How to make dwarfs

Here's two frames from the movie showing Odin molding a maggot into a dwarf. The process is simple. First, kill a frost giant. Then, take his dead body and make a world, using his flesh to make the earth, bones for mountains and hair for trees. Then. wait for maggots to appear from the rotting corpse. Take the maggots, do some molding and ta-da! You've got a dwarf. There's no female dwarfs though, so if you wanna be nice like the Gods, give them a couple of princes that can forge more out of rocks.

Behind the scenes: Big feet!

This is a behind the scenes photo of the six-headed troll being born from the frost giant's feet. It was the most difficult to animate, as there are six heads, and he was a bit front heavy. It was also quite fun though. To not have to animate all the heads all the time I made a little scene where most the heads are sleeping except one. The head wakes up discover he has many heads, and to find the next head to wake up takes control of an arm. In their struggle to control the arm, they wake the others and start a fight. At this point all heads are awake and the animation process got slower, so it was time to put some of the heads to "sleep" again, which the fight managed to do in an excellent fashion. That's also the end of the scene.

To make the big feet, but not mix more plasticine than necessary to get Jotunn-green, I covered two cardboard plates in the shape of  giant feet with plasticine in a layer just thick enough to get some depth. They actually became very heavy, which made them hard to animate because gravity really wanted them to tip over. Every break I took the feet would have sagged noticeably, and needed readjustment. In the movie, the frost giant is therefore sleeping a little bit restlessly during this scene.

A frost giant's armpit

From the sweat of the left armpit of the frost giant Ymir, a male and a female being is created.

Still image from a scene in the movie.

1st scene animated

Here's a still shot from the first scene I have animated for the film. It is creatures spawning out of the sleeping body of the frost giant at an increasing pace. The characters for this scene were sculpted at the same time as they were animated emerging from the wall of plasticine, so they are only half the height of the "main cast", and much simpler in their design. I think that's OK though, as they are newborns after all.

Bergelmir's wife

Bergelmir's wife and her husband are the only two Jotnar to survive the bloodshed when the Gods kill Ymir. Little is know of her from the old sources except for that and that she and her husband restart the Jotnar race which again become numerous.

I've had trouble sculpting female figures because my main reference always have been the mirror. It's finally started to loosen up a little. Main features to make a figure female is big hips and a small jaw. Big hips are emphasized by a extra narrow waist, and a small jaw is empathized by a extra large forehead. Usually my style have been figures with long faces and small foreheads, which I have realized is very hard to make feminine. Other general traits of a female face is that it has small features than a male face. Smaller chin, nose, jaw (especially important), ears, an almost absent brow and narrower eyebrows. Big eyelashes and heart shaped lips are also very feminine, but I was happy I managed to make her look feminine without those as those things takes more time to animate.

Her legs are not really made for walking, but that's OK as she won't use them in the movie. If she were to walk I would have to design her differently.

Bergelmir

Bergelmir is a frost giant, and one of Ymir's grandsons. His name means "Mountain Yeller". He is one of the very few Jotnar to escape the bloodshed and repopulate the Jotnar tribe after the Gods kill Ymir and the blood from Ymir's body creates a massive flood. In one of the old sources it's just Bergelmir and his wife who survives, in another he has his household with him. For the movie though it's more practical production wise that it's just him and his wife I have to sculpt and animate.

While making him I experimented a little bit with giving him texture. The brown plasticine was very sticky so my fingers left marks on the lighter green color which I then smoothed out. The texture gives more realism, but realism reduces the stylistic look so there's a fine balance. In the end I removed the texture from his face, shoulders and chest as those areas get the most light, and left it on his arms and back. His back won't be seen in the movie anyway, so it doesn't matter there.

Bolthorn

Bolthorn (also known as Boelthor) is a frost giant and Bestla's father, which makes him Odin, Vili and Ve's grandfather.

Six-Headed Troll

 

 

 

 

This is one of the first creatures to spawn out of the frost giant Ymir's body. His feet mate together and bear a son with six heads.

