodby Silverstein & Partners won two pencils at the D&AD Awards. It is the third time in history an interactive project won a Black Pencil! It is little shame thou that we did not get so much cred at the ceremony as usually when we works with bigger advertising agencies. But still totally awesome! For GSP it was the first Black Pencil every in its 25 years history! How cool is that? GSP is one of the best agencies in USA today.

It is only the third time in history an interactive project is given a Black Pencil.

Personally I´m in Miami right now for the Clio Show so I missed the possibility to be in place but I guess it must been amazing. David Eriksson and Mikael Forsgren from North Kingdom where at place thou! :)

6 Black Pencils where given this night. iPhone and iMac was two other winners of this big price.

Mikael is so happy with his new friends!

North Kingdom & The 2008 Creativity 50

2008-05-12T13:40:00.004+02:00

A couple of month ago we where included on a list I never had dreamed about.

"The list represents the biggest innovators of the year, who—through repeated demonstration of sheer brilliance or even just one spectacular feat—brought new spark to their respective fields of advertising, entertainment, marketing, technology, design and beyond."

Absolute amazing! A great award for our whole office! :D

The article of North Kingdom.
The article about Creativity 50.

North Kingdom & The Lodge

2008-04-29T13:15:00.003+02:00

Forgot I did this one.. a showreel of Skellefteå from last year for The Lodge, a creative digital group in Skellefteå for the agencies there. Mathias Lindgren did the 3D and Dreamfield helped us out with some film & postproduction.

New stuff from North Kingdom

2008-04-29T10:57:00.002+02:00

We have released some new stuff this spring from North Kingdom.

1) The Coke Zero Game.
2) A Glass and Half Full Production.
3) Toyota iQ.

Grand at New York Festivals

2008-04-25T17:16:00.006+02:00

We won both Grand in the 2008 New York Festivals (NYF) Innovative Advertising Awards and also won Gold for Best Microsite. It is amazing how much good publicity this project have given us :) Unfortunately we did not have time for this years Got Milk campaign for Got Milk, but I hope to have the chance again next winter.

Here is an article in the Swedish Resumé for the awards.

D&AD Webjury 2008

2008-04-10T11:31:00.003+02:00

This spring I had the honor to join the D&AD 2008 Website Jury in London. First two days of voting from home and then three days of voting and discussing at ExCel in London. It was a very inspiring and fun!

Over 29 other categories where on place during this D&AD Awards Judging Week, so I had a chance to check out lot of cool stuff.

Joakim Borgström, Oliver Payne, Flo Heiss and Benjamin Palmer.

Joakim Borgström (W+K) and Staffan Formsman (Forsman & Bodenfors) at St. John restaurant.

Coca-Cola Zero in progress, part II

2008-01-30T11:40:00.000+01:00

The work with Coca-Cola Zero Germany continues... We are pretty much done now with all design work and post production, which Dreamfield helps us with. The work has moves on pretty smoothly. The hard work is to keep up the high quality through everything within all deadlines. When it comes to games it is much much more then just doing a campaign site. I wonder how the final work will turns out... if people out there will like to play it or not. The site itself is pretty classic, no specific new techniques or so. The idea was basically to make an interesting gamesite with a motion picture feeling. Some more stuff from behind the scene can you find here.

Anton Eriksson helped us out with the illustrations work as the one above. The idea was to combine his illustration style with our filmed sequences to get a feeling of a classic game/movie cover.

My reference material for the cover...

Mikael Forsgren in our conference room, going through one of the CCZ challenges. The photo is taken by my iPhone.. if you think the quality is crappy ;)

Work in progress. Here are some first screens from the interface. I am still working on different design solutions here but the overall feeling is correct.

Another illustration from Anton. Each game has its own Game Cover Art where the preloading parts are placed. “Jump Of Death" is the first challenge of four.

This is kind of material Anton could receive from me when he did the cover arts.

A first idea sketches of ”Jump Of Death”. The inspiration was taken from a crazy movie we found on Youtube called “Insane Car Jump”.

