Esben Toft Jacobsen and the Joy of Animation

WeAnimate 2024-12-04 | wam#0053

Esben Toft Jacobsen has been a creative force in Danish animation for years, winning recognition for projects like The Great Bear, Beyond Beyond, and Kiwi og Strit. He is remarkably prolific, constantly adding to a career of diverse and interesting projects. His latest series, Hullet i Hækken/Flora & Lars, began airing on Ramasjang in November after a premiere at Viborg Animation Festival. We recently spoke with him about his current projects, his motivations, and his creative process.

WeAnimate: Most of your projects have been aimed at fairly young audiences. What attracts you to making content for children?

Esben Toft Jacobsen: I love working for this audience, and it’s what I’ve always done. For my final project in film school, I made a film for children, and it was accepted at the Berlin Film Festival. I bought a really beautiful suit and took my wife to the festival, and we went to the red carpet so we could be really cool on the red carpet. But there was nobody on the red carpet! There was just a red carpet there, and my wife and I. So she took a photo of me, and I took a photo of her. It was a bit disappointing.

Then we went into the theater, and there were like a thousand kids in their little winter suits, and they were pointing at the poster of our film and eager to see it. And I suddenly realized ‘Yes, this is what it’s all about – they are just excited to see the film!’ While it was playing, there was a little girl behind me who was kicking my chair – she kicked every time the film got exciting, so I could feel just how excited she was. I loved seeing all the reactions from the kids. They were so into what I was doing! I was completely overwhelmed. It felt so right, and it’s exactly what I wanted to do.

WA: Where did the concept for the Flora & Lars come from?

ETJ: There were a lot of different sources of inspiration. I always loved stories where you go through a portal to a different world, and have an adventure there and then you go back home. I also used that idea in The Great Bear, where they go through a hole in the garden wall and have an adventure. It’s a type of story I love to do, and a universe I love being in.

When we were first developing the show, my youngest daughter was around the age of our audience, so I was surrounded by kids of this age group and hearing what they were talking about all the time, and they are wild! They say all these crazy things – they are incredibly clever and incredibly goofy at the same time. That was a good influence for me while creating the show.

One day I was picking up my little girl at school, and there was a hedge in the schoolyard, and she said ‘Hey dad look at this!’ and she crawled through a hole in the hedge. And I asked her what it was about, and she said that they imagined that they had a secret, magical world in there. We were already working on Flora & Lars, but it suddenly clicked that it was real, that they were actually playing that idea in real life.

WA: Flora & Lars has a very distinctive look. How did you approach design and the aesthetics of the show?

ETJ: When I am watching cartoons, I personally like it when it’s beautiful, so I wanted the show to be very painterly. We hired the amazing Thomas Poulsen, Tanja Hass, Nicole Di Fresco, and Patrik Lindberg as background painters, and they gave us these very well-drawn backgrounds.

I also really admire the style of Rune Ryberg – he does a lot of comics, but has a background in animation, and I always loved his work. I was talking to my producer and said that I would love it if we could get someone who draws like Rune, because I love his colors and how vibrant his work is, and the wild shapes he creates. So we were discussing how we could find someone as good as him, and my producer said, ‘You know, we could just call him and ask him if he wants to work with us.’ And so we did, and he said yes, and it was a really good collaboration. I had already drawn a lot of the characters, but Rune took them and lifted them to a whole different level. It was an absolute joy to work with him.

WA: Aside from just entertaining young audiences with the show, is there something you would like to communicate with them? Does the show have a message?

ETJ: Well the main goal is to entertain, but this show has something real and sincere at the heart. Flora is a very forward person, she does things without thinking too much about them, and Lars thinks about everything. We’re trying to show that you need both. In a really good friendship, your differences make you stronger. Flora and Lars are stronger together, and good for each other. That’s the main message: that we need to understand and accept differences in people. But each episode also has something going on, some type of emotional core that drives what we want to talk about.

We also know that the adults who watch the show should have fun.  Even though they aren’t our core audience, we do mix in some humor for the parents as well as the kids, and sometimes the same thing is funny for both. If you are watching a show with your parents and they laugh too, it becomes a shared experience. Creating that shared experience is important to me. 

We’ve had two premieres now. We’ve had a screening at Viborg Animation Festival, and at the Buster Film Festival in Copenhagen, and it’s so cool to watch the show with kids and hear them react to the moments and jokes. That part of the process is so cool and so fun for me.

WA: What do you think was a particular success, or a moment in creating Flora & Lars that really stands out for you?

ETJ: One thing that stands out is the first animation test from Nørlum. I really admire their work, and I like Elena Alexa and Claus Toksvig a lot, so I had wanted to work with them for a long time. Then I met their lead animator Sif Perlt Savery, who is such a good animator. I am a 2D artist myself, but I’ve never done a big project in 2D like that before; I’ve always made my films in 3D. Sif had just gotten the first rig for the first character and started testing it and moving it around, and it just felt so right. I was immediately sure that this project was going to work and people were going to like it.

WA: What’s your creative process like?

