Happy Birthday Noémi

A few days ago my dear friend Noémi Besedes had her birthday and keeping the tradition in awe I created a small birthday Aquarell for her in the midst of the night. If she seems familiar to some of you it is because she played the stellar role of the Duck in my last Episode of the AtA (That hasn't been published yet, but a ton of photographs from the event has...)

She is Swizz, hence the mountain theme...

Some background WiP

Last night very late I got over a stressfull deadline for a big company. Unfortunately I cant tell you much more about it than that. Not unlike secret agents us creatives also sometimes need to walk the path of secrecy and bear the burden of corporate secrets. I will however post a couple of the backgrounds I did for this particular project. Even though it was a lot of work it was so much fun to do. Everything was kept very rough and for the first time in a very long time I was actually enjoying creating a commercial spot. Maybe I am fooled by my hormones and the spring.

I can tell you this: Projext X is set in a 1940'es filmstudio. Here is a finished background and a background from first sketch to final composite:

Work, some bad news and some pretty awesome news...

These days are just melting together. I get up ridiculously early in the morning and go to bed way past the wee hours all due to a melting pot of projects laying on my table. All of them are so much fun but I must admit that right now I am looking forward to getting some of them pushed off my plate so I can start focusing a little bit again.I will tell you all about it at a later point but right now there is no time to dwell. Must work.

Yesterday I got word that our Animation Tag Attack didn't get selected to Annecy which totally bummed me out. They received a very rough cut of the film and I can totally understand why it didnt get selected, but I would have loved to go, and I totally believe that it deserves exposure on the big festivals. But after spending a day in the studio with the composers for the last episode I am so psyched about the final product that Im sure everything will be alright.
Half an hour after my short term depression over the Annecy selection I received an email from the Vie Network informing me that Bear Untitled got selected by the Director's Guild of America for the very first New York digital short film festival:

"The Festival will be hosted at the prestigious Director's Guild of America Theater in New York City at a World Broadcast Gala Event in March 28th, 2011, with doors opening at 5:45pm. A selection of Chosen Digital Films that display excellence in the progression of the Digital Revolution in filmmaking will be shown for a World Audience LIVE on THEVIENETWORK.com."

Although slain in work I made a poster for my little film this morning. Nothing revolutionary, granted, but then again neither is the graphics of the little flick...

Heavy Heads

I have been away from the blog for quite a while now due to a series of crazy work incidents - amongst them the very last Episode of the Animation Tag Attack + all the producer work it apparently takes to get a bird like this of the ground. But what a ride! And on top of it all a series of commercial gigs I unfortunately cant share with any of you at the time being due to signed papers and corporate secrecy.

Next to this hectic work schedule, these past 1,5 weeks featured the Berlin International Film Festival - and I am so tired after spending all my nights hobnobbing and my days working/watching movies that Im close to falling apart right now, but inside my heart is breaking - My make-up may be flaking - But my smile still stays on... To quote the good FM.

There are two reasons for this Festival madness:
1) I did the compositing on the amazing Helena Frank's Heavy heads. A dark comedy about loneliness.
2) My good friend Esben Toft Jacobsen had his feature film debut, The Great Bear, premiering on the festival. An animated fairytale about the friendship between two kids and a giant bear... + Andreas Normand grøntved who did Episode 3 of the ATA did the production design on the movie and my good friend Petter Lindblad produced it. And since they were all in the city there were no rest for the wicked.

I must be frank and admit that I was a bit skeptic after seeing the trailer for TGB, but it is so well told and the universe is so well rounded that you totally forgive and forget the minor flaws that a 2 million Euro 3d production is almost bound to have and just enjoy the great story. Heck I was entertained!

And now enjoy the trailer for Helena Frank's Heavy heads...

Animation Tag Attack Episode 11

Now we finally got Episode 11 of the ATA up and running. It is made by Francesco Giroldini & Brendan Carroll, both currently working at Dreamworks, and is an orchestrated piece of violence and humor with the title: The Attack of the BearDuck.



As always you can read all about the project and see all the episodes in their entirety on the project blog:
http://animationtagattack.blogspot.com/

I am currently in full production with the last episode of this Bastard Baby which will be online in about 4 weeks, so stay tuned it will be epic:

Picture courtesy of Peter Ruschel

Postcard from Las Vegas

From Vegas with love

Christen & Henrik

Las Vegas, 2011

I held a talk for the 24/7 creative, Visual Life, today at the Marquee Nightclub sponsored by Intel & HP, arranged by the David All Group. It was a rocking evening only leaving me with a ton of questions: Why wont the Lavo allow man-bags? Where is the Las Veags machine gun shooting range? And how the hell do you remove glitter from a suit.

Hers a couple of clips I made for the event:


Intro 24/7 Las Vegas from Christen Bach on Vimeo.



Test, Las Vegas 2010 from Christen Bach on Vimeo.


We will always have Vegas!