WeAnimate 2026-01-20 | wam#0071

This month, the film adaptation of Jakob Martin Strid’s beloved When Mumbo Jumbo Grew Giant finally hits Danish screens. This eagerly anticipated animated film is a loving homage to the book, with a beautiful visual style and a charming story that families will adore. Produced by veteran Danish animation studio A. Film, WeAnimate has conducted a series of behind-the-scenes interviews about the studio and the movie.

A. Film has been producing animation in Denmark since 1988, and is responsible for many of the country’s most successful films and shows. Simply maintaining an animation studio for 37 years is a huge accomplishment, but A. Film has also created a company culture where passion for animation and respect for animators remains a driving force, even after all this time. As we get to know the artists and creators behind this film, we also have an opportunity to explore how deeply the team at A. Film love their work, love animation, and loved creating this film.

Sten Mesterton has been with A. Film since their first forays into CG animation, working in the art department on every one of their features. Although he is usually credited as an art director or a production designer, A. Film’s process involves quite a bit of flexibility and overlap in roles and responsibilities (they all refer to it as “wearing many hats”). He explains more about the studio, his process, and the unique challenges of Mumbo Jumbo in this interview.

WA: Your LinkedIn says that you have a background in architecture. How did you get involved in animation?

Sten: Well, although I was educated as an architect, I really studied production design. That was my goal; I wanted to work in movies, making environments. That’s my big interest: the surface, the props, the plants… Making the best image.

Back when I was in architecture school, there was one computer and nobody could use it. It was so expensive and futuristic. But a few of us realized that we needed to know more about it, so we started using computers, doing AutoCAD and Photoshop and so on. After I graduated, there was no work in my field, so I ended up getting a job teaching AutoCAD and Photoshop and 3D Studio Max. I started with 3D Studio MAX when it was very new, back when the whole movement for this kind of technology was taking off.

So I was teaching engineers and people who needed to know how to make 3D drawings and how to paint them. But I always wanted to work in animation, because I was always in love with animation: old Danish animated movies, and Disney, and things like that. So when I got the opportunity, I went down in salary just to be able to work at A. Film, back in 2000, thinking they would fire me in a couple of months or something. But I had to do what my heart told me, and I’ve been doing it ever since.  I’ve been at A. Film this whole time, with a few small breaks here and there. I’m now working on my 21st feature film. So I’ve been in the business a long time, but I haven’t been very many places.

We only do low budget movies in Denmark, so there are always very few of us working on a movie. Therefore you have to have a lot of skills, and I fit in because I was kind of schooled in the built environment: how do you make a house, how do you make a street, why do you react a certain way to narrow streets? For me, it’s always been the goal to make the image that works best for the story. I think a lot of younger people are in it because they think it’s cool to make a model, but that’s not our approach. Our approach is always to make the image that tells the story, and all the rest is “how do we get there?”

WA: That’s a great segue into my next question. Could you talk a bit more about the A. Film production process?

Sten: We have been doing movies basically the same way ever since Terkel in Trouble, and that’s very hard-won knowledge. Other Danish studios have to invent how to make movies over and over again every time, because they only ever make a few feature films. The guys I am working with, we have done it so many times that it’s now kind of in our backbone. We have the feeling inside.

Most people have no idea how many objects have to be in a scene in order to make a movie, and we have to build or find and place them all. There are about six of us on the image side: one of us is doing comp and some effects, and another doing effects, two on lighting and one or two people working on props, and me mostly building sets. As the core team we all have to have a lot of hats on. You can’t just say “I did my part” and walk away. Each of us has to take full responsibility for the scene.

I’m inventing, building, shading, assembling all the parts, and sometimes I’m also doing art direction, but I have the same thoughts no matter what I’m doing: I’m always building for the image. When I start to build a set, I look at the animatic and start placing cameras nearly from the beginning. Because it’s all about what you actually see in the movie: is it a better image? Is it telling a better story? Nothing else matters.

 

– Sten Mesterton

We are also always thinking about what is the best way of doing things. We only introduce one new technology in every movie, so we are careful not to shake the boat too much. That’s a lot of knowledge in just a few key people, and that’s very important. You can’t just go out and get another guy to do that job, because he won’t have the same knowledge.

Of course it’s also a way of saving money. And we can’t easily scale this system up. If someone said “okay, here’s more funding, now you can have four times the number of people”… we wouldn’t be able to do that without changing our way of communication and everything.

WA: How have things changed over the years?

Sten: When I started here, we used to have all the polygons in the scene. We didn’t have proxy systems or anything; we were shading by looking at the scene and then picking shaders. That has the benefit of letting you see the overall picture. Now we have a separate asset for everything, and that’s very smart in many ways, but the problem is that you are sitting and looking only at that asset, and sometimes people don’t even know what they are creating shaders for. You are ripping apart the image, and then when you put it back together you realize that you can’t see all that work at all; it’s in the back or out of focus. And if a new person starts and they are assigned this and this and this, so they are just sitting there with an object and another object and another object, that’s the wrong way to do things… There’s the potential to make them too complicated, or in the wrong style, or spend too much time on it. They need to be able to see the whole image.