This was the most fun character to make, and will probably be the most memorable one from the movie. The plasticine puppet is about 20 cm tall I reckon. I've found that small pupils bring a lot of life to a puppet, and I was extra wary of that with this character. I've also given each head a different face expressions for this photo shoot to show that they each have their own personality.

Long after the Viking homelands were Christianized, people still believed in trolls for centuries. Most Norwegian fairy tales have a troll as the villain, typically with up to three heads. In the Viking sagas, some have many many more.

Troll

A troll is just one of many names creatures from the Jotnar tribe were given by the vikings. There were wolves, serpents and other creatures dangerous to the Vikings that were born from a Jotun woman.

This is not a character mentioned specifically in the myths, but rather one of the many Jotuns that spawned out of the frost giant Ymir's body. He is by far the scariest of all the characters in the movie.

The viking religion was not about good vs. evil, but order vs. chaos, which is a philosophical way of saying human vs. nature. The Aesir (the gods) were very "viking" in their behavior and could do really cruel things. However, as this film is for little kids, good vs. evil is easier to understand, so this troll was designed specifically to send the message that the Jotnar are evil. His long limbs and short torso are to resemble a spider, his skinny body to bring associations with disease, and his zombie-like blank eyeballs radiates death.

Tomorrow I will post the six-headed son parented by Ymir's two feet.

Ve

Ve (also known as Lodur) is the third brother of the group, and the last of the main characters in this film.

From this point on, the characters left to be posted on this blog will be Jotnar; otherwise known as trolls and frost giants.

Vili

Vili (also known as Hoenir) is one of Buri's three Grandsons, and brother of Odin and Ve.

Odin

Odin (also known as Wodin, Woden, Wodan, The Wanderer, The Wise and several dozen other names) is the chief god in Norse mythology. He is the eldest of three brothers and the son of Borr and the Jotun woman Bestla. Wednesday is named after him.

Later, after the events of this film Odin is to become the God of Warfare and Wisdom and the leader of the Aesir tribe. Besides fathering Thor, he becomes known as a wise man who often travels the world in the shape on an old man. He sacrifices an eye in exchange for wisdom, acquires an eight-legged horse that can fly, and two ravens that gives him information from all over the world.

This film however takes place before this while Odin is a young man. With both eyes intact he starts a perpetual mortal feud between Aesir and Jotnar and creates the world.

His design is fairly simple with not much detail as he will move a lot, and that makes animating him easier. Noses however tend not to move much, so I like making detailed noses on my characters while keeping the rest of the face simple, particularly eyes and eyebrows needs to be easy to move.

Bestla

Bestla is a Jotun woman (or a frost giantess if you will) and the Mother of Odin, Vili and Ve. Her father is the frost giant Bolthorn. I made her slightly bigger than her husband Borr.

This is the prettiest of all the characters made for the film. She is one of very few women, and her role is primarily to keep the chronology in order.

I thought she had to look pretty since she has children with an Aesir. Unfortunately I have less practice sculpting female heads, therefore I had to resort to making her more "real-life" where I have references I can use, but that's OK since she has so little screen time animating her wont be problematic. Usually my characters don't have eyelids and only a very simple mouth as eyes and mouths are animated a lot, but big eyelashes and big lips are feminine traits I wanted to include to make sure she looked pretty.

Borr

Borr (also known as Bor, Burr or Bur) is Buri's only known child and father of Odin. He had three sons with the Jotun woman Bestla, but besides that little is known of him. His role in this film is primarily to keep the chronology in order.

This is probably the jolliest-looking of all the characters I've made for this film. I also gave him some more detail then for his sons because his role in the movie is so limited it wont be a big hassle to animate his long braids and cape.

