Bamse och den lilla åsnan must have been one of Rune Andréasson’s favorite stories, since he retold it so many times during his lifetime. In sunday strip format in the 60s, in the animated short from 1981, and in a book in the 90s (there might be others that I have missed). Surprisingly though, Bamse och den lilla åsnan never showed up in the main magazine. Until now! One of the scripts Rune left behind after passing away 1999 is an adaptation of this story, based on the film and the book. As always it’s an honor to be entrusted with pencilling one of Rune Andréasson’s few remanining scripts. Especially this one!

Here’s the process from script to printed page:

Most of today’s writers for Bamse make scripts in text only. With Rune’s scripts you get the layout of the panels, balloons and boxes for free. Sometimes even a small doodle of a pose or an expression.

I spent quite a lot of time doing research for this assignment, perusing the book and the film (taking snapshots). Whenever there was a pre-existing pose, expression or image, I used it in the comic. After all this is Rune´s Story with a capital S, so I aimed at getting as much of his style into the work as I possibly could. Doing this I felt a bit like one of those restoration painters fixing up old church paintings. 🙂

The rough, my interpretation of Rune’s script. By the look of this page you can tell it was written by someone well-versed in both comics and animation. I tried to draw it that way too.

Cleaned up page for inking.

Kerstin Hamberg’s amazing ink work.

The printed page.

With Bamse och den lilla åsnan, I was approaching Rune´s drawing style from the animated cartoons. I got into Bamse while studying animation. I never saw myself as a comic artist, but Bamse seemed a good thing to do until I could find work in animation. The drawing technique is similar to that used in hand drawn animation. I also thought at the time (late 90s) that if new Bamse films would ever be made, experience from drawing the comic would come in handy when applying for the job.

Said and done. The last two months I’ve been working on the pilot/trailer for the upcoming Bamse feature film. I was part of the design team, doing character turnarounds, expression sheets, mouth charts and poses and expressions for the animatic. Veteran Bamse artist colleague Thomas Holm (the one and only) designed the backgrounds and did layouts for the animatic. The actual animation will be done elsewhere.

I don’t know how much I’m allowed to write about this before the trailer is finished. I’ve probably said too much already! What I can say though is how much I enjoyed being back in animation again. Gave me a real boost. It’s a bit like coming full circle, from where I started all these years ago. I hope to be able to work more in animation soon.

Read the second part of Bamse och den lilla åsnan in BA #8 2011, in stores 30 May!

All images in this post are ⓒ Rune Andréasson