Professional portfolio
Drivers of the Apocalypse is a bonkers action driving combat game set in the apocalyptic plains. You play as Artemis, a junior mercenary working for the hottest startup, Thunder Strike Force. Your job is to help your clients overcome their “problems” but then a personal tragedy strikes…
A short film we created with our daughters when they were 3 & 8. Both of them also drew the characters they acted. This was a lovely little weekend project!
| Animation: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Screenplay | Myy Kemppainen, Ruu Kemppainen, Kiia Kemppainen |
| Illustrations: | Myy Kemppainen, Ruu Kemppainen, Kiia Kemppainen, Jussi Kemppainen |
| Voices | Myy Kemppainen, Ruu Kemppainen, Kiia Kemppainen, Jussi Kemppainen |
Iron Danger is my debut PC/PS5/XBOX game as a game director.
It is a game all about maximising your actions in combat with the help of infinite redos and intuitive trial and error. It is basically a gamified combat sequence animation tool (so cool)!
Gamescom 2019 Best experience: Winner
Best creative achievement of the year 2020: Winner
Big screen game of the year 2020: Nominee
Finnish game of the year 2020: Nominee
Best of E3 2019: Nominee
A lot of games market themselves as being built around a “unique” mechanic. And while 90% of the time these mechanics are not in fact unique, every so often you get one that’s the real deal, and this tactical RPG with functional time travel is certainly one of ’em.
Iron Danger was released for PS5 and Xbox S/X in 2023. Gamepad controls were finally added to the game and I think this is the best way to experience the game.
Iron Danger is a tactical combat game with a unique time manipulation mechanic. A never before seen combination that blends the tactical depth of turn-based games with the exciting action of real-time games.
Tackle challenging encounters with your party of two characters, using a variety of skills and highly interactive environments.
Maybe you will set an enemy on fire and kick them into a grain field for a proper barbeque, or set up a trap and fell a tree on top of them. The options are endless and it is you who will be deciding your own approach!
The core of Iron Danger is its unique time control mechanic. You can rewind time for up to 5 seconds whenever you want, trying different strategies and combinations of moves until you find the right one for the task at hand.
The time manipulation allows us to combine real-time combat gameplay with controls from more traditional, tactical turn-based combat games. This gives tactical combat a puzzle-like element, as you can continuously keep trying new approaches to turn impossible odds to your advantage and synchronize the actions of your characters for the perfect outcome.
You will die, but you will not fail!
Iron Danger is set in a world of lofty fells, primeval forest, and placid lakes… as well as living gods and monsters of steel. The city of Kalevala, home of the humans who rebelled against the gods and forsook their protection, shines in the middle of this world, surrounded by towns, sea lanes and and woodlands under its protection.
But from the frozen north, a witch queen is leading her army on a quest for vengeance against the lords of Kalevala. Ancient ruins from the days when gods dwelled on the earth are opening to unleash forgotten powers, tempting humans and striving to overtake the world.
You’ll take on the role of Kipuna, a sharp-witted village girl, who becomes imbued with an ancient power that grants dominion over time and death. You must use your wits to control it as you’re drawn into the midst of a war between the city of Kalevala and the armies of the Northlanders driven by their witch queen Lowhee.
Your task is to master the power, in order to use it for mankind’s protection, while your enemies will seek to harness it in the service of total destruction.
Use unique time-rewind mechanics and experience a new take on tactical combat combining best aspects of real-time and turn-based combat.
Use highly interactive environment for your advantage to succeed against impossible odds.
Adventure in a world of steampunk fantasy and meet its unique inhabitants inspired by Finnish folklore.
Fight epic boss monsters on the path to fulfill your destiny.
No grinding; character progression pace is controlled by the story and every fight matters.
15+ hours of gameplay
PC Invasion – 90
“Iron Danger is a fun game that takes us to fantasy Finland and lets us play with time. This is a surprisingly good combination before you take interactive environments and the vibrant art style into account. If you want to play a fantasy RPG that’s lighter on the RP and heavier on G(ameplay), try this one out.”
DarkStation – 90
“From its inception to the execution, Iron Danger showcases a rare, coherent vision where everything comes together to form a unified experience, not least because of truly novel gameplay that holds it all together. I’m afraid that Iron Danger has spoiled other games in its genre for me. I can no longer imagine playing formulaic fantasy tropes with rigid combat and eternally repeated, tired systems.”
Player2 – 83
“Iron Danger feels like a breath of fresh air for CRPGs. While not a perfect game, its unique, time-based combat system is a pure joy to play with and worth the price of admission alone.”
