Ellen G. Kleiven

Nasty "Habits"

2010-04-16T08:49:00.001-07:00

Sweet little nuns.. what imaginations they have!
Really fun little 6 part series I worked on for Trunk
Watch Pilot here
Just watching the animatics made me laugh out loud. All episodes can be seen at BBC website.
Here are a few clips with mostly my animation:

Directed by Layla Atkinson
Written by Laura Solon
Voiced by Katherine Parkinson
Produced by Richard Barnett

We were 11 animator, and we animated 6, 3 min episodes in 3 weeks.

Maya Wormy

2010-04-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

Here is a little test I did from my latest Maya course..
Finally I think I know what I am doing with those motion curves, and have grraduated to more sophisticated rigs.
Watch this space!
It moves... and it's 3D.... Ah, I am enjoying the dark side.

Weansworld

2010-03-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

In December last year I helped my Friend Francesca Gambatesa with a few animated scenes for an episode of wee wise words.
A flickerpix production for BBC Ireland.
It was animated to children talking about their families.
Here I have cut out the little scenes I animated for a taste of what it looked like.

Paradise Lost

2009-12-20T04:23:00.000-08:00

Almansa Rooftops

2009-09-16T01:48:00.001-07:00

Workplace Wellness

2009-05-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a little extract of some exercises I did under Ellefolk creative partnership.
Workplace Wellness was 14 exercises to do at your desk to : "help minimise spinal pain and stiffness, decrease stress and remain alert and focused" for Balham Chiropractic/Pmm Healthcare.
The character and backgrounds were designed by Lynne Pritchard,
All movements were done by me and Lynne in flash and put together by me in Final Cut and After Effects.

Sound was recorded by Tamborine, www.tamborine.co.uk
Also collaborated with DVnor, http://www.dvnor.no/ who did the DVD authoring.

Butterfly Lovers

2009-05-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

Voila finally a little edited bit of a film I helped my creative partner Lynne with last summer.
Butterfly Lovers was a Telling Tales production for the BBC written by Emma Collins.
Lynne Pritchard did all the design for it and directed it.
Neil Ben produced it for the BBC.
All the animation was done by Lynne and me in flash. The bits you see here are just some of the bits I did.
The whole film is sometimes available to see on the BBC i player under Telling Tales.
It is worth a look, and Lynne's designs are very beautiful!

Dial 0800Z

2009-01-20T10:38:00.001-08:00

This was a jolly little project I worked in November last year for Slinky Pictures.

It was great fun working in such a small team. Just me and James animating.
I hope there will be more on the horizon.

Maria Manton (Producer), Leigh Hodkinson (Director), Ellen G Kleiven and James Newport (Animators) with sound design by Barnaby Templer at Fonic.

The 0800z commercials were created by London creative consultants, Starscraper and Animation by Slinky Pictures.

Mirrors Edge

2009-01-20T07:57:00.000-08:00

Worked for a couple of months on the animated trailer/interstition movies for the game Mirrors Edge for Chase Imagination.
It was flash animation, and some storyboard cleanups.
I only had a few scenes to animate about 10 scenes until moving on to a different project.
Quite demanding animation style, as it was kind of realistic human locomotion but very smooth and subtle.

Above you can see one of the trailers produced by Chase Animation, to get an idea of the end product, and below a rough cut of some of my animated scenes.. unfinished with rough backgrounds.

Vitus web movies

2009-01-20T04:40:00.000-08:00

This is an ongoing project I am working on in collaboration with Wirkola in Norway.
A set of web movies with educational content for Vitus chemist online.
We have so far made 8 movies about how to use different asthma inhalors, how to administer medicine to kids (which you can see below), the medicine's journey in the body, the benefits of physical activity and one about headlice.

This project I have done under the umbrella of my creative partnership Ellefolk.
My partner Lynne Pritchard has done the character design for these films while I have done all storyboarding, prop design and layout and animation on the first 4 and the subsequent 4 we shared all design and animation.
I also created the logo animation in After Effects, and a preloader in flash.

The films are available in their entirety to view on Vitus' pages:

http://www.vitusapotek.no/Resept-og-medisin/#
http://www.vitusapotek.no/Baby-og-barn/

Doodles

2008-09-01T14:29:00.001-07:00

Falling Chinaman

2008-09-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

This was a very strange end existential piece, that was Slinky pictures contribution for a pilot comedy show for BBC2.
I cannot remember who wrote the story, but if anyone knows please let me know and I will amend this blog entry.
It was designed and directed by Michelle Yo, and Produced by Liz Chan.
Michelle, Martin Ollive and I animated it in Flash, and Michelle added the effects and 3D cityscape.
I think it looks good, and quite animated for a flash project.

