Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi about the role of the layout artist:

“This poor bastard not only has to have great skills and talent, he (or she) has to balance a ton of rules at the same time he’s trying to make all the drawings look pretty. It’s not like drawing a random pose in your sketchbook and hoping it comes out looking swell – which is much easier to do than doing functional drawings, as we all know.
[…]
The layout artist is also not completely free to make up anything he wants. He is not anywhere near as free as the story artist. He has to use the story artist’s ideas as a guide – and clean up all its problems. This sounds like a dreadful boring, laborious task – and it can be while you are learning layout skills. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t a creative job. To me, it is the most essential job in the studio, because it’s where the characters come alive – if you know what you are doing.”

Well, I’m not sure I always knew what I was doing on Bamse och Tjuvstaden, but I think this sequence turned out quite alright. Poses by me, BG art by the king of awesomeness Ulf Sandberg.

Rusken & Slusken have carried a VERY heavy bag off the train. What’s in the bag…?

Bamse och Tjuvstaden will premiere January 2014.

ⓒ Tre Vänner produktion AB. Based on Bamse’s universe created by Rune Andréasson and published by Bamse Förlaget.

Layout is perhaps the least known phase of the animation process among people not involved in animation. I worked on Bamse och Tjuvstaden for 11 months. More than 50% of that time I spent on layouts. Something tells me layout won’t be the main thing journalists write about when the film comes out…

Layout is where “… the background layout artists determine the camera angles, camera paths, lighting, and shading of the scene. Character layout artists will determine the major poses for the characters in the scene, and will make a drawing to indicate each pose.”
Wikipedia

One of my heroes in animation, John Kricfalusi (creator of Ren & Stimpy) says layout is the toughest job of them all in the animation process. According to him a layout artist should be:

A great draftsman.
A stylist and designer.
An actor.
A problem solver.
Patient and focused.
A multi-tasker.

I don’t know if I fit any of those descriptions, but doing layouts for Bamse och Tjuvstaden was certainly a lot about problem solving. Most of the time I did poses.

The producer was kind enough to let me post a couple of layouts from the film. This scene was posed by me, background art by the one and only Ulf Sandberg. Rusken & Slusken carry a VERY heavy bag off the train. To be continued…?

Bamse och Tjuvstaden will premiere January 2014.

ⓒ Tre Vänner produktion AB. Based on Bamse’s universe created by Rune Andréasson and published by Bamse Förlaget.