I created this trailer from a level I made for Iron Danger. The VFX, models and animations I used we from the game, but naturally I had to create custom animators and special versions of the particle systems to create a frozen in time effect. An effect the game leans heavily on, as time stands still while you plan your next moves.
The title sequence for a Finnish TV show Aallonmurtaja. Directed by Tero Ahonen.
A promotional video created for a mobile VR app startup.
The video is actually made to be experienced in 360 VR.
My company, VAU, produced the visuals and the tools for all the stages at Slush 2015.
A live visual VJ set for Meidän Festivaali celebrating Jean Sibelius and especially his wife, Aino. Together with my brother we produced visuals for 4 concerts in total.
We did not know of the performances in advance, so I built a live visual set capable of adapting to any type of music. All effects were reactive to the music being played and we could control things by hand as well during the live performance. 2 persons were required to control the visuals and keep them going at all times. It felt like playing an instrument as a member of the band. We could play off of the performers and they of us as they were encompassed by the screen.
I also designed the stage which was a first for me.
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Illustrations: | Antti Kemppainen |
| Director of Photography: | Toni Pasanen |
A proof of concept trailer directed by Sami Timonen for an Iron Danger movie. This is a standalone piece separate from the game production with the same name.
A live performance by Petteri Sariola. Directed by me.
In this presentation I describe the creation of the 3D-like rigging in Adobe After Effects to produce 2D animation with hand-drawn qualities for Angry Birds Toons.
Check out the end result while you are at it:
Adobe: How did Rovio Animation get started? Kemppainen: After Rovio’s amazing success in mobile gaming, the company decided to expand its offerings to include more entertainment and publishing offerings. I founded a studio in 2007 named Kombo, which Rovio purchased in 2010. I then became one of the co-founders of Rovio Animation and was responsible for creating an Adobe After Effects rigging system for the characters in the Angry Birds Toons cartoon. provideocoalition.com
A live performance by Petteri Sariola. Directed by me.
A live performance by Petteri Sariola. Directed by me.
A live performance by Petteri Sariola. Directed by me.
An Angry Birds collage music video for Ted Striker. Directed by me.
| Direction: | Jukka Salo |
| DoP: | Toni Pasanen |
| Post Production: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Screenplay: | Jussi Kemppainen, Jukka Salo |
| Illustration: | Antti Kemppainen |
An entry we did for the uneton 48 movie competition where the idea is to make a movie in 48 hours. This time the jury failed to see the greatness of our masterpiece.
An Angry Birds Space announcement video. Actually filmed in space! Most viewed video I directed to date: over 30 million views.
Uncut version at NASA’s channel.
A corporate video created for Nokia Siemens Networks.
An entry we did for the uneton 48 movie competition where the idea is to make a movie in 48 hours. We won the audience choice award.
Audience Choice Winner
Finalist
A corporate video created for Halton indoor climate solutions. I did the direction on this one.
We made a number of different company presentation videos at Kombo, many of them very nice in their respective ways like this one, but they are almost all lost to time.
Silver
Shortlist
A short animated film about 2 mail-robots that encounter an abandoned package. I was contacted by the director duo Mariko & Ismo after they had seen my music video Pieni ja Ihmeellinen. They loved its style and wanted to create an animated movie using the same visual style.
This time we went even bolder with matching various animation styles and we introduced traditional stop motion puppet animation and servo controlled robots. We also expanded our use of costumed live action elements as parts of puppets.
A music video for Collarbone. Directed by Jukka salo and me.
A set of advertisements for a finnish national betting company. Character design bt Lauri Konttori. Directed by me.
I got this gig just when I was returning from a holiday. I spent the whole trip home playing the song on a loop and feeling the visuals that it would give me. The idea I got was to visualise the DAW software: to replace each and every bar of music with a copy of the band member playing the correct part of the song.
When I presented this idea to Osmo, he had just one catch: he played most of the instruments himself. The last video we did together featured multiple copies of him! I was still so exited about the DAW idea that I did this video with my original idea anyway.
Maybe this is a trilogy? With the last video still to be made?
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Director of Photography: | Toni Pasanen |
| Grip: | Lauri Konttori, Jyri Sääksjärvi |
A ad for donations to help the finnish war veterans. Created from actual war-time photographs.
Fun facts: Made from concept to final video in 3 days in a very high fever with a laptop at home. 1 day / setup. Uses basic camera projection techniques, but I wanted to move the camera "too much" to make it more interesting.
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Director of Photography: | Toni Pasanen |
| Director: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Director of Photography: | Toni Pasanen |
| Gaffer: | Ville Vainio |
| Grip: | Sami Kustila |
| Animators: | Jussi Kemppainen, Ilmari Hakkola, Lauri Konttori, Tuomas Gustaffson |
Shortlist
A live performance of a song by Osmo Ikonen. All video material is of the actual takes.