Of course you can always make the assets really good and re-use them, but a lot of them aren’t actually reused because each movie has its own unique environment. When we do reuse assets, every single time I think “Why didn’t we make it better in the beginning?” [laughs] But I want to have an overview all the time, so I’m rendering all the time, with the cameras set up in the scene, so I can see everything. And I do it again and again for everything I’m working on, so I’m not in a fragmented, pixelized view of the scene.

I start by building the sets so they are just good enough, and then send them to animation. When they come back, we notice what the shot still needs and make a final adjustment before we go on. We’ve learned that it’s better to get it 80% done in the beginning and then do a little polish at the end, rather than do 100% at the start and then not have any budget left to make adjustments later. It’s actually cheaper to have me do it on both ends, because I know how to quickly make those adjustments. It’s kind of a puzzle.

WA: Was that your process for Mumbo Jumbo?

Sten: For When Mumbo Jumbo Grew Giant, we did a test a couple of years ago, and then it was on hold for a long time. Then it got funded, and we reached an agreement with the publisher. Then I worked on it for about a year in total, jumping back and forth between it and Checkered Ninja 3.

WA: How funny! Those movies couldn’t be more different!

Sten: That’s part of what’s great about my job: what’s the design, what’s the audience, what’s the story? In Mumbo Jumbo we stuck very closely to the style of the images in the book. A while back we adapted Strid’s The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear, and in that book there were nearly no images of the city where everything starts, so we had a lot to design. In this one, we have so many images of what is going on.

The benefit of having an illustrator with a distinctive style is that you can make something more unique, as opposed to always making very similar characters and everything. Of course that’s not international, Pixar-type style, but we only have to worry about the Danish market usually. We don’t earn money internationally, so it’s actually better to do it in a very Danish style. The Checkered Ninja is very Danish, and Anders Matthesen is very good at finding the Danish tone and humor for young people. It’s relatable; it’s funny, and it also conveys something about what it’s actually like to be a kid in Denmark. My daughters have grown up with these movies, from Terkel in Trouble to The Checkered Ninja series. They are adults now but still like them.

In Denmark, we don’t worry too much about material things; we worry more about happiness. So we don’t have to show off wealth with fancy things. If I had kept working as an architect, I probably would have a lot more money, but I am a lot more happy doing what I’m doing. I have the best job in the world.

 

– Sten Mesterton

WA: Although you worked closely with Strid’s illustrations, there was still a lot of design that had to happen for the film. Could you talk more about the design of Mumbo Jumbo?

Sten: When you see the books, Strid is perhaps drawing things from his childhood; old chairs and things like that, things that have been worn and reused. All their chairs are little and fat, fatter than real chairs. In Checkered Ninja, the style is more realistic. The first Checkered Ninja especially was supposed to have very realistic proportions in the sets and everything. But in Mumbo Jumbo we really stuck to his drawings of chairs and plates and everything, creating the impression of a nice little world where the characters are having fun together.

Mumbo Jumbo is a very nice, sweet story for children. I like that cozy feeling. Everything is very sweet, even when some of the characters are a little bit crazy. They live in a little Christiana, a little place with no fences, no hedges, no private gardens: a green world where you go where you like, and they have these little houses that you could build yourself. There are no roads, just a big grass carpet, with little worn paths where they walk. It helps to create the feeling of community, and makes a nice environment.

Although it’s very cosy, it’s still a big story. They are traveling from somewhere that might be in Denmark to somewhere in Siberia, so they are on the road and moving, and they talk together. Although it’s for young children, there are still a few scary parts… Not too scary, you know. It still needs to feel very nice.

Mumbo Jumbo himself is so big and has so little detail, that it was hard to set up his shots. It’s much easier to have a character that is more defined with clothes and things. But if we stick to the simple shapes, the way he’s drawn in the book, then he can’t be a normal hippo with normal skin and detail. He has no folds or anything, he’s just a big concrete guy, and grey is kind of the worst color. So his shading is very subtle.

In the beginning, Karsten said it should be a widescreen film, as usual. But I was really worried about that, because of the scale of the character. You could never get all of him in frame, and we would only see parts of him at a time. I think it’s better that we didn’t go with a widescreen aspect ratio.

WA: What’s next?

Sten: Now we are just running on to the next movie, as usual. Although we do work a lot, we almost always work normal hours, and very seldom have to do overtime.

I know that when some companies are making their first feature, they go all in and work like crazy. And maybe afterward everyone goes their separate ways, or the company may even dissolve. But we are making movies time after time, for a long time. So we really try to keep it on budget, and consider the structure, making sure that we are really doing it right.

 

– Sten Mesterton

We should be proud that A. Film has been producing the highest-selling Danish movies for a decade now. A lot of people think of animation as not “real” movies, and the Robert Prizes always go to live action movies. But they may have gone on location for three weeks, but we worked on the film for a half year, and sometimes much more. It’s a long task to make a feature film, and you have to be as fresh at the end as the beginning.

WA: Final question! What is the best part of your job?

Sten: [smile] I like every part of my job. I have the best job in the world.

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