Elk Hair Caddis: More CG Cartoon Fun

Check out this impressive student animation from Denmark. “Elk Hair Caddis” is Peter Smith’s graduation film, and it just makes me eager to see what he’ll come up with next. Granted, it’s inspired (and he lists his inspirations on the vimeo page for the film); but he’s drawing inspiration from the right places and it’s a nice team effort.

Watch the film:


The “Making Of” is even more interesting to me. If you saw Meindbender’s stop-motion inspired CG rigs, you’ll really appreciate this attempt to get some of that flexibility in a student film character.

I like the combination of miniatures and CG — It brings together the hand-crafted feel of practical elements with the flexibility of animating a CG character. Sure, it’s more work, but the result is worth it. Speaking of more work: The character rigs aren’t exactly action-figure-simple, but that’s true of any good cartoon rig. CG cartoon animation calls for carefully, patiently crafting every pose; not very far from drawn animation but far enough that it has its own place. While it borrows a lot from stop-mo and drawn animation, it adds its own unique touch and does what only it can do.

More on that later.