One of the cars we designed for the game. As we couldn´t use any existed models (it is lot of rights when you working with big names ;) our 3D artists had to develop new ones. Fun ofcourse... takes time? Yes! Do we have time? No...

An early concept sketch of the jump effects for our 3D artist.

The fire was made with a 3D program called Fumefx.

The challange “Jump Of Death” is all about jumping over a river with style, all to impress the ladies ;)

Game Cover Art for the “Freestyler” challenge.

”Freestyler” is the challenge where you are going to impress the girls in the lockeroom with your juggling skills. This screen is without color correction.

"Powerball" is a challenge where you has to kick through a wall with his football. The game itself is pretty much a classic golf game where it is about hitting the ball as good as possible. This scene is filmed in a local garage in Skellefteå and what you see here is some sketches how the game graphic will look like.

Vanessa Lindgren was our local star from Skellefteå.

The final challenge is a gigantic pinball game where you will unlock one of the goodness to get the final key. If you have succeeded so far you will be able to win tickets to this summer EURO2008! The style itself, the Grindhouse style, is taken from Coca Cola Zero´s TV commercial with the same characters.

"Extreme Megaball". The left pictures shows how the programmer works with the game structure. The right picture show the final design which I did in Photoshop combined with elements from our 3D artist. I wanted to make a very branded game field, not as a regular pinball game with lights and color everywhere. We played with explosions and fire instead which I hope will turn out well... Right now it is not finished but soon I hope ;)

The pinball itself was going to contain three mini games, each one related to the games you will see in the earlier challenges. Here is how “Powerball” looks like in this mini version alá "Extreme Megaball".

This sequence shows how one of the scenes are made, from the first storyboard through Post Production.

Showing how one of the end scenes takes form...

Wallpaper work in progress.

We also used Antons illustrations for the Game Tutorials, where you can learn how to play each game. Above you also see the rough first sketches and then the final pieces.

Just some form exploration of game graphic/icons.

Some more picture I took from the filmdays.

Some photos by Thomas Westermark. You can see David Grehn and Ted Kjellson is discussing the filmning and how strange it sometimes can be living up in north; the scene should look like a summer night but suddenly it starts to snow...

Here can you see Mikael Forsgren (North Kingdom) giving instructions to Joseph before his juggling scene, and how happy Clemens Dopjans from CCZ Germany was to be in Skellefteå!!

Rerform & Revolution

2008-01-29T17:50:00.000+01:00

Andreas Philström(AD, North Kingdom) and I have just launched a design inspiration blog called Reform and Revolution with authors like Rob Ford (FWA), Chris Hewitt (dstrukt), Peter Jaworowski (The Hejz) among others. Here we will post and discuss stuff that inspire us :)

FWA Site Of The Year + People Choice Award 07

2008-01-15T17:42:00.000+01:00

Shit! We did it again :D We won x 2!!

FWA Site Of The Year
FWA People Choice Award

"This is only the second time in FWA's history that the same site has won
both the SOTY and PCA awards, so huge congratulations!" - Rob Ford, The FWA

Last time we won the double was with our Vodafone Future Vision back in 2004. Amazing! I think I can quit now ;)

1 Year Long Global Competition
12+ million site visits
365 Site Of The Day Winners
12 Site Of The Month Finalists
1 International Public Vote
82872 votes cast
1 People Choice Award Winner

Comment from David Eriksson, CEO North Kingdom:

Holy Cow!

Getting the FWA PCA is from our view the greatest prize you can win. We have
always tried to put the users in the first room and this is a proof that we
have succeeded

It is also a recognition to the whole North Kingdom Team and a reward for
all the love and passion we put into our work.

Looking forward we will struggle to keep pushing the frontier of digital
media and make ourselves worthy of this award!

Here is a Swedish article as well by IDG.

New Art Director at North Kingdom Sthlm

2008-01-11T18:57:00.000+01:00

Andreas Philström started to work for us for couple of months ago,located in our Stockholm office at Gamla Stan. He has updated his great portfolio Suprb.08. Cool work!

