The Journey so far

I'd like to take a moment to recap the journey so far. I know a lot of people have been confused about where I've actually been travelling, and where I'm going, so this is the moment to catch up!

January 8th

Me and three classmates left the safety of our little island, and ventured to the amazing Budapest! Here we got to have a lot of various lectures and also get to know each other. It turned out the a large part of the group were from Sweden (and thus we invented the "Swedish Panel" who disapproves if you speak swedish...)

We also created a game in a week. This was both a huge success and a huge failure... a lot of problem arose, and we were able to discuss them in detail and how to avoid creating the same situation in the future. I think that project will help us a lot in the near future, when we start to work on the main project. However we never got a finished game, so we failed in that sense. Still we learned a lot!


January 22nd

Two weeks later we had booked a mini bus to take the whole group to Ludwigsburg. It was a 10 hour ride packed with bags and people, but we were happy when we finally arrived in Germany.

There we enjoyed a week of workshops with Jörg Ihle at the Filmakademie. We focused mostly on the creation of storyworlds (the universe which will spawn into different products). We did this in various ways, one day we would be completely free to do whatever we wanted. The next day we would work from an image in small groups, and then let another group create products from our idea.

January 28th

This day marked the return to Sweden and Visby. We made an epic 18-hour journey with a train, two flights, two busses and finally a ferry. And when we finally reached home, we were very tempted to go back to Germany straight away... they didn't have loads of snow and -12 Celsius. Brrrrrr.

It's still pretty though. This is just outside the school!

I have mostly spent this time reflecting on what I've learned so far, and whether I have it in me to continue (as it is very stressful to travel around and spend all day long working). I actually had to visit the dentist because of the stress, I'd been grinding my teeth so much in my sleep I could barely eat anything, haha....

I also baked. A lot. Enjoy these samples!

February 8th

The journey to come... instead of going to Cologne, we're going straight to Copenhagen where we will spend the rest these 6 months. We've gotten to see some images of the work spaces, and it looks amaaaaazing... there will be a lot of photos once I get there.

We're staying there for two weeks until the next study break at home. Those two weeks are planned to be spent on learning pipelines and working on a benchmark (basically, creating stuff that will show how we want the finished product to look). I'm hoping it's gonna be a lot of fun!

Victor ate a Burger in Budapest

This wasn't the biggest burger they had...

But it was enough to make Victor happy!

Speaking with Geza M. Toth

As I can't get photos from my phone at the moment, I can't upload any photos from Ludwigsburg... but I'll make up for that with a few more from Budapest!

We got to meet Geza M. Toth while in Hungary. He's an incredibly skilled movie director - among many other things he has directed the Oscar-nominated short movie 'Maestro':

A few of us from the Eucroma group went to his studio to discuss animation and movie-making in general. We got to hear a lot of stories of how it was to work with animation in Hungary, and also how you renew yourself as an artist. It was a really inspiring meeting!

One of the things I will take with me from that meeting is how he described himself. He said he was like a tailor. A tailor's job is basically to take the request of the client and make an original and creative suit that would still fit the client perfectly. I'd like to think of myself like that as well.

Less talking, more photos!

A few prizes he won over the years. Some are very... original.

Lunchtime! Geza M. Toth is the one in the middle.

Obligatory coffee in the children's section of a café.

Summary of Budapest

Second attempt at summarising Budapest... it's a city of history, and there are so many impressions to take in while being there. I really recommend visiting it (don't forget to visit both sides of the river, basically completely different cities!), but do spend some money on getting a decent hotel... ours literally stank of crap. Anyway, here goes!

As a swede, the language is impossible to understand. For example 'thank you' is 'köszönöm'. It also sounds a lot like Finnish.

We found this sign on a pizzeria close to the hotel we stayed at. We discussed the different possible meanings of it, but I think we decided on 'We do not serve sushi!!!'. Since it's a pizzeria and all.

One of the treasures of Budapest. Sandwiches in every size and form! You could order 10 smaller ones in a box to bring with you, and they would have everything! Salmon, egg, tuna, salami, roast beef, cheese, brie cheese, ham, clam...

Since everything in Hungary is really cheap as well, these were only 3 swedish crowns per sandwich. I miss them already.

Nomnomnomnomnomnomnomnom

This sign belonged to our favorite pizzeria. They actually had awesome service and tasty food, and they also introduced me to the awesome concept of having sour cream on your pizzas instead of tomato sauce.



Unless you apply the sign to our hotel of course... besides stinking of crap they liked to turn every room into a sauna. They would go in during the day and turn the heaters up to max and close the windows. Don't ask me. Onwards!


The meals were gigantiiiic!

(depending on what you ordered of course... Victor always managed to get the humongous meals)

Quite often you will see these random holes in Budapest. I don't know the history behind them, but it seems like the old building has been torn down and then not been replaced by a new building. One hole had been turned into a parking lot, but many of them are just empty like this.



