\\A couple of easter vacation pastels, and ink thumbnails. I finally had a good opportunity to try out some pastels I bought a while ago. I will try to get simpler and better at designing my elements, but i really like working with them on the go.

\\ Above is an old watercolor portrait I found. And the life drawing studies was done earlier today. I was attending a one day class with legendary Glenn Vilppu. If you haven't heard of him before you haven't done any figure drawing:) His lecture was fantastic, he was funny and his skills and knowledge on the subject seems to be endless.

// Important stuff going on! Be sure to follow http://dream-represented.blogspot.com/, a project started last summer and hopefully will get some funding for further development in a couple of weeks. There's a massive pile of awesome characters, and kick-ass animation to this project and it will be dominating your world in a near future!

YIIHAAAR!!

Over 40 followers! I'm am so honored that you guys are stopping by every now and then. and believe me I'm looking back at yours, and it feeds so much inspiration.
This little dude is a concept test for a project on the side (from bachelor buissiness), I won't reveal too much right now, but as this thing comes along I will post some process. Hope you like it!

Meian

Meian animation from Mark Kjærgaard on Vimeo.

This is some of the animation I did for a japanese series inspired short film at The Danish Filmschool. It's directed by Maremi Watanabe, a wonderful, talented and dedicated director. The crew was also blessed with some of the crew from the newly released "Salma" short film, from our school The Animation Workshop. If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out, it is stunning: vimeo.com/​18009392
And be sure to check what they're up to:
Martín Sand Vallespir - masava.blogspot.com/​ who art directed Meian. He did an unbelievable amount of beautiful designs and backgrounds
Rikke Skovgaard - rkkskvgrd.blogspot.com/​
storyboarder and background artist, and I mean great artist.
Michael Holm Nielsen - michaelholmnielsen.blogspot.com/​
did compositing on Meian, be sure to check his things out he is cool.
Andreas Severin Kristensen the technical director. He did wonders, after we left the filmschool in november, with the film.
I did the animation and coloring for this sequence.
A little warning, this is the cleanest shape, size and form of a spoiler you'll get. Hope you enjoy it.

Happy Birthday Mia

This is done in the occasion of my girls' birthday. From bottom up; some exploring sketches, Ink version, and then digital. And NO, we do not agree in music preferences but today she's the boss. Happy B-day Ilse.

Please take a seat

A little girl I made on the train to Copenhagen today. Normally people can be quite annoying on the train, but today it was probably me being the brat for taking all the table space with my laptop and tablet. But heck, I spend 4 hours in a tick.

Happy New year

To everybody out there (Especially those following this blog (happy faces)) Have an amazing New year! I'm honored you are stopping by to check out what I'm up to, so thanks a bunch! best of luck in the new year!

Season Race

old concept drawing.

LOAD

So finally we started the Bachelor film, Im truely blessed in being teamed up with some awesome artists for this year and it makes me even more exited than earlier. These are some concept designs I've done for our main character in different stages (in watercolor). Make sure to check out the projects blog at: http://loadnotes.blogspot.com/
It includes some concept, story synopsis, boards and other relevant stuff that will be updated as the project comes along! Hope you dig it, and throw me/us some feedback if you fell like it!

Sketches

I'm back in Viborg after nearly two amazing months at The Danish filmschool in Copenhagen. The films will premiere at the filmschool 17. dec so looking forward to see how it turns out. This week we've started the long awaited bachelor films, so exiting times ahead! Hope you like the sketch outtakes, and feel free to drop some feedback.

"Meian"-Project

Meian teaser from Mark Kjærgaard on Vimeo.

This is a small preview from the project I'm working on at the moment. It's called Meian and is directed by Maremi Watanabe who is currently a student at The Danish film school. The animation is due friday, and there will most likely soon be more of my shots uploaded to the blog. Hope you like though it's not finished and in the right format.

New thang!

Found this sketch to try out some new stuff in Photoshop.

Bachelor project

In 10 minuttes the stories for this years bachelor projects at The Animation Workshop will be announced. Kristoffer W mikkelsen ( kristofferwmikkelsen.blogspot.com or in my friends list) and I have two pitches in the run for it so I made this quick thing for good luck. It's a concept piece for a story called "Season Race". Hope you like it.

Sketches!

A couple of pages from my current sketchbook. I've bought a small set of akvarelpainting, so I'm slowly learning to incooperate the colours into my sketches.

Story concept-art!

Mr. Birdmonster in his new concept feathers/colors

This Background is called End-station, because that's what it is for a little boy in the story I'm developing concept for at the moment. The story is about the revengeful imagination of a little boy, who have had it with low-life adults disturbing his imagination.

Project Quadruped!

So, finally some 3D animation for you to look at. This is a school assignment called project quadruped, and it's a collaboration with the CGA line on our school. We where teamed up in groups of two, one from each line, then the CGA's created the character, we animated it, and last but not least the CGA's went over the scene once again putting on lights, special effects and loads of other stuff to integrate the animation to the picture that is our background . My partner on this project is Thorvaldur S. Gunnarsson and I will highly recommend you to go check out his blog because he's really talented as you see. http://thorvaldurgunnarsson.blogspot.com/

Concept for story idea!

This is a character I created for a story about three crazy brothers, all wearing masks and doing a lot AO-rated stuff.

Stills from Void Of Light.

These are some of my stills from our animation jam with the CG Artist line at the Animation Workshop (animwork.dk) the week before our christmas holiday. It was an mindblowing experience, and I'm really pleased with the way the team worked and our final result.
Our team consisted of:
Kristoffer W. Mikkelsen - animator (http://kristofferwmikkelsen.blogspot.com/)
Who i have to mention once agian for coloring the lightsource in my scene (the yellow niceness in the stills above)
Touraj Khosravi - animator (http://tourajkhosravi.blogspot.com/)
Malte Burup - CG Artist (http://malteburup.blogspot.com/)
Magnus Myralf - CG Artist (http://myralf.blogspot.com/)
Ágúst Freyr Kristinsson - CG Artist (http://agustfreyr.blogspot.com/)
All really nice and talented people, so check out what they're up to.

Some rough and fast modelsheets I did on the first day of the animation jam, for the leadcharacter. Kept mostly in silhouette since the final look had to be a black character on black background.

Lintest for animation jam (Void Of Light) from Mark Kjærgaard on Vimeo.

Before our christmas holiday we had an animation jam along with our brother bachelor line the CG artists. It was one week of very intense work, since we had to come up with the story and do the entire production in five days. This is a takeout of the animation i did in that week. We didn't really do any clean-up since i had to paint the whole thing over afterwards. I have to give my credits to Kristoffer W. Mikkelsen (http://kristofferwmikkelsen.blogspot.com/) who animated the white light source that's twirling around the character, and BTW did some other amazing stuff on the jam(so check out his blog, and see for yourself)!

Girl sketches

Here's a couple of sketches I've done lately. Hopefully I'll get to clean, and put some color on them soon!

Chinaman from Japan

This is a character I came up with sketching for a story about waiters. He's not going to be in the story but I thought he turned out quite nice, so I finished him up and hopefully I'll be able to use him for something else. I'm at the moment coloring some expression drawings with the same character, and they'll probably be out here pretty soon!