.net Awards 07 - Interactive Site of the Year

2008-01-09T18:32:00.000+01:00

"The 10th annual .net awards are upon us. Who’s won, who’s lost, who’s the hottest property on the internet?"
North Kigndom was given the Interactive Site of the Year by the international .net magazine.

The award was again for our "Get the Glass" campaign! Awesome! :) Sometimes it is easy to forget all late hours you have spent in a project. If it was worth it? Well, that is another question... ;)

But still, it is always great to get recognition like that! Thank you .net!

North Kingdom is looking for talented people

2008-01-07T22:41:00.000+01:00

As I am looking to re-locate to our North Kingdom Stockholm or Gothenburg office shortly, we need to find someone that can take my Art Director position and responsibility at our northern head quarter, where this photo is from. This is our good looking kitchen. There are also some other openings that might be of interest to you like Creative, Flash Developer, Information Architect, Production Manager and Account Manager..

Check here…

"We are looking for a lead Art Director to be one of the driving forces as we strive for creating world-class digital branding experiences for our clients. It is of greatest importance that you have a strong portfolio and love to be challenged by our creative team as well as our International clients."

Some of our team in Skellefteå... I'm the glad one in the middle with hat.

Build Your IQ, Episode 2 in progress

2008-01-07T22:29:00.000+01:00

Right now our Stockholm office is working with the next episode for Toyota Europe´s project Build Your IQ. The filming was made here in Skellefteå at Film i Västerbottens green screen studio.

Our cute model, Matilda Månsdotter, from Stockholmsgruppen.

David Grehn (cameraman) is checking out the light and Daniel Illic (Creative Director, North Kingdom) wonders what he will eat for dinner.

North Kingdom goes Svansele

2007-12-16T23:03:00.000+01:00

This weekend we went to Svansele Wilderness Camp, 60km from Skellefteå, with the whole team of North Kingdom and spent one night out in nowhere. We had no electricity, no running water and definitely no internet ;) but lot of fun!

Henrik, who was our guide and great chef, in front of David Eriksson and Daniel Illic.

Here did we spent the night...

Some of the team around the fire, drinking coffee with vodka ofcourse!

After a great dinner it was time for bathing! It was an awesome evening with cloud free sky and minus 20C.

Henrik Carlsson, Isak Wiström & Elisabet Halming in one of the three hot tubs!

Me riding down on the ice-slide.

Mattias Lindgren during the great reindeer dinner inside our cottage.

Roger Stighäll and Daniel Illic happy to survive the outdoor ice-sliding.

Coca_Cola Zero in progress, part I

2007-12-02T22:05:00.000+01:00

For two weeks ago we had a big film week here in Skellefteå for an upcoming internet campaign for Coca-Cola Zero where I working as Art Director & Lead Designer. From Berlin we had Clemens Dopjans among others from CCZ Germany. I can not tell to much of the project yet but it includes the actors from the Coca-Cola Zero TV commercial.

Ted Kjellson from Direktör´n & Fabrikörn (Skellefteå) was hired as a Film Director for the project. I took some photos from the filmdays for our “Behind the Scene” section, and this is one of my favourites, showing Ted who just have instructed the girls in the “Lockerroom” scene how to act.

For the photos I have used my Canon 20D. The copy on the picture is nothing final, just something I have played with for now.

The scenography was excellent made by the team. The picture here above is showing my ugly rough sketch of the locker room turns out to be the environment above that one. That is cool :)

One of the days (or nights) we filmed in the garage of the “Brinken” building in Skellefteå. We had a cool car and good looking girls so what could go wrong? Would maybe be the timing in that case... We started to film around 10 PM and we where done around 4 AM. The car we used at the shoot was a Chevelle Malibu 1972. Awesome car!!

Joseph who is playing Tim, and who do not have a driving licence, enjoying his time in the car.

