The Epic Saga of the Career of Mikkel Mainz

WeAnimate 2024-08-12 | wam#0046

For most people, Mikkel Mainz is the face and force behind Tales of Alethrion, the groundbreaking animated web series. But Mainz is more multi-talented than that project alone. From his work as a creator and director to his work as an entrepreneur and innovator, Mainz has charted his own course through his career in animation. He recently spoke with WeAnimate about his work, his philosophy, and what’s ahead.

Mikkel’s first appearance on the international animation scene was with The Reward, a student film that won the 2014 CITIA-Imaginove award at Annecy, and went viral online. Unlike most well-received student films, The Reward went on to form the basis for a crowdfunding campaign that built the studio that continued the project as the popular web series, Tales of Alethrion.

MM: I started at The Animation Workshop in 2009. Kenneth [Ladekjær] and I were very into 2D animation when everyone was saying that the only work was in 3D, so we decided to just have fun with it while we were in school. While everyone else was working on their 3D animations, we were doing 2D on the side. We probably did about 15 minutes of rough 2D animation just during lunches and breaks.

We wanted to do all the things that we like in a movie, cut down to a short film. So we came up with something together, and pitched The Reward, which would become the first episode of Tales of Alethrion. It was this fantasy action-adventure film with a bromance and everything, in a traditional three-act hollywood structure in eight sequences, without dialogue: just these emotional beats. We pitched it like a theater, with a soundtrack, and we acted it out, and everyone got really excited about it.

While we were still in school working on the film, Kenneth and Bo and I agreed to form a studio together and shook hands on it. We said ‘if this thing goes viral, we are going to follow this plan, with crowdfunding and Kickstarter and our own studio’. We had also made a contract with the team, that if it happened everyone would have a position at the studio and be able to continue working. Of course, we also had alternate plans in case it didn’t work out: we were thinking about animated documentaries, and talking with producers and so forth, just in case. But we were already very clear about what we wanted to do after school, and already had plans for Sun Creature.

In the years before our film, The Saga of Biorn and Backwater Gospel and some other Animation Workshop films had become pretty successful, so I think people were already paying attention to the films being made there. But when our film came out and went viral – it totally exceeded our expectations.

So we then spent 3 weeks making a Kickstarter campaign. When we started we only had 800 followers, and we were still just setting up the studio and working on a development package for the show. We decided to run the campaign as if we were fans and not creators, so we were just playing with everything.

The whole Kickstarter was like a treasure map, where the journey was laid out and backers could see how the money would be spent as the characters moved over the map, and there would be obstacles or boosts on the map depending on the funding. Every day we drew a little comic as the characters advanced through the funding adventure, and people would come back and check in every day to see how the journey was advancing. We would also sit and draw live, while telling the story, and then interact with people in the chat.

Visuals from the earlier kickstarters

The process of making a webisode is visualized like a map

We were kind of role-playing the story while drawing it. We went on Reddit and did AMAs [a popular feature where people ask and answer questions in real-time]. We had all these events and communication, we had lots of fun, we didn’t sleep at all.

Mikkel and Tales of Alethrion would go on to have a series of successful Kickstarter campaigns, driving further production of the series and developing a companion board game. It’s an unusual success, and an unusual choice: most European animators don’t use the crowdfunding model as extensively, and don’t pursue the types of skills and strategies that monetize projects online.  Of course, most animators don’t continue to work on their student film projects for years into their professional careers. But Mikkel is not a typical animator.

MM: If you want to make a living off of making animation and telling stories, you have to have some sense of business, because if you don’t, then you won’t be able to keep your team.  You have to be able to carve your own doors, rather than just look for the ones that are open. Even if you’re working with great producers, you have to have some of that skill yourself. I mean, I like the festivals and everything. I just don’t want to base my whole artistic journey on being judged by those narrow standards. I don’t want to be waiting, and be dependent, on that process. The way things are now, you can’t stick too closely to doing things only in one way. Kickstarter is definitely not the only way, and it has to be mixed with lots of other things in order for it to make sense financially.

