The Danish Poet Wins the Oscar for Best Animated Short!
HA! Dimples is in shock. Dimples loves the artful 2D animation and beautiful story of the Danish Poet, but frankly, Dimples did not think there was any chance for this to win. It’s the pick of all three on the Dimples’ team. It’s stylish and it can be enjoyed on many levels by young and old. Congratulations to Torill Kove and her team on their great win. Wowzer.
Flash Animator – Billy Bob at BillyBlob.com – Good Karma
Dimples just ran across a fascinating web site: billyblob.com. This site is the creation of some guy who is supposedly named Billy Bob. He created a flash cartoon, Karma Ghost, that made it to Sundance a few years ago. Besides cartoons, his site includes a gallery of some fine paintings. Take a look. There’s quite a bit going on at billyblob.com. A quick google didn’t turn up any personal information on Billy Bob. Dimples would appreciate any scoop you might be able to provide.
[tags]2D animation, flash animation, billy bob, billyblob.com[/tags]
Animboom Announces Six Winners of Their First Annual Animation Contest
Aniboom is a relatively new animation site that Dimples thinks hits the bullseye dead on. Youtube is fine for uploading your latest puppy and kitty videos but young animators looking for feedback on their animated shorts needed a place like Aniboom to show off their stuff. On Feb. 1, Aniboom announced their six prize winners.
- Grand Prize Winner – Bendito Machine – Dimples loves this animation. We’re not sure what the message is but we’re known for our general denseness. The animators were extremely clever with their technique in this piece as well as extremely artful in their presentation. This short deserved the big prize.
- Funny Category Winner – Humans! – This is a cute animation that is expertly done in a public service STD announcement fashion.
- Drama Category Winner – Beton – Dimples greatly enjoyed the style of this short animation. Like the grand prize winner, these folks were clever in delivering an enjoyable short film despite the simple animation. In other words, no lip synch required. This work is also timely and thoughtful as was Humans!.
- Music Video Category Winner – Mr. Fortune – You have to admire the quality of this one. The timing is perfect. It’s not a style that pleases us but you have to give high marks for technical merit.
- Crappy Category Winner – Back in Bush – Well, what can we say, this is crappy animation but it makes fun of Bush and Cheney so it’s not all bad.
- Experimental Category Winner – Chaos Theory – This is the winner that we liked least. It’s pretty and it will give your sub-woofer a workout but there’s no story and there’s no character and, as far as Dimples is concerned, that’s just boring.
While Animboom was giving out $50,000 to these winners, they were collecting a much bigger prize for themselves. From Newteevee.com:
Israeli startup Aniboom has raised $4.5 million for its emerging online animation community, which it hopes to turn into a distributed animation studio.
[tags]2D animation, aniboom, animation contest, animation winners[/tags]
The Oscar Nominees for Best Animated Short Film of 2006 are….
- The Danish Poet (National Film Board of Canada) A Mikrofilm and National Film Board of Canada Production Torill Kove
- Lifted (Buena Vista) A Pixar Animation Studios Production Gary Rydstrom
- The Little Matchgirl (Buena Vista) A Walt Disney Pictures Production Roger Allers and Don Hahn
- Maestro (Szimplafilm) A Kedd Production Geza M. Toth
- No Time for Nuts (20th Century Fox) A Blue Sky Studios Production Chris Renaud and Michael Thurmeier
All of these films may be sampled at the Oscar Showcase site.
The Danish Poet (National Film Board of Canada) was directed by Torill Kove. The film is narrated by the legendary Liv Ulman. The beautiful, whimsical 2D animation was done by Torill Kove, Astrid A. Aakra and Bjarte Agdestein. A summary of the story from the Norwegian Film Institute is shown below:
Is it possible to trace the chain of events that led to our own birth? Is our existence just coincidence? Do little things matter?
In The Danish Poet the narrator ponders these questions as we embark on a holiday to Norway with Kaspar, a poet whose creative well has run dry. As the story of Kaspar’s quest for inspiration unfolds, it appears that a spell of bad weather, angry dogs, cows that slip form barn planks, careless postmen, hungry goats and other seemingly unrelated factors might play important roles in the big scheme of things after all.
This is Kove’s second Oscar Nomination. Her first nomination was for Min bestemor strøk kongens skjorter (My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts). According to her bio at the Norwegian Film Institute she “also works as a designer, illustrator, animator and scriptwriter”
Lifted is a 5 minute 3D animated movie from Pixar Studios directed by Gary Rydstrom who has a list of credits that reach all the way to the home planet of the alien character in this movie. Lifted is scheduled for theatrical release in the summer of 2007 with Pixar’s full length feature Ratatouille. The film had only one public screening in 2006 at the Chicago Film Festival. This is Rydstrom’s first animated short film for Pixar. From the Laemmle Theatre‘s web site here is a summary of the film:
A bumbling young alien student from a distant world tests the patience of an increasingly weary instructor as he attempts a first-time abduction of a innocently slumbering farmer in Lifted, the comical latest short film from Pixar Animation Studios.