Ted is talking with Lotta and Vannessa in the background. Cassandra is focusing on her lines.

The idea I had of the girls dresses was to made something unique, clean and sophisticated but still feel as a soccer dress. I wanted to have some sort of a 60s - 70s feeling of the dress. The dresses were sewed by Helena from Umeå.

Early sketches of the cars which will appear in the game. We could not use any existing models so our 3D artists Daniel Wallström and Mattias Lindgren made up some new ones.

Some more pictures I took from the night in the garage. The happy guy on the wheelchair is David Grehn, our Camera man. In that scene we wanted a close up on Tim running. Old school solution always works :)

Some drawings from Anton Eriksson which we used for the storyboard.

Here is a shoot on Joseph from the scene you could see in Anton´s drawing. In the picture you can also see David Grehn and Thomas Westermark (Dreamfield).

Here is actually two pictures of me taken by David Eriksson and his Nokia mobile. Some days are more tough then others ;)

LIA Gold x 2

2007-12-01T23:37:00.000+01:00

Together with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners we won two Golds Statuettes, at London International Awards with our Get the Glass project. What a year :)

Awards is not everything in the world but still, it is little sad that small creative agencies like ours never get the cred as we should have...

We also had a finalist with Vodafone Journey! Not bad either :)

New serie of nuns in progress

2007-11-29T22:33:00.001+01:00

Why does time go so fast? I had totally forgot that I started to do some new nun illustrations last winter :/ Here is one of them, and absolute not finished. Based on a photography I have published here earlier. However, I hope to get some time later on to finish these. I have been experiment with some new techniques which includes Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter. However, I love doing this kind of job and now I will not forget these pictures ;)

North Kingdom goes fashion

2007-11-29T18:15:00.000+01:00

This is a first glimps on our new fashion brand MINK / Made in North Kingdom where I have drawn the logotype in Illustrator. The hangtags (on the right side) is for the t-shirts and will be printed on canvas. The idea about MINK is for now to focus on designed prints, but we have lot of fun ideas for this in the future.

Logotype work in progress...

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 :)

North Kingdom interviewed by Computer Arts

2007-11-29T18:09:00.000+01:00

"The tiny city of Skellefteå in the extreme north of Sweden is an unlikely place to find one of the world’s foremost web design agencies, and yet it is the spiritual home for the award-winning North Kingdom."

Cool interview by Computer Arts. Read more here; The online version.

Designchapel II in progress, part 2

2007-10-28T22:20:00.000+01:00

I finished another background for DCHPL-2 this weekend. The illustration is painted in Photoshop, 9000 x 6300 px. My plan was to finish these in Painter but I have had to much problem with the sizes there so it will only be Photoshop work.

I have figured out that I work to much on small details. Details which you probably never will see in the final version on the web later on. However, it is fun to paint but I have to keep in mind that I should finish this project soon so I can move on with other fun stuff :)

Work in progress.

"The Hottest Digital Agencies Around"

2007-10-24T16:38:00.000+02:00

Wow! Advertising Age has listed North Kingdom as one of the "The Hottest Digital Agencies Around".

"Despite waves of consolidation across the ad-agency business, there remains a healthy bunch of independent digital shops doing everything from search optimization to building web interfaces to simply doing damn good creative. Some of these shops are near-acquisitions for digital-hungry giants; others are adamantly opposed to becoming part of something larger, hanging onto the romantic notion of David vs. Goliath."

I am very honored! And I can tell you that we are not Goliath! ;)

Here is a note about it in the Swedish press: Resumé

Toyota Europe, Build Your IQ (Episode 1)

2007-10-24T16:09:00.001+02:00

We from North Kingdom is for the moment working with a microsite for Toyota Europe called Build Your IQ. This is Episode 1 of 3. I have not been so much involved myself in this project (mostly very early concept work) but it is great to follow the process. This is our fourth project for Toyota.

The car itself has a very unique design. It is a small, very smart, city car with the name IQ. It is only 2,98 m long.

The room was built and filmed in Skellefteå.