The story behind this video is pretty freaky. I had discovered this cool Myspace artist, Osmo Ikonen, that was on heavy rotation at our animation studio office. We had listened to his stuff for maybe a week and I suddenly got a phone call from an unknown number. To my amazement, the caller was Osmo Ikonen, asking if I would like to direct a music video for him.
Of course I did – free of charge!
I can no longer remember where I got the idea for the duplicated people from, but needless to say I am into Michel Gondry big time!
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Performers: | Osmo Ikonen, Petteri Sariola |
| Director of Photography: | Toni Pasanen |
| Sound engineer: | Niklas Nylund |
The animation and post production for this film celebrating an update of a Finnish financial magazine was created by me and Ilmari Hakkola in one week. We combined 3D, after effects and some filmed elements.
A teaser video for a new kind of note reading teaching method. Created at Kombo in the year 2008.
| Director | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Screenplay | Lauri Konttori |
| Illustrations | Lauri Konttori |
| Director or Photography | Toni Pasanen |
| Producer | Katja Kostiainen |
| Compositing | Jussi Kemppainen, Ilmari Hakkola |
| 3D Modeling | Jussi Kemppainen |
| 2D Animation | Lauri Konttori |
| 3D Animation | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Costume Designer | Anna Vilppula |
| Voiceover | Jarmo koski |
| Editing | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Color Grading | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Crew: | Antti Kemppainen, Vältsy, Sorjola, Jyrki Kemppainen Turkka Parviainen, Topi Kemppainen |
| Direction: | Jussi-Petteri Kemppainen |
| Performers: | Antti Kemppainen, Jyri Sääksjärvi, Paavo Vartiainen, James Barnes, Heidi Kauppinen |
| Drivers: | Tiia Arnberg, Jyrki Kemppainen |
A music video for Waurio. Directed by Lauri Konttori.
A music video for Retropop.
For the longest time I had this idea of a music video with very very small planets. I tried to shop it around for quite a while without finding a great song to make it for. Then Universal luckily had a song about small planets as well and the rest is history!
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Screenplay: | Lauri Konttori |
| Puppets and Miniatures: | Lauri Konttori, Jussi Kemppainen, Antti Kemppainen |
| Wardrobe: | Mirkka Kallio |
| Gaffer: | Toni Pasanen, Lauri Konttori |
| Grip: | Antti Kemppainen, Jyrki Kemppainen |
| Drawings: | Lauri Konttori, Tommi Ojala |
| Thanks: | Jyri Sääksjärvi, Tero Ahonen, Riitta Kemppainen Roosa Saarinen, Alex Keskitalo, Vanessa Riki, Markus Kallio Topi Kemppainen, Anna Kemppainen, Mikko Haapala, Arttu Kotisara |
Audience Choice Winner
These photos are from my archives from all the way back in 2007
A music video for Pooma. Shot by me, my dad and brother Antti at our summer cottage during one rainy night using self-built camera wire rig and a dolly.
I actually had to shoot the cabin sections twice, because it was so dark and the image vas unusably noisy on the first go. GH5s or Alpha 7 s camera would have been a something!
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Grip: | Christoffer Forssell, Juuso Kemi, Antti Kemppainen, Jyrki Kemppainen |
| Thanks: | Jere Leskinen, Arttu Kotisara, Tuire Lukka |
Honorary Mention
Video content for Nokia Non Stop Living website. Shot and directed by me. This was my first commercial advertisement job. And this case actually prompted us to found the animation studio Kombo.
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Audio: | Ilmari Hakkola |
| Art Direction: | Marko Vuorensola |
| Production: | Cao Quintas |
Shortlist
Honorary Mention
Site of the day 8.10.2007
A music video for Traffic Island. Directed by Jukka Salo, Juhani Koivumäki & Jussi Kemppainen.
A music video for Jonna Tervomaa, co directed by me and Jukka Salo.
A music video for Valvomo. I did all of the Prost production for this.
A music video for Valvomo. Directed by Jukka salo & Juhani Koivumäki.
In memory of Markus.
A music video for Zarkus Poussa. A story about a couple who can not stop fighting but can not break up either.
The first music video I have ever directed. This made me quit my then on-going game development career and go into video production for almost 10 years.
| Direction: | Jussi Kemppainen |
| Screenplay: | Jussi Kemppainen, Zarkus Poussa |
| Actress: | Minna Puolanto |
| Thanks | Jyrki Sukula, VIA ravintola |
Honorary Mention