Audhumla

Audhumla is an important supporting character in the movie. Four strong rivers of milk poured from her udders and provided nourishment to Ymir and the other beings in Niflheim. She is also important in that she releases Buri from the ice by licking the salty iceblocks for her own nourishment. Buri's release marks the beginning of the Aesir tribe (those we call the Gods) who two generations later became the mortal enemies of the frost giant Ymir's tribe, the Jotnar.

Nothing is known of her origin, but she must have come into existence around the same time or before Ymir and probably in the same manner. Her name is believed to mean "hornless cow", as there is a similar word in a Scottish dialect that means just that. However, I wanted this to be the "mammoth" version of a cow as it is a bit of a prehistoric ice age they are living in, and since viking names often were ironic I reckon massive horns are suitable.

The design is a mix of different Norwegian dairy cows (depending on what angles I found reference pictures for) and the horns from a Scottish Coo. I made her quite realistic as she is more a part of the landscape than anything else (the source of four rivers of milk), and I want a really dramatic look for the shadowy Niflheim.

Buri

Buri (also known as Bure) was the first of the Aesir, those we refer to as the Gods. Before time and  the creation of the world he was thawed out of an ice block in Niflheim by the Cow Audhumla who licked the salty blocks for nourishment. Audhumla came into existence around the same time as Ymir and provided everyone nourishment with her milk.

A great theory I heard about Buri is that he was left over from a previous creation-cycle. It happens a couple of times in norse mythology that an entire species is repopulated by the only surviving male and female. This film describes one of those incidents.

Buri was the grandfather of Odin, king of the Aesir. With a Jotnar woman, Buri had a son Bor, who in turn had three sons with the Jotnar woman Bestla.

He was also a keen florist, but not really.

Ymir

Ymir (also known as Ymer or Yme) was a frost Giant and the largest creature that has ever existed. He was created from the ice of Niflheim and heat of Muspellsheim. While he slept, smaller frost giants spawned from his body forming the Jotnar race. A male and a female spawned from the sweat of his left armpit, and a six-headed son was conceived by his two feet.

When you look into the sky, what you see is the inside of Ymir's skull which the Gods placed as a dome over their creation. The clouds are pieces of his brain, the mountains are made from his bones, the earth from his flesh, the trees from his hair and the sea from his blood.

I made the surface of his body less smooth than I usually make my characters, as his main function in the story is being building material, therefore I wanted him to look a little bit "unfinished".

Concept Maps

Here are some concept art I drew of the Viking Cosmos. They will not be featured anywhere in the film, but as the film deals with the creation of the cosmos, I had to decide where it will all end up. I say decide, as there are no precise description of the Cosmos in any preserved texts, only several contradictory ones. The essentials though are references to nine worlds (some of the nine vary), and Yggdrasil, an enormous Ash tree that stands in the middle of the world. This is very much my take on it, taking as a basis what geographical knowledge I believe the Vikings had. Cold in the North, increasingly warmer further South (possibly burning hot if you sailed far enough), a massive ocean to the West (the Atlantic) and unknown lands to the east, therefore I placed most of the "nine" worlds east of Mannheim, home of the humans.

Niflheim is the realm of cold and darkness, Muspellsheim the realm of warmth and light. These two worlds created Ymir, the Frost Giant whose body was slain and used as building material by the Gods to create the worlds in between.

Clothes

After the heads are pretty much done, It's time to make the clothes. In choosing the colors I make quick temporary bodies to see what colors goes well together, for each character individually and for the characters as a group. I don't want them looking too similar, but I prefer "rotating" the colors rather than using many of them, i.e. the color of one character's shirt is the color of the trousers of another one etc...

I took this photograph outdoors because the sun gives great lighting, but the characters can only make quick trips to the outside world as the sun also provides a very hostile environment. Plasticine people need a cold climate in order to stay in shape.

Introduction

On this blog I will post the progress of my current claymation, a short film telling the Norse creation myth. Working title is "The Frost Giant". Though not the main character, he is the center point of the story, as the world was created from his dismembered body by the gods who with this act ignited a never ending feud between gods and giants.