Jakob Nylund (Art Director, North Kingdom), Rudy Boeman (Toyota Europe), Sonja Lakner (Project Manager, North Kingdom) and Daniel Ilic (Creative Director, North Kingdom).

Winner at Flashforward Film Festival

2007-09-20T18:16:00.000+02:00

North Kingdom and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners won yesterday with Get The Glass at the seventeenth Flashforward Film Festival awards ceremony.

Lovely :)

North Kingdom at Hyper Island

2007-09-05T12:01:00.000+02:00

We from North Kingdom will take care of one module at Hyper Island this winter. It is for there 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!

I had nothing to do last night so I did this illustration which I will use for a testprint for an internal book project.

Bak09 Interview

2007-09-01T22:11:00.000+02:00

Here is some of the pages from the my interview in the last issue of Bak09 by Ozan Karakoç. Thanks a lot of the opportunity :) Bak is a great inspiration magazine so check it out!

Blaugallery III

2007-09-01T21:43:00.001+02:00

I have done a new profile for my site Blaugallery.com which will have its third edition released this autumn. The new Blaugallery will have more focus on exclusivity with few artists, bigger frames and smaller limited editions.

The logo is made with pen on paper. Then I scanned it and finished it in Illustrator.

Designchapel II in progress

2007-08-28T13:43:00.000+02:00

Sketches of the three dresses made for Designchapel II. This was my first sketch made in Painter.

The last two-three years I have been working on a new portfolio, a new Designchapel. Starting up a new own company like North Kingdom (2003) have ofcourse taken almost all my time, but I think it is important to have some kind of side project where you can express your creativity, free from clients feedback, and where you can experiment with new medias and new ideas. Designchapel II have been a long experiment time for me where I have in the first step focused on the nuns dresses and learning to paint in Photoshop and Painter which will be an important part of my backgrounds.

Hantverksutbildningen at Balder, Skellefteå, helped me to made the dresses. Big thanks to Charlotta Havh who both was my model and a helping link between sketches and textiles and big thanks to Harriett Lundsten, their excellent teacher. I hope we can do more stuff together in the future :)

Håkan Moberg, who is a great photographer in Stockholm, took care of the photoshooting. The shooting was made in Stockholm, November 2006. Here is just some shoots showing the different dresses and how they was going to be used.

A photo of Charlotta who is sitting and designing the cool green neckless.

The first background is almost ready. It is first made in Sketch Up and then I have paint in in Photoshop. Some final touches will be made in Painter.

Father Robot will be one of the characters Designchapel II. I did the first sketch in Flash (the one to the left) and then Mathias Lindgren built it up in 3D Studio Max.

Ofcourse we will see a nun who has the control over Father Robot. The photo is by Håkan Moberg and it is not a final retouch.

Some early concept sketches of how I wanted some 3D/paint attributes around the models. Made in Illustrator.

Some really early sketches of the coat. The final version turned out pretty close to the one in the middle though.

Painting for my sis

2007-07-28T01:55:00.001+02:00

A painting for my little sister Rebecca. Sorry it took so long time ;) It is basically from an illustration I did back in 2001.

Gouache on canvas. Size 140 x 110 cm.

The rough drawing from 2001 made from a scanned ink drawing which I fixed in Freehand.

My first sketch on the painting.

North Kingdom Summer 2007

2007-07-28T00:16:00.000+02:00

For the third year in row we have our North Kingdom days up in Skellefteå just before our summer vacation. It is three days of education and internal discussion about how we can improve ourselves as a team.

Here is David Eriksson speaking about our visions in Rogers parents summer cottage just outside Skellefteå.

On the evening we had some barbecue and beer in the midnight sun.

Hall of Fame

2007-07-27T17:51:00.000+02:00

Amazing!!! My company has been chosen to FWA Hall of Fame! I am very proud of all our employees! You guys are the best!!!