The Little Matchgirl from Disney Studios was directed by Roger Allers and is from a Hans Christian Anderson story. Allers is basically a legend in the industry. Like so many of us who love animation, the bug hit Allers at an early age. He actually “sent off to Disneyland for a do-it-yourself animation kit”. Given that sort of romantic start to a career, perhaps it’s no accident that this film is in the beautiful 2D animation style of the old-time Disney greats combined with the best computer techniques. From the IMDb Movie base here is a summary of the story:
An animated short based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about a poor young girl with a burning desire to find comfort and happiness in her life. Desperate to keep warm, the girl lights the matches she sells, and envisions a very different life for herself in the fiery flames filled with images of loving relatives, bountiful food, and a place to call home.
This film was intended to be part of set of shorts to be released for Fantasia/2000 but the project was killed. From VFXWorld:Walt Disney Pictures’ latest animated short, The Little Matchgirl, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Girl with Matchsticks,†marks the end of an era. It’s the last of the shorts highlighting international music spawned by Fantasia/2000, preceded by two Oscar nominees, Destino and Lorenzo, as well as One-By-One. It’s also the last of the works to utilize the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), the first digital ink-and-paint, compositing and rendering program for traditionally animated projects, developed by The Walt Disney Co. and Pixar. Fittingly, the first use of CAPS was on an earlier Andersen adaptation, The Little Mermaid, the feature that sparked the previous renaissance at Disney.
Maestro was directed by Geza M. Toth. Unlike most of the nominated films. Maestro is a 3D animated film and even though we prefer 2D animation, Dimples has to admit that this film is absolutely enchanting. Toth is a Hungarian film director with a fat resume. From Con-Can.com:
Geza M. Toth is a 35 years old hungarian artist, working as an animation filmmaker and lecturer for the Hungarian University of Art and Design (MIE). Created approx. 120 animation signals, commercials and short films. His productions were successfully screened at more than 50 different festivals.
And, finally, the last nominated short animated film is No Time for Nuts directed by Chris Renaud and Michael Thurmeier and it’s basically an extension of the Ice Age series. The plot summary for this one is short: “Scrat comes across a time machine and is transported to various times all in pursuit of his beloved acorn.”
Dimples wishes all of these great films the best of luck.
Ka-Chew! – Ariel Martian and Oogloo+Anju
Sometimes, it seems as though some of the best animation around is found in commercial advertising. One of the characters that tickles Dimples is Mr. Mucus from Mucinex. Mr. Mucus is a product of Ka-Chew! which is the commercial division of Klasky-Csupo. They’re the production studio that brought you the first three seasons of the Simpsons as well as the Rugrats among many others. While we generally don’t care for the rubbery feel of 3D animation, Mr. Mucus is a perfect use of 3D animation. He really looks like mucus. Perhaps we should stop calling 3D animation rubbery and start calling it phlegmy. Enough of this digression in the world of 3D, our obscure point is that often it’s the commercial advertising revenue that pays the bills allowing more interesting animation work to prosper. Among the many projects at Kachew!, the one that interests Dimples the most is the 2D animated Oogloo + Anju created for the Cartoon Network and directed by Ariel Martian. This very funny cartoon has the look and feel of the animation we live for at Dimple central and it seems that this is exactly the look that Ariel Martian sought to achieve:
It’s a sloth eat bird ice-cream world…and my network animation debut! I was going for a kinda Fleisher brothers feel with a little Pac-Man thrown in.
Take a look at Ariel Martin’s website. She’s definitely got a few things banging around in her head. And, don’t forget to try and catch Oogloo+Anju.
Bristol Animation 2006 and Joanna Quinn’s Dog
Our love affair with Joanna Quinn is almost unseemly. We can’t get enough of her drawing. There’s an interesting article in Animation World Magazine on a forum at Bristol where Quinn and her partner, Mills, discuss their work at Beryl Productions. From the Animation World article:
Quinn and Mills were surprisingly frank about their different strengths and weaknesses, and their points of disagreement (Mills, we learned, was particularly disappointed by the “dumpy mongrel” dog who plays a big part in Family Ties).
Dimples hasn’t seen Dreams and Desires – Family Ties and can’t comment on the acting of the “dumpy mongrel”. However, judging from the drawing of the dog shown above, we love him. We’re animal lovers at Dimples and one of us has a dog with that precise exhuberant expression of joy. Joanna Quinn has expertly captured “dog soul” in this drawing.
Read our earlier post on Daniel and Tom’s animation win (T.O.M.) at Bristol 2006 for a comment from Daniel saying that they’re going to be at Sundance along with Joanna Quinn.
[tags]2D animation, Bristol 2006, Joanna Quinn, Beryl Productions[/tags]
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