ETJ: I think anyone who works in a creative field has a million ideas before lunchtime. I have a million ideas and I want to do everything, but of course I can’t. You also don’t get anywhere if you just work on everything at the same time, so I have a system to help manage those ideas and actually make things happen.

I keep a piece of paper on my wall, and there is a line across the middle. I have five things above the line that I’m allowed to actively work on, and all the other stuff has to stay below the line. When something has some traction and something is happening, I work on it, like when there is financing to go further. But then there’s a pause or a gap, so I pick something else to work on for a while. Sometimes something down below the line becomes more important, so then I bring it up, but I have to put something else down. So I’m kind of working on five things at the same time, bouncing around them.

All my projects come from that system, and it seems to help keep me more focused and working productively. I actually never know which one is going to go next or furthest – I just write stuff up there that I love and want to work on.

WA: You’ve worked with a lot of the same people over many different projects.

ETJ: I like long-term work relationships, and feel like they are very fruitful. You get to know each other’s strengths, and the better you know someone the better you know what to expect and what they are really good at. But of course I also love working with new people and bringing them into the team, and getting new ideas and new inspiration.

My producer Petter Lindblad, who was also the producer on my first feature film, makes me feel so safe. I am completely sure that he’ll let me know exactly where we are in the production plan, and there’s never any trouble with people not knowing what’s expected and when. He’s very transparent, and makes sure everyone knows everything. When I walk around with him at Annecy everyone wants to work with him because he’s so good at structure, and so good at making things happen – I really love working with him.

We also collaborated with Tall and Small on this project. I’ve known Jannik Tai Mosholt since even before film school, and he worked on all my projects during film school, which was amazing because we were also friends. He was always a part of everything I did, including The Rain, a live action post-apocalyptic show we did for Netflix. It was a huge hit, but afterward I really wanted to get back into animation. He was booked on something else, so I started writing myself, but I really wanted to work with him again. So we developed Flora & Lars together with Rune Schjøtt-Wieth, and we also got Asta Stuhr onboard as a producer from Tall and Small, and they all did a great job.

Sometimes there are people who work so hard for a show and you never hear about them. There were so many incredible people who elevated Flora & Lars; I wish I could name everyone who was so important for its success. Annevig Schelde Ebbe especially played a huge role by finding and co-directing the voices. She voiced half the characters herself; she has such a huge range and was crucial in defining the tone of the show.

So all these relationships are important. I met Thomas Østergaard Poulsen, my designer, more than 20 years ago, working on a type of trolls video game for TV where you could call in and control this running troll. I was 19, it was my first job after school, and we worked on that together. We became friends there and just stayed in touch. He’s been beside me on lots of my projects, giving feedback on characters and things, and he’s working with me now on the new film.

WA: Speaking of the new film, congratulations on winning the Eurimages Co-production Development Award at Cinekid for Millie and the Secret of the Crocodile!

ETJ: Yes, we won the pitch forum award for that project, which was so amazing – there were so many beautiful projects there! I’ve actually been working on this project for around five years, but I kept it completely under the radar.

Once you start production, you have to produce. And of course there’s a lot of creative and artistic work during production, but the story needs to be there before you get to that point. During development, you can be very agile and make lots of changes, so I like to have a very small team just working on it under the radar. Slowly finding the right people and creating the right look and getting it emotionally right. We wanted a distributor who felt like a good fit, and needed the right production partners.

For example, we are co-producing with Viking Film in Holland. Petter, my producer, had worked with them before, and Marleen Slot, the producer at Viking, had also done Oink, an excellent film. She’s really good, especially on story, and I liked her. She read it and came in with a script consultant and a storyboarder, and they really get the project. They act as if the film was their own, and take responsibility for pushing it forward.

LevelK is on board now for distribution, and I’ve worked with Alexandra Cruz before, and I knew the film would be safe in her hands. I’m very happy to get her input. So it’s about putting together people who have the same vision for the film, who understand how we’re going to make it and who it’s for, so we can solve problems together.

WA: What else can you share about Millie and the Secret of the Crocodile?

ETJ: Well, I’ve already pitched it, so I can talk about it now. The story is about a mouse called Millie, who has been raised by hedgehogs. In the past, her tail was bitten off by a crocodile, and she’s very nervous and afraid of everything. One day her hedgehog friend falls in the river and is carried away, and she has to go after him to rescue him. But the stream flows toward Crocodile Island, so Millie has to go and face her fears. It’s a drama/comedy, and it’s emotional, but also funny. For young children, ages 5-9, it’s a big adventure.

© Patrik Lindberg. Snowcloud Films 

WA: What’s next for Millie and the Secret of the Crocodile?

ETJ: I’m currently working with Thomas on location design and a very early first pass of the animatic. This is the first film I’m writing myself, so I’m working on rewrites.

We expect to start production next year, but we are still in financing. Films are always like that – you work for things to happen and expect things to happen, and so far they have happened, but there are no guarantees. I hope this also happens, because I really love this film.

We love to see animation created with such joy and passion, and think that young audiences will somehow benefit from shows created with so much love for the project, the people, and the viewers. Catch Hullet i Hækken/Flora & Lars on Ramasjang, and keep an eye out for Milie and the Secret of the Crocodile in theaters.

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