Text from the website;

"North Kingdom is the first company to ever have won both a Site Of The Year award and a People's Choice Award. The fact that they made this, so far, unique achievement is even greater seeing that they won both in the same year for their pioneering Vodafone Future Vision site. North Kingdom is one of the very few agencies who consistently produce the most creative and progressive websites and is hailed as one of the world's best by their industry peers as well. - Rob Ford, FWA Founder.

Wow! Otroligt roligt! We don´t know what to say up here! We are very glad and very honored to be mentioned at the FWA Hall of Fame! It means a lot for us! We are a small agency but still fighting with the big bulls! Nothing is impossible in this branch! - Robert Lindström, Art & Design Director / Co-Founder, North Kingdom"

Great results for Get the Glass

2007-07-27T17:31:00.000+02:00

They did a pretty nice article about Get the glass at Digital Arts from UK. They have som stuff online here.

When we spoke at OFFF in Barcelona we showed these results for Get the Glass campaign (6 weeks after launch);

*Approx 6 million visitors.
*Approx 650 000 visitors has reached the Glass at Fort Fridge (takes around 15-30 minutes of playing).
*First week we gave away 4000 glasses to users that finished the game (only in US).
*Worldwide press in New York Times and Metro among others.
*The California Milk Processor Board has already sold 10 million more gallons of milk than it did the previous year.

Good result is always fun cause then you have a happy client ;)

Two Faced

2007-07-16T13:35:00.000+02:00

Two Faced was a book project I was invited to last year. At WIWP site you can read that the book "approached a large variety of creative people ranging from Toy Designers to Art Directors, Photographers to illustrators, Musicians to Designers. The Artists were paired off and given the task of creating a portrait of the person they had been teamed with, using their own style for which they have become renowned."

I was teamed together with the talented designgroup Vasava from Barcelona. You can see their portrait of me here above.

This is a print of my work of Vasava I did from my site Blaugallery for a local café.

The final result. This picture is from my portfolio Designchapel.

Alternative coloring I liked pretty much...

Work in progress... I draw all the lines in Photoshop (I like the speed better there) for coloring it in Illustrator. Unfortunately I did to many nodes for the computer to handle so I sat 3 hours just taking away stuff I hoped I wouldn´t need :/

DesignChapel at Veerle´s Blog

2007-06-25T22:45:00.000+02:00

I almost forgot that I was interviewed by Veerle´s Blog this spring. It is really great to hear that I have inspired people out there :)

One of my illustrations from DesignChapel 2002.

Gold at Cannes Cyber Lion 2007

2007-06-25T22:31:00.000+02:00

YES! We at North Kingdom won gold at Cannes this year as well! Two years in a row! Get the Glass won a Cyber Gold Lion at Cannes. Great news! On the picture it is a glad Roger Stighäll (my colleague I started North Kingdom with). Too bad that I didn´t went to the festival this year but I will definitely go next year! Thanks Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for a good collaboration!

Staffan Lamm, who went down with Roger, have his thoughts about Cannes here.

Sad that we didn´t get more cred though :/

Beckmans inspire!

2007-06-25T22:10:00.000+02:00

I and Kenny Lindström went to the final exhibitions of Stockholm design schools this spring. We visited Forsbergs, Beckmans, Berghs and Konstfack.

It was very inspiring and it was also very surprising to see how big different it was between the quality of the four exhibitions. Beckmans was in my eyes the absolute top school this spring! Both the exhibition itself and the work of the students was very professional!

Sarah Törnqvist from Beckmans Fashion School.

OFFF, Barcelona 2007

2007-05-24T21:02:00.000+02:00

Jorge, me & David talking about Get the Glass project.

WOW! What a town! Lovely Barcelona! We took a weekend off the whole company (North Kingdom) and went to Barcelona to get some inspiration! Me and David Eriksson also did some speaking at the OFFF conference which took place the same weekend. We was invited to OFFF together with Jorge Calleja who we did the Get the Glass project with (when he was working for Goodby). Our lesson was about just that project! We had a great time! Met lot of cool people. Finally I had a chance to met Scott Hansen who I have know through email during a couple of years (who´s work I have at Blaugallery).

