"Polar fun-time fishing" was our first serious production.
We got a big box of Polar series of Tolo First Friends from China and we begin to play with them to see what kind of story we could develop.
We started with a scenario, storyboard and production setup then it was Lights! Action! Camera!
This was the first time I’d a chromakey background so I made lots of tests before I found right solutions.
The most challenging of these was animation. How do you make it look as if a toy dog is really running? I looked through slow motion movies of running dogs and horses to learn their basic moves but it was not so easy to apply these to a toy, especially when it is a simple toy with limited movement. In “true” animation they use special puppets that are made for this purpose that can make realistic moves very similar to human or animals. Simple toys are very limited in their moves but I persevered.
Another issue was sound. We were looking for “stock music” but it was hard to find exact type of sound. Our reference was a sound from a computer game - a very cute “kids orchestra” music. Of course our next thought was to approach the same guy to make something like that for us. We quickly located the musician, Daniel Olsen, and we were so glad that he agreed to work with us.
PS
When you see the dog running through the polar landscapes passing polar animals, they are not actually moving. Camera, dog and scene stays in its place - but everything else moves.