Illustrations

2008-08-31T16:39:00.001-07:00

Stills from a couple of recent Christmas card animations.
Designed and animated by yours truly..It is also a tribute to my home..
And the wintry northern landscape has a particular sentimental edge for me; evident in the used of my grannys lace under garments.
Think I have to bring back the blood and gore for this years greeting.
The latter was a personal adaption from a tiny print in Snorres Saga of the Kings.
I thought it apt that this 'Nisse', in the pagan tradition of winter solistice should be an axe wielding maniac back from the jule tide feast.
Or a blood feud mission.

A couple of intended book illustrations for a journalist friends book on Interview Technique.The idea was to illustrate the interview process in a series of metaphors.
The interview as a dance, as Archeological dig, as a Journey, as Time travel, as Theater, as a Fight etc. etc..
The illustrations got a little too illustrative in the end and the publisher scratched them in favour of photographs.

Who I Am and What I want

2008-08-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

'Who I Am and What I Want" must by far be the most fun project I have worked on in a professional capacity, and they only one where I have been asked to do things again and do it worse!
'Who I am' is a film collaboration by film maker Chris Shepherd and artist David Shrigley, produced by Maria Manton at Slinky Pictures.

It was a lot of fun working with Chris Shepherd. And as animators we had a great deal of creative freedom, and fun coming up with ideas of how something should move as the story boards were very rough,usually just one drawing from Shrigleys book by the same name.

We were a small team of 3 animators, myself, Alan Andrews and Siren Halvorsen who worked for 3 months with the animation, and John Taylor did some cool After effects work and Barnaby Templer is resposible for the brilliant sound recording. Kevin Eldons voice added just that extra bit of lunacy to Peter's character with his voice. It was so fun to animate to!

I often wondered how something so weird and deranged could come out of the imagination of someone so nice and friendly. I remember the animators having a drawing competition of how David Shrigley would look like before we first met him, and noone was even close to imagining this tall, friendly man in a pink T-shirt. Got some nice goth drawings though.

Contact

2008-08-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

Buddy and Elvis

2008-05-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

This is a pilot I animated on in 2007.
It was directed by Ed Foster at Illuminated Film Company.
The pilot Buddy & Elvis' won 'best Pilot' at the Pulcinella Awards/Cartoons on the Bay 2008.

Based on the 'Buddy & Elvis' books, written by Andrew Murray and Illustrated by Nicola Slater, published by Macmillan Children's Books.

If you want to see the entire pilot click on the link below.
It is funny!

Blog Ed Foster Animation/Illustration

Below you can see some of the scenes i animated:

Houdini Dummy

2008-05-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

My second little foray into 3D world, or the Dark Side as 2D animators delight in labeling it!

This is just a test of 'work in Progress', to show that I have some vague notion of how to do character animation in Houdini!
The effects were added by the Houdini guru Peter Bowmar as a quick test to show his students at Framestore.

A-Tom-A-Tons

2008-04-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

A little film snippet from intended mobile phone loops.
Unfortunately project was scrapped due to circumstances.
Collaboration with great designer/artist Basher. Check out his website:http://www.basherworld.com/
Hopefully there will be opportunity of other collaborative projects in the future.

Little Princess

2008-04-16T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Series is based on the popular books by Tony Ross.
Art Direction by Sue Tong, directed by Ed Foster and animation direction by Roger Mainwood,
Produced by Iain Harvey and Ian McCue at Illuminated Film Company

It has been an amazing run. 2 Series and Specials, and all those lovely cuddly toys! The series look great and the episodes are well written. In terms of Celaction it is one of the most complicated character setups ever attempted, which sometimes makes the series look like traditional animation and not too cut-out.

Halvseint

2008-04-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

An amusing anecdote from 'Halvseint' pilot for animated talk show on NRK in Norway.
The series is now running into their second series on NRK , and is produced in Animation Studio formerly known as Moho. The backgrounds were made in the painting package Artrage.
Directed by Sven Mattis Folkestad and produced by Marius Hoel.

Striplight music video

2008-03-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

This is a music video I worked on last summer with my brilliant friend Elroy Simmons and a bunch of willing, talented helping hands at editing: Jim Andrews, Tim Smith and Jonathan Klahr (After effects wizard).Fabrice Langelier helped clean up and trace Elroys drawings in flash and Lynne Pritchard sacrificed a sunday at her busiest to help assemble the animatic when she could have been relaxing in the park.

The whole production was an after hours on a shoestring project.
We had great fun shooting the band in their tiny studio underneath the railway arches at Waterloo. And the band did a great job hitting their mark, or rather not overstepping their mark in front of our makeshift green screen.
Sigh you are all such energetic/photogenic rock stars!

Check out the band Striplight! They are Awesome!
http://www.myspace.com/striplight

Life Drawing

2008-03-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

My Showreel

2008-02-29T15:58:00.000-08:00

2010 Spooky cut

2010 Goodie cut

2008