Charlotta Havh, Scott Hansen & Jorge Calleja.

Charlotta (Chalet) had her work from 2Faces at their exhibition area from IdN. The exhibition and the book was awesome! Good work IdN!

FITC, Flash in the Can 2007

2007-05-24T20:21:00.000+02:00

My company North Kingdom was invited to Toronto and FITC 2007 this year (Flash in the Can), so myself and Staffan Lamm visited this beautiful town in Canada. We where very impressed how professional arranged this Flash festival was! Everything was located in Hilton Hotel. Great job by Shawn Pucknell among others (he has btw taken the photo from the poker with me in the foreground). We had the last lesson and we could not believe our eyes when over 1000 came to hear about what we had to say. We talked about North Kingdom projects; "How is a small company like North Kingdom, located in the north part of Sweden, thinking and working so leading global brands/agencies would like to work with them? North Kingdom will go through some recent projects from sketches and ideas to final production."

Here is my presentation of myself btw.

And here is a short review from Ping Mag from Japan.

d-mode

2007-04-09T12:45:00.000+02:00

This is just a snapshoot from my livingroom I took this morning. I have printed the illustration I did for D-Mode from my Blaugallery.com project. Size 160 x 103 cm. The chair is redesigned by Charlotta Havh which I got as a present.

d-mode magazine from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Some other prints I have done lately. Photo from my office.

MoMa / Jeff Wall

2007-04-09T12:19:00.000+02:00

I saw Jeff Wall´s exhibition at MoMa, New York. I was very impressed by his work. It is hard though to get it on his website when the exhibition shows his pictures in a really big format with backlit. Nice done!

I was disappointed by the Comic Abstraction exhibition where I had expected more.

Art Director Club, 86th Annual Awards Jury

2007-04-09T10:52:00.000+02:00

I did get the honor to join the judge at the Art Director Club as one of 26 in New York this year. It was a great opportunity to see some god work and met colleagues from other companies. ADC is actually the oldest competition of advertising art in the world. Founded in New York in 1920.

Paul Lavoie,ADC President; "The ADC’s most important mission is to inspire not only this generation of practitioners but also the next, which it has been doing for 85 years now. I’m proud to be part of this organization.”

Mauro Gatti from Mutado and The Brainbox with Paul Davis wife who is working for ADC.

The making of "Get The Glass"

2007-04-08T23:03:00.000+02:00

Here is some small stuff from when we at North Kingdom made "Get the Glass" for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Fransisco, US. Their 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 :)

This is the sketch we got from Goodby, showing the concept idea they come up with. They told us about a story with this family that had become criminal cause the lack of milk...

First we started to figure out how this island would work. The left map is the first rough one I did in Photoshop. The one to the right is made later by Ted Kjellson who would be in charge of the building.

Next step was to build a rough island in 3D so we knew exactly how all the areas would look like, and so we could set camera angles and discuss solution with Goodby. The picture is showing how I have made marks for the our 3D artists what we should change etc.

Meanwhile Ted and his team started to work on the model I made a first rough interface sketch.

We also started to look how the characters would look like. Anton Eriksson made some early concept sketches before we started to build them in 3D.

Our 3D guys also had the pleasure to build some really cool vehicles. When the TV ads was not ready at this point we did not have so much to go after... but maybe that was for all good ;)

The only time I was worried during the week we did the model building was when we got a call from our client; "The castle is no more a castle..." This was three days before the filmday (which we could not move). Our client had at this point get footage of how the "castle" would look at in the TV ads. However, the new style turns out to be much better, it gave the whole island a totally new character. I felt bad for Ted though...

One day before filmday and it starts to look very interesting... Still, it was lot of magic going on the last night...

The sky did I paint in Photoshop. One of my first Photoshop paintings.

Ing-Marie Lindström

2007-04-07T11:03:00.000+02:00

My mum could as well! This picture where at my uncle Allan's website under the guest section, taken by my mum Ing-Marie from the 50´s.

