With the Oscars just round the corner, award season is in full swing. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret of Kells, which wowed us at Annecy last year.
Closer to home, we were delighted with 4mations director Emma Lazenby’s BAFTA success last week with ‘Mother of Many’. Beating stiff competition, her team at Arthur Cox took home the Best Short Animation award for their rich tale of childbirth combining painting on glass, hand drawn and Flash animation with After Effects. And to top it off, producer Sally Arthur gave birth two days later to a baby boy. Many congratulations to both!
Don’t miss the charming interview with a slightly bewildered Emma on the BAFTA website - you’ll even discover the unusual place where she intends to keep her trophy!
February has little to recommend it. It’s grey, cold, and dull. There’s that whole ghastly business of Valentine’s day, with its deformed army of festering hearts and tedious angels. There’s Chinese New Year, which leaves me scanning the streets disconsolately for dragon dancers and illusive suckling pigs.
And then, there’s the British Animation Awards. Every two years, they delight us with a programme of animation screenings to brighten up our darkest hours. From the 8th to the 27th of February, you can catch the Public Choice screenings at a cinema near you, and vote for your favourite from a fantastic range of animated films made over the past few years.
Look out for fresh-out-of-the-oven 4mations films The Moonbird and The Astronomer’s Sun. Then get your sketchpads out, because you only have two years to get your next masterpiece finished before the next awards.
The 4mations Digital Shorts films are finally nearing the end of their assembly line. It’s been a dark, sweaty, animated summer for many of our Directors.
You’ll remember ‘Slow Joe’ from the interview we featured a few months ago with its directors Steve Boot and Phil Gray. With their Digital Short all wrapped up, they’ve put their zombie pigeon back in their coop and have shared a little highlight of their film with us:
Intrigued? Here’s what Steve had to say about the production…
There’s nothing I like more than being in a dark room with a doll, but then that’s because I’m a stop-motion animator. In fact one of the things that made me want to become a stop-motion animator was watching the old late night “4Mations” series on Channel4 and seeing films such as “The big Story” , Paul Berry’s “The Sandman” and Jeff Newitt’s “Loves me Not” . So I’m proud to have been chosen to be part of this commission. It’s been a brilliant and worthwhile experience and here are some of my highs and lows.
Highs
Being grouped together with some of the most amazingly talented animators from the other regions. It’s been great to look at their blogs, interviews and websites and see their films evolve alongside ours.
The development. It’s an exciting part, so many problems to solve, so many challenges. This is were we got to throw a lot of ideas around and really stretch our imagination.
The filming. I’m happy being in a dark room with a doll for company (have I said that already?), this is the fun part, making it all come to life.
Lows
Being grouped together with some of the most amazingly talented animators from the other regions. Sometimes I just look at their blogs/websites to punish myself, why do they all have to be so talented!? Why isn’t ours as good as theirs?
The development. It’s a stressful part, the film could go off in so many different directions, so many questions to answer, why this? Why that? What if?….. I think my head’s going to explode.
The filming. It’s a lovely summer’s day and I’m in a dark room with a doll, again!
Is a simple, touching story of a character remembered: Uncle Stephen, the smartly dressed writer of letters sitting at the kitchen table. Childhood Memories, tangents and details of family life are recalled and reexamined. The animated pen and ink drawing echoing the pen and ink writing of Uncle Stephen: crossings out, drips, things are done and re-done. It’s quietly enigmatic and poignant.
I love cardboard and I always have trouble putting it into the recycler. Yeah it might be a fire hazard and possible rat nest but you never know when it might come in handy, right?
Well, I guess Saul Freed would agree and maybe if, like him I also had some yarn, a gravelly-voiced, Jazz narrator and a talent for animation, I might be able to make something like The Red Suitcase.
There’s a whole lot of home-made charm in this animation, with its painted cardboard scenery and people that look like knitted versions of Mr Peanut’s hill-billy cousins. There’s a lot of neat story telling moments and fun in here, but there’s a serious slice of life story behind the off-cute style. It’s the small life of a fix-it man and what happens when a stranger comes to town. Someone crosses the tracks. and things change. Suffice to say it involves jazz, wicked, wicked Jazz.
My mother used to warn me that I might turn into something.
There’s a deep truth in this film. Alright, I admit it, I once had a partner and… she turned into a triangle. I didn’t deal with it very well. There, I said it. I’ve come clean. Sometimes geometry gets in the way of life. I knew somebody who turned into a rhombus. A former flatmate of mine even turned into a 4 dimensional hyper cube AHHHHHHRRRGHH! It’s a modern plague!
Yasmeen Ismail’s simple, uncluttered, hand drawn style gives this slice of life with a twist, real heart. This charming little film has genuine warmth and humour and more importantly shows how to deal with interpersonal triangulation. It turns out you need a hot oven and a tolerance for infanticide.
Doodle, doodle, doodle… Doodling is better than working. It helps you think. Think deep thoughts about the universe (does it end?) and make lists: cake, pie, chips, soap… maybe I should live in a boat?…cake. I’ve drawn a giant snail and a man with one leg longer than the other. A parrot driving a car on a world the size of a balloon held by a cat faced boy. I leave notes to my future self which I cannot decipher. I’ve done it and I’ll do it again in my sketchbook.
The Imperfectionist uses the crazy JUXTAPOSITIONS (sorry I have to break off and put 50 pence in the JUXTAPOSITION box) found in a sketchbook to tell the untidy, ink-stained story of an illustrator who has one of those god-awful, embarrassing “relationship” conversations with his mum. Its all played out across the pages of his sketchbook: giant cats, stