#chintis lundgren

Muse’s Milk: Tell us your story.

Chintis Lundgren: I never planned to become an animator, all my life I just wanted to become a painter. And I did, for a while. But then I had a creative crisis, played around with animation just for fun, and somehow never went back to painting. Now I’m spending my days drawing drunk rabbits and hot muscular wolves.

MM: What was your first job?

CL: I was a waitress.

MM: How do you begin a film project? Walk us through your process. 

CL: I start with a character. Sometimes the character turns up just from random doodling, sometimes I have an idea of a character and I just make some sketches to see what it would look like.

After I have a character I try to think what could happen to it and come up with a short premise. I run the idea by my co-writer, Draško Ivezić (also known as my boyfriend). If he doesn’t think it’s the most stupid idea ever, I’ll spend some time writing but also making some sketches on the side.

I’ll then present the script to Draško and after a million iterations and intense arguments we’ll have a script that makes kind of sense. Then I draw a storyboard and make an animatic out of it.

More arguing and frustration follows until the animatic starts to look like something a bystander might understand. We’ll show it to strangers whose judgment we trust and try to make the story make even more sense.

Finally, after a lot of time has passed it’s time to animate. I’ll listen to some audiobooks and draw quietly all day and night until a deadline induced mental breakdown arrives and then animate some more. And then it’s done. Time to drink some vodka and repeat.

MM: What are you working on now?

CL: I’m working on my next short called Toomas Beneath the Valley of the Wild Wolves. The main character in this film is Toomas, the sexy wolf plumber from “Manivald.” It should be ready by next spring if all goes according to plan.

MM: Just curious; it seems that part of your visual style is the distinct pink color palette. Do you have a reason for this?

I just really love monochrome colour compositions. Right now it’s all pink but next year, who knows, maybe it’ll be all blue or all green. I think Toomas Beneath the Valley of the Wild Wolves will be all purple gray.

MM: Is there anything you would like to add?

CL: I’d like to add some milk to my coffee.