Allan Lundström, my uncle & my guru

2007-04-07T10:25:00.000+02:00

Allan was a lovely friend, a big expert and the one I always looked up to! He was absolute brilliant within photography, painting, sculpturing and poetry. He was a perfectionist and could talk about a grey scale in a picture for hours. Allan died the summer of 2005, only 58 years old. A very big tragedy for us all. Your work will always be a big part of our lives! We will always remember you!

Allan Lundström, 46.12.08 - 05.07.16

Get the Glass (Got Milk?) launched

2007-04-05T18:32:00.000+02:00

It was lot of hard work but now we have launched the new Got Milk? campaign site! Thank God! Thanks to Dreamfield, Ted, NK Team, Goodby among others!
Check it out here: US Server or European Demo server

Goodby in Skellefteå

2007-04-05T18:09:00.000+02:00

During the last period of making Get the Glass we had Jorge Calleja and Paul Charney over for a week from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Lot of work but we had time to have some fun as well :) They thought we had a pretty cold climat though...

Two Faced

2007-01-26T11:07:00.000+01:00

TWO FACED is an illustration project I was part of last summer. The book will soon release and this week an exhibition at the Agnes b Librairie Galley, Hong Kon, starts. Over 100 unique portraits produced exclusively for this project where both me and Charlotta Havh, North Kingdom, invited.

Filmday of the model

2007-01-25T22:45:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was the big film day. Wow, Ted & co had made their job so well! I was really happy of the result! The new fort up in the mountains end up to be the coolest part toghether with the small city behind. Will be great to start working with the material! The result will be a campaing for "Got Milk?" from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Thanks a lot all guys who helped us out with it!

Model building for "Got Milk?"

2007-01-21T17:35:00.000+01:00

Right now we at North Kingdom are building a miniature landscape for another "Got Milk?" campaign from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (San Fransico). The result will be a online game where we will combine filmed material with 3D graphic. Ted Kjellson in the red t-shirt is helping us with this task here in Skellefteå. This picture is showing status 6 days before film day.

Some really early pictures from the model building. All photos are made by myself, when I was trying to get our client in San Fransisco to understand what we where doing ;)

ADAPT 06 & Journée Grafika, Montreal

2007-01-15T20:20:00.000+01:00

I visited ADAPT 06 in Montreal this autumn with some of the world leading international digital art masters. I had the change to see some of Holywood´s best digital artists showcase the techniques behind their works in 2D & 3D.
The main reason of why I was in Montreal that week was becuase I where speaker at Journée Grafika, a web/design conference. At the conference we met Sid Lee (also speakers) who invited us to there office. They are the guys behind the magnificent MGM Grand site. Cloudraker was another nice agency we met and visited.

At ADAPT.06 I met a legend; my new topp favourite artist; Syd Maed! He has been designing futuristic concepts for corporations and the movies (including Blade Runner, Tron and Mission Impossible 3) since the '60s. He is making "retro future" in a way I have not seen anywhere else, and he does not use the computer!

Another great artist I had the chance to see was Mark Goerner! Stunning work from one who has make concept drawings for Minority Report, X-Men 2 and Superman Returns. Mark is currently working on James Cameron´s Battle Angel to be released in 2009.

Thierry Doizon gave a lecture in speed painting and I can just say "WOW!". His team was demonstrating the use of custom brushes and team work. Just f***ing amazing what they could make by drawing for 1,5 hour.

Some other really great artists I had the chance to see; Dylan Cole, Christian Lorenz Scheurer, James Clyne and Sebastien Larroude.

Father Robot

2007-01-13T21:50:00.000+01:00

A first concept drawing of Father Robot. A priest robot for next version of DesignChapel which I hopefully will launch during 2007.

För att hästen ger allt

2007-01-13T21:38:00.000+01:00

Rebranding of the V75, by my team at North Kingdom and the swedish agency Åkestam Holst. Great solution of how a filmed ad can be used on the net!