BDM125, BDM 126, Animation Reviews, Week of 9 March

Here are some short animated films I've watched this week.

 We watched these animations in Storyboarding this Monday.  Mac 'n' Cheese is a chase short that keeps our attention by using lots of fast paced editing and pays off with a funny joke at the end.  Four students from Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands (Tom Hankins, Gijs van Kooten, Guido Puijk, and Roy Nieterau) directed and made the short in 2011.  They followed up with:
  


 This was also a chase film, but why wasn't it as snappy as the first?  In "Save the Cat!", Blake Snyder says that a script, and ultimately the film, drags if makers "Lay too much pipe" when introducing the premise.  In the first short, we have about 15 seconds to see the characters, and then they're off.  In Supermarket, the chase doesn't start until halfway through the short.  That may not seem like much time to wait in a 2.44 film, but it really does feel like ages when compared to the first film.



My storyboarding tutor, Rachel, sent me this link because it reminded her of the script idea I'm working for in class.  I had thought about filming live action street scenes and then adding a layer of animation.  This artist, who goes only by the name Blu and lives in Bologna, Italy, appears to paint each image onto the wall and then films it, stop-motion style.  Every set of images was so interesting and could lead off on a tangent of it's own.  At over 7 minutes, it kept my attention the whole time as I waited to see what would appear next.




I typed "doll animation" into Google and this came up.  Based on a line of dolls, this short was made by students at Supinfocom  in France, 2012. It starts at Mom's grave, then sister dies, then DAD dies, and then ends with the littlest cat drowning it's toy in a bowl of milk.  Sacre' bleu. What's remarkable is that it does all of this without words.  Each scene delivers vital information and then quickly moves on.