A classic Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale gets a modern new treatment in Magnus Igland and Peter Smith’s Annie-nominated short, The Swineherd. The original tale centers on a prince who disguises himself a pigherd to win the heart of a selfish princess who is only willing to give him kisses in exchange for his magical trinkets. (Gene Deitch adapted the tale into another animated short back in 1975!) The project which debuted in Europe in 2023, is produced by Tumblehead Animation Studio (Tales from the Multiverse, Ron n Ron). Møller and Smith were kind enough to answer a few of our questions via email.
Animag: Gentlemen, congrats on the Annie nomination which gives your work new visibility this year. Can you tell us a bit about how your Swineherd came to be?
Magnus and Peter: Thank you. This nomination really means the world to us. It’s what we’ve been working towards the past 13 years of our studio’s existence. Tumblehead was commissioned by Fleng Entertainment to create this short. It is being distributed in the Nordic territories as part of a Nordic Christmas TV program that consists of films from each of the Scandinavian countries. It was a real treat to work on it, and to see it side by side with other goofy Christmas shorts. Scandinavians have quite a special kind of humor, you know 🙂
What was the inspiration behind it?
The film is actually based on the short story The Swineherd by the famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes). However, we had to adapt it a bit to fit modern standards while still aligning Andersen’s timeless themes of love, vanity, and self-worth.
Did you start working on the project and which animation tools did you use to create the special look of the characters?
The project started in spring of 2022. The whole thing is produced by our studio Tumblehead in Denmark. The team consisted of 12 people all in all. We used Maya for most of the preproduction and animation. The whole thing was rendered in Redshift via Houdini.
Can you describe the visual style of the short?
Well I guess it’s kind of a 2,5D. It’s a style we worked with since our graduation film at The Animation Workshop in Denmark. Very heavily inspired by the work of the Swedish studio Meindbender, we wanted to explore how to make 3D animation more flexible and expressive. It turned out that a sort of flat UPA-like design lended itself very well to that sort of dogma. We’ve been working on refining that style ever since.
Who are some of your biggest animation influences and idols?
We like a lot of classic stuff like Tex Avery, Fred Quimby and Maurice Noble. We also really like a lot of the really goofy stop motion animation from Aardman and really crazy stuff like A Town Called Panic.
What are you working on next?
At Tumblehead, we’re always working on a few commercials, and recently released a really wacky Nike Commercial with sort of a Nightmare Before Christmas meets The Grinch kind of theme. It’s always a lot of fun working on these sorts of productions where you have a really solid reference, and you’re faced with the task to twist it into something of its own, that really stands out.
We’re also been commissioned by SideFX to do a short film as a showcase of a full production done in the new Houdini 20.5. The film is called Turbulence and it came out in January, so keep an eye out for that. We’ll also be releasing a ton of documentation and training material on how to use our pipeline in a full Houdini pipeline.
On top of that, Fleng Entertainment is developing the concept of The Swineherd into a TV series in collaboration with 13 European broadcasters, including France Television, BBC, German SWR, RTV, Denmark Radio, and more. The working title is Pig & Andersen, and we are providing our designs and creative input and expect to join the production, so stay tuned for some exciting Swineherd news in 2025! We can’t wait to see what this year will bring. One thing is for sure! The Nomination for Annie Awards gave us a fantastic start in 2025!
Watch the trailer below:
For more info, visit tumblehead.com.
