The Animation Show 2005

If you are in Charlottetown and haven't seen The Animation Show 2005 at City Cinema yet, go see it. I was smiling through the whole thing, something which only really good music and creatively-done animated art can do to me.

Short descriptions of each of the shorts are here:



(Some of these are from Vol. 1)

The ones that I loved the most were:

“Ward 13” (Trailer) - a stop-motion story of a car accident victim trying to escape from an insane hospital where the doctors are all trying to kill him. It's as well-directed and sequenced as any action film, and the pace is constant. The claustrophobic indoor shots make you wince when the protagonist flies around a corner in a wheelchair or is cornered by a cthulu-like fellow patient.

“When the Day Breaks” (Clip) - This is why my heart will continue to race when I see the National Film Board of Canada logo. The white background and pencilly-looking drawings seems to be a common theme among Canadian animation artists, probably the most famous example of that is “The Man Who Planted Trees” (The original story is online, read it if you haven't. It will bring tears to your eyes.) What made this one so great was the rotoscoping of the actors, who managed to convincingly act out how a humanoid rooster or pig might move, and then the way the film was transferred from VHS to 35 millimeter which gave it all a very eerie, not-fully-there look. Beautiful.

Also, the sound was so incredibly detailed, where you could hear the humming of the alternating current going into a toaster to the mundane sounds of every day life. It gives you the impression that these are events that really did happen, but you are seeing a dream-like representation of the visuals. You could close your eyes and get a perfect impression of the story.

“The F.E.D.S.” - This is rotoscoped animation in the style of Waking Life, depicting the jobs of those people in the supermarket who offer free samples. What I noticed about this was that the two 'customers' in the film are not given full stature as humans. Where one of the food service people who wears glasses has her eyes drawn fully behind them, a 'customer' who complains about the name is drawn with opaque, reflective glasses that obscure his eyes. Another customer, who asks annoying questions and takes too many free samples, is never shown from the front. Even though the food service people are drawn with different colours, from blue to light green, while the customers' skin is close to their presumed actual skin tone, seeing the full facial features of the protagonists gives them a much more empathetic representation.

Just like Waking Life, if it wasn't for the animation techniques, the subject matter would have put me to sleep.

A running theme through most of the shorts was a lot of violence. Violence in animation is nothing new, of course, ever since SteamBoat Itchy we've known that it's funny to watch animated creatures get hurt. This new style doesn't shy away from the consequences of violence, though, with a dog dragging his dead master home after his walk in “Guard Dog” to the nearly true-to-life image of an accident we see in “When the Day Breaks”, while it still made me laugh, this was more of the 'I'm laughing but you probably aren't' kind of reaction.

Anyway, go watch this, and I'm definitely getting the DVD of Vol. 1.
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