When Sveinbjörn J. Tryggvason decided to come to VFS, he thought he’d be pursuing visual effects. After all, he had animation experience already, from a stint at Iceland’s School of Multimedia. But once he arrived in our 3D Animation & Visual Effects program, he felt the pull of the animation stream. The result is his final project, friends?, which is already getting attention – not to mention a front-page plug on CGSociety.

He calls the move to a character animation focus “a switch that I certainly don’t regret.”

“I went into the program with the hopes of learning pretty much everything: new ideas, new techniques, new ways of thinking and working. I learned a lot of those things and somehow I think that I don’t yet realize how much exactly.”

friends? is a good example of a story-first principle. Oh, and it’s got charm coming out the wazoo. Part of that comes from the pitch-perfect music – provided by Sveinbjörn’s brother, Einar Sverrir Tryggvason – but it’s really all about the simple visual style.

“I just really wanted to focus on the story and animation and not get caught up in modeling and texturing,” he explains. “A couple of years ago [in Iceland] I did another 3D animated short titled ‘Kulan’, and that one spun a little bit out of control and I ended up wasting too much time modeling unnecessary props. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen on this short.”

You can see friends? for yourself on Sveinbjörn’s personal site.