To hear Henrik Hallgren tell it, the only major difference between his childhood and his adult life is that he doesn't have to worry about bedtime anymore. At 29, the illustrator-turned-director has not only found a way to indulge his adolescent fascinations through his work, but also to maintain a childlike sense of excitement about the process. Take, for example, his trademark storyboards, which he renders in comic form. "On most late nights after school, when Mom went to bed, I'd stay up, hiding and [illustrating]," Hallgren recalls. "And it's exactly the same thing now - I'll sit down with a storyboard and draw it like I used to do my comics."

With the help of Stockholm's Atmosfär in his native Sweden and Compulsive Pictures in the US, Hallgren has built a body of work that keeps one foot planted firmly in the realm of the unbelievable. That otherworldly feeling, he says, is the defining link that connects all his obsessions. "What I love about film is what I love about comics as well," he explains. "It's that you have to create some kind of world that adds a little twist to reality, even if it's just with sound or by how you frame something. You're creating a world within the camera."

As a teenager, the comic-obsessed Hallgren grew up wanting to be an illustrator. While still in high school, he landed a starter job with a local animation production company and gradually moved up the ladder. Although he quickly found himself at the level where he was animating his own shorts and music videos, he grew dissatisfied with animation's interminable production time, and left to focus on live-action instead. A student of films like Alien and Blade Runner, Hallgren's breakthrough short was a sci-fi piece called Citizen Ghost, which showcased his visual eye as well as his proficiency with effects.

The boards started flowing soon after; among them was a gem from Sprite, which imagined a parallel universe where man-sized hamsters presided over miniature humans on treadwheels. It was an idea that Hallgren gravitated to immediately. "It was the first spot I ever directed, but the feeling came from my short films, which were close to the dark and surreal world of comics in some ways," he says. "I knew there was something good about [that board]. The idea was clear, and I liked that there was a world with a chance to create something more around it."

Since then, Hallgren has built an impressively diverse reel, nearly all of it showcasing some sort of clever visual technique. And while he's mainly worked for European clients like Ikea, Reaal and Electrolux, he's starting to get excited about the prospect of crossing the ocean. "As it is now, it feels like I do more European and Swedish work, but suddenly everything feels so close," he says. "I want to do jobs in the US; that's definitely the plan."

Atmosfär http://www.atmosfar.se
Compulsive http://www.compulsivepictures.com