We asked New Danish Screen for funding and they said the project was too crazy, and we didn’t have an experienced producer and writer and they wanted us to work with different people rather than our team. So we asked what would happen if we came back with some of the funding ourselves, and they said they were open to that, so we got all the crowdfunding and then they supported us.

I think I’m still going to be making Tales of Alethrion for decades. It’s almost like a diary for me, because I can see how the stories reflect what was going on in my life and how I felt at that point. You need to have a passion and love for a project like this, and it becomes who you and your teammates are during that period. Because you are engaging really closely with the people around you, you shape it together based on what’s happening inside you.

The cool thing about this show is it’s not like a sitcom, where the framework is that we have two characters and in each episode they have to go through 1 monster and 30 jokes and resolve everything at the end. Tales of Alethrion is more like a mini version of Game of Thrones, where we can follow different characters’ stories through different settings. Each has its own story, and all the other characters become background characters in that particular short film. We also have the flexibility to tell different stories in the comic, or in the main series, or in a side storyline. So it makes it possible to tell a story about a breakup, or about friendship; we can have different characters go through those experiences and have that journey. The good guys become the bad guys when seen from different perspectives, so there’s not really good and evil – just lots of points of view. This allows me to work with lots of different themes and emotions, and it also makes the characters much more rich because you can see them from different angles instead of just playing one role. It also makes it fun for me as a creator, because I want to continue to discover and put in new characters and make it like a real world in which people love and hate.

Even though I am often the face of Tales of Alethrion and the campaigns and the project, I couldn’t do it without my team. I am so grateful for the support and help of our community, but also for my team, because I need people who get hyped with me. Their enthusiasm is energizing.

MM: Over the years, I have also done all kinds of projects under Skjald, my own studio. I felt like it was time to do something bigger, so I was excited for the opportunity to direct Høj with Copenhagen Bombay. Along with my core team and a number of new people, we started on the new show and it was so great. It was just a little creative island where we could dig down into Nordic mythology and fantasy and epicness and fun.

When Copenhagen Bombay was unable to complete the project, I really wanted to save it. I had already been talking with Edith [Marie Nielsen], a producer with a company called Freeborn, so we decided to combine our companies and create Skjaldborn. Then we worked with DR to find a way to complete Høj. At the end of all that, we had a very short time to finish some episodes that DR could actually broadcast – every week we were delivering episodes while they were airing, JUST at the deadline. When I am 70 years old and looking back, that period of time is probably going to be one of the things I am most proud of, because we did all the right things at the right time with the right people. It was just a combined, awesome, fairy train on a rainbow riding out of the town on fire… it was just crazy.

© DR

I am actually glad that I was so naive back in the beginning, and believed that things would work out if you just do them. It’s a waste of time to think too much about everything that isn’t happening or isn’t working out. In the industry there are periods where you are being swept up by the wave, and then other times when it’s more difficult, so it’s important to be aware and to appreciate the times when we are on a roll and things are going well. And I am also trying to prepare as much as possible for the times when our house of cards gets a little wind. I will always be thinking about what’s next and wanting to begin something else.

So this summer we are finishing up the Høj series – the first 13 episodes have aired, and the next 13 air in the fall. I am so grateful to DR for that. And then we are also working on more projects as Skjaldborn, where we are doing some shows and some visual effects and developing new things. I have several features in various stages of development: Gone Badminton, Spirit Seeker, and Floating World.

We also just finished another Tales of Alethrion Kickstarter, so we are doing 2 new episodes and a new intro for the next chapter. The treasure chest has been opened, so now it’s a new vibe and a new phase in the world, and I’m really excited about it. I really want to reach out to some streaming platforms and see if we can find new opportunities. We’ve done so much already, and we’re at a really interesting place right now: I want to see what more we can do with it. Every time we have a triumph or a big reward, it’s not that things are over; it’s just another stage in the journey.

Credits