Dane Jorgen Klubien has lived in two parallel career worlds going back to the 1970's: one as an animator and story man for studios such as Disney and Pixar, the other as a Danish pop star. It's a safe bet to say he is the only one in the world with that distinction. He took a little time out to talk to FLIP.
FLIP: Can you tell us about your music career?
Jorgen: I began playing the drums in bands in Copenhagen as a boy in the early 1970's. We were four pals from school and we played high schools dances, etc . I always thought of myself as an artist who would become a fine artist with playing music for fun on the side.
I enrolled in the Danish Design school at 17, and was then invited to attend CalArts two years later. My music career was put on hold until I returned to Denmark after having assisted Glen Keane, Jerry Rees, and Randy Cartwright on The Fox and The Hound for a year. Back in Denmark I began writing songs with friends and soon thereafter I was in another band, this time as the front man and lead singer. We had a few hits in the mid 80's in Denmark and we have continued to play for fun every so often.
I returned to the US in 1982 to work on a title sequence for the show Animation Around The World, one of the first shows on the newly formed Disney Channel. It was produced by my friend and classmate from CalArts, Rick Heinrichs. He's been a great supporter of me throughout the years, and has pulled me unto such great productions as The Nightmare Before Christmas and lately, Frankenweenie.
Toaster Crew in Taipei, 1986. From left: Joe Ranft, Sanvy from Cuckoo's Nest, Steve Moore, Randy Cartwright, Brian McEntee, Jerry Rees, Chuck Richardson. Photo by Rebecca Rees
In January of 1986, eleven Americans travelled to Taiwan to work on The Brave Little Toaster. There was Jerry and Rebecca Rees, Chuck Richardson, Brian McEntee, Kevin Lima, Tanya Wilson, Chris Wahl, Ann Telnaes, Randy Cartwright, Joe Ranft, and 23 year-old me. The studio was called Cuckoo's Nest, a cartoon factory which had been churning out miles of Saturday morning cartoons for Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears. The studio's owner, James Wang, paid to bring out about half of the American crew to shore up his talent pool. Toaster raised the bar for his studio in every capacity. Just compare Cuckoo's Nest productions such as The Smurfs to Toaster to get an idea of how far they were pushed.
I recently found a letter I wrote to my parents from Taiwan, which unearthed some forgotten memories. So if you ever wondered what it was like to make a great American cartoon in the land of Chiang Kai-shek, read on!
TRON dropped audiences into a glowing realm of Bits, Programs, Systems and
Game Grids – the unseen computer world manipulated by its Users. As one of
the Users on the original crew I still feel that glow in memories that refuse to fade.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -"Big AL" Einstein
Last month, I was shown this video by my old pal Jerry Rees.
My head fell off. A week later, I saw this one, below (skip to about 1:30 to get to the interesting stuff).
Now, I’ve been around long enough to say I’ve been around long enough.And for the first time in years I saw something animated that really blew my mind.How do they do it? Jerry explains “Augmented Reality” and his work with AMUSME, a start-up new-tech company he has been working with as Lead Creative.
Jerry Rees:
"Augmented Reality (AR) is a process that allows web cams and/or smart mobile devices to show you a live image of what is actually there (the Reality part), plus an added element that isn't actually there (the Augmented part). Software locks the Augmented element to the scale and perspective of a preordained marker in the real space. This "tracking" to the marker is essential in making the added element seem to be part of the physical world. When you move the marker in Reality, the Augmented element moves right along with it.
Old school tracking markers used to be blocky black & white symbols. We now use image recognition. This allows the app to "recognize" almost any image, such as a face or a logo and launch the software.
The term Augmented Reality is used pretty indiscriminately by many companies, often referring to a flat overlay that doesn't track, or just a link to a traditional website or video playback.
We are excited to push the AR envelope with true 3D animation that tracks the real world and includes original music and sound. We aim to create involving experiences and we aim for high quality. Since AR places extreme limitations on the amount of data that can be streamed live, we are constantly exploring work-around strategies to elevate the sense of production value. One day soon, cloud computing and hardware advancements will work together to remove most of these limitations. Until then we valiantly joust!
When planning out the Augmented Reality pieces, I start with sketches. I storyboard the expected attitudes and action. My storyboards for Owney included plans for him to sit up and beg, catch a little envelope in his mouth, toss it back to you, bark, trot and run. The idea was for updates of the app to feature Owney doing more and more interactive tricks - to display more and more personality.
Our Maya animator Jeff Clifton started building Owney in 3D, keeping in mind his required activities.
I rendered a pose test cycle to establish a cadence for Owney's trot. I gave this reference video to Jeff as a timing guide for his animation. I also gave it to our composer, Ian Rees, as a timing guide for his music.
Looking at historical photos I painted the flat Owney fur textures for Jeff to wrap around the Maya model. This was the only fur solution available to us since Augmented Reality cannot yet handle the heavy data required to move thousands of fur strands.
Jeff sent me animation dailies married to Ian's music, and we tweaked various drafts.
But Jeff's challenges went far beyond traditional animation. He had to collaborate with the software techs who were providing us the playback tools which track our animation to the physical marker. Not only were there strict restrictions on the amount of data, but different tracking software uses different rendering environments as well. So Jeff had to keep simplifying the data load while laboring to preserve the quality of our character. And he had to work within the software language parameters of each vendor. Not easy. But he has become a top practitioner in essentially outsmarting the medium - especially as we followed up the Owney AR release with other projects such the JFK stamp, a dynamic Captain America movie promo and more. Randy Cartwright has become an invaluable consultant, brainstorming with Jeff on best new methods.
A web portal allowed us to view tests on how smoothly the animation moved in the AR software environment, how well the sound stayed in sync, and how well the animation locked to the physical marker as you moved it around. There were a number of trouble-shooting passes to smooth things out.
Once we were happy, the Apple apps team ran Owney through his paces. He got a clean bill of health!
On some of the projects I've used Photoshop plus 3D layers in After Effects to do a more elaborate animatic of how the final experience should appear. This process has allowed some of the textures and layers I build during pre-viz to be incorporated as hybrid aspects of the Maya model and the final app.
Currently my directing duties at Imagineering are keeping me from participating full time, as I did for the first year of our AR venture. But the AMUSME team is going strong and I keep throwing in my two cents until I can dive back in! We've started collaborating with computer science faculty members at various universities. So many breakthroughs are just about to happen and we are poised to secure a perch on the front of the next wave. Fun will be had by all!" Jerry and Stephen Michael Schwartz wrote a 69 page version all based on newspaper articles vetted by Smithsonian. Free at the iTunes app store for iPad. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/owney-tales-from-the-rails/id488657528?mt=8
For those without an iPad there's a web version link. Fred Cline did awesome illustrations in the classic Golden Book style.
And finally, here's a video Jerry did of the "Owney" theme, using Fred Cline's illustrations. The song was written by Stephen Michael Schwartz, performed by country singer Trace Adkins.