It's kind of odd when you walk by these at night, as there are no lights at all in them, just a big black... hole.

And finally, speaking of contrasts in Budapest. Here are two more examples of how different styles neighbouring houses will have.

In Ludwigsburg!

We're now at the Filmakademie in Ludwigsburg! I'll update with more later on when I have some time.

I decided to remove the summary of Budapest, I felt it was a bit too hurried and badly written.

Now I'm off for lecture!

The most awesome place in Budapest

Heroes' Square (featuring the majestic Millenium Memorial)

This was my first sighting of the more impressive stuff you can find in Budapest. Up until then my experience had consisted of dirty hotels, packed buses and half-demolished buildings, so it was really nice to see this. Since then I've seen a lot of stuff as well, but this will have a certain place in my memories of Budapest.

Click for a sense of scale!

Morning Yoga at the Memento Park

We visited the Memento Park in Buda yesterday! It was pretty impressive, but really really cold and lots of wet dirt. My boots acquired a beautiful new color of dirt after walking around to see all of the statues.

I'm sorry if these following photos offend anyone, we just saw our chance to have a bit of fun... I hope you see the humor in them as well. :)

Morning Yoga

Recap Week 01

 We started off the first week by getting introduced to the group of people that we are going to work with for the next 6 months. The group consisted mostly of students from around Europe, but also a few people with professional experience.

Our task of the week was to start working on the creation of the universe. We will later on use this universe to develop a game and a movie. This would be tough to do with any kind of group, especially when you don't know each other.

On tuesday we went through an epic 12 hour long discussion about the different ideas we had and how to expand on them. Since we come from different backgrounds we also discussed a lot about the similarities and differences between games and movies. We didn't really come to any conclusion about anything that day, more than the fact that it is very frustrating to try and get along with a group of people you have only known for a day.

On wednesday we got to meet a panel of various awesome people. Among them a project manager from Sony and the creator of the Star Wars lego (and a lot of other lego products as well). We got a lot of advice regarding how to get started and what to focus on. It was definitely good to have the huge discussion the day before, we knew what questions we needed to ask. I think we also took the panel's advice to heart in a way that we wouldn't have done if everything had happened smoothly.

The later half of the week we spent working on one-day projects to get used to the workflow and working with each other. The concept group (consisting mainly of the game and animation director) had meetings to come up with a universe. The whole group got briefed at regular intervals on their progress. Even if a smaller group comes up with the initial ideas, the input from the rest of the team is considered very important.

A Paparazzi photo of the concept group in progress.

Next week will be all about fleshing out the universe and deciding more about the direction we want to go.

Vakvarjú Restaurant

This is from our very first day in Budapest. We had spent the first half of the day in the studio listening to lectures and getting to know each other. For lunch we entered the first restaurant we could find, which just happened to have a balcony with people in it! (also note the bird stuck in the fence)

The restaurant is Vakvarjú, I can really recommend it for the awesome food and somewhat... interesting interior design. Do you remember this post? Same restaurant. Here's some more!

Hungarian ABBA

Yesterday we went to a restaurant across the street and got entertained by these guys. We were very impressed with their talent and knowledge of swedish songs! Also Victor got the biggest schnitzel I have ever seen in my life... (in a literal sense...)

Köztigon Studio

The studio that has kindly lent us some working space is normally used by the architect László Rajk. We have had a few very interesting lectures with him about planned cities vs organically grown cities. He also owns one of the fluffiest dogs I've ever met!

The studio itself is very fresh and spacious. We try to meet up at 9 everyday to eat breakfast together (the hotel breakfast is actually worse than the one you get at a supermarket...). The first half of the week we sat around two tables like this:

While that was very cosy we quickly got in dire need of more space. Some shuffling of tables later we now have a lot more space and desks for everyone. The photo below is taken from the room to the left (in the above photo), and the "office" now covers three rooms!

Speaking of contrasts in Budapest, this house is what you see when you step out from the studio. There is something very telling with how the clean and nice-looking the first floor is, and how the second floor is riddled with bullet holes and history.

The Liszt House

I'm sorry for the lack of content on this blog so far, it will become better once I have access to a computer and some time to write! I can tell you that Budapest is a very interesting city and so far I've enjoyed my time here.

Something that still amazes me after a few days here are the contrasts. Imagine you're walking down your typical random alley in a town. You're surrounded by boring concrete buildings (and since it's Budapest there are a looot of Gothic-style buildings), and then suddenly... you see the house in the photo below. Wow.

(more updates about the program itself is coming soon!)

Money Money Money

The prices in Budapest are absurd for a scandinavian. 3 swedish crowns translates to 100 forints, so you feel ridiculously rich carrying around 20.000 forints in your wallet...

(btw, can you find the one real euro penny in the photos below?)

Budapest so far

This photo actually sums up my first impressions. A city in the roof, why not?