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Out of Sight
Another inspiring student animation, this time from Taiwan. Heartwarming and full of quiet wonder. Enjoy!
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Le Royaume
I’ve seen plenty of impressive animation come out of the Gobelins school, but this one blew me away. An obvious homage to Hayao Miyazaki — both in form and content — “Le Royaume” is fun, expressive, visually delicious, and true to its point. Hats off to the team behind this film. Enjoy the short!
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Flat Life
I like the deceptive simplicity of this short from Belgium. Little pieces of the typical human drama play out in subtle, quirky ways. Stick with it through the end credits for the real ending. Well, it’s an “ending” in a delightfully cyclic sense. To me, it nicely wraps up the metaphor of the apartment as ...
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The Pumpkin of Nyefar
Now this is my favorite kind of animation: whimsical, joyful and freewheeling; but not random for randomness’ sake. Co-written by Maurice Noble, who sadly didn’t live to see the finished short. This is a great example of limited animation that doesn’t feel limited. Enjoy! Question: How do you keep creativity alive in the face of ...
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The Lady And The Reaper: more CG cartoon fun
I just saw this oscar-nominated short. It’s not everyday we get to see fun, cartoony exaggeration done right in CG. This one’s well done, and nicely storyboarded too. When Pixar’s Presto came out, I was pretty excited to see cartoon animation in CG. Over time I’ve realized that while Presto had some great movement, the ...
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Lessons from Norstein
A few weeks ago, Michael Sporn reproduced a compelling magazine article from 1980, written by Russian animator Yuri Norstein. I must confess, I’ve only seen one of his films, but it was unforgettable! It’s called Hedgehog in the fog. Reading the article got me thinking about the medium of animation; I’m quoting my favorite lines ...
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Zoetrope fun
Two things I’m a sucker for: Stop-motion, and old proto-animation toys like the Zoetrope. The two come together neatly in this recent commercial:
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La Maison en Petits Cubes
or “The House of Small Cubes”, if you so prefer. Whatever the name, it’s a deeply elegant and touching animated short. If the goal of art is to evoke and amplify what it is to be human, then this short IS art. Directed by Kunio Kato. Winner of the 2009 Academy award for best animated ...
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Where do we feel?
I recently stumbled across some interesting research in the field of emotions. The author, apparently a graphic designer from the UK, asked several people to relate emotions like anger, fear, joy, sadness and love to the part(s) of the body where they feel these emotions. They indicated their responses on an outline drawing of the ...