Animated music videos with Pippi Longstocking

Storyboard and creative direction

The starting point for the project was four well-known songs: Here Comes Pippi Longstocking, Sov alla, Mother's Little Lathund and Sommarsangen. Astrid Lindgren AB provided a basic script which we then developed further for animation and music video.

Since it was about music videos, we chose to work with simpler scene descriptions and go directly on animatic instead of detailed storyboards. The structure of the music was allowed to guide the storytelling. Here comes Pippi is clearly driven by chorus and dance, while Sov all has a more classic narrative in which the world slowly goes to bed. The summer song is rather in a state of endless summer, while Mother's little lathound has a narrative that gets to take the lead role.

‍

Visual style and world

The visual style is graphic 3D with clear expressions and character designs where emotion is more important than realism. Everything in the environments is based on the original books rather than the later films and television series. Villa Villekulla, for example, is composed directly from the book illustrations, both in form, room and decor.

We have been consistent in opting out of realistic assets. The playful expression permeates everything from color palette to movement patterns. Even when the animations were basically based on motion capture, we have actively added classic animation principles from 2D animation to maintain Pippi's energy and personality.

‍

Character and animation

Working with Pippi Longstocking presents a particular challenge. It is a character that everyone already knows, especially children, and with whom there is a strong relationship. She must feel exactly right.

We received a finished Pippi model from another studio, which gave us a solid foundation on which to start. The big work was instead in the animation and expression. Bringing out Pippi's cunning, busyness and warmth required a great deal of fine-tuning of movements, timing and small details. Many of the most important decisions sit not in the grand gestures, but in the subtle.

‍

Technology and Workflow

Timeframes were crucial to the choice of technology. Each music video was produced in about six weeks, making Unreal Engine the only plausible option. Real-time rendering gave us quick iterations and the ability to test ideas that otherwise wouldn't have been possible on schedule.

In parallel, we worked a lot on simulations and effects in Houdini. A major focus was on creating a fast and efficient flow between Houdini and Unreal. The rendering expression evolved gradually over the course of the project, from a more traditional lit-rendered expression to an increasingly path-traced result where we pushed the image quality step by step.

‍

Production

The team consisted of an animator, an animator focusing on faces and small movements, two layout and lookdev artists, a director and producer, a compositing artist, and a Houdini FX artist. A small team with clear roles where rapid, iterative collaboration was crucial to staying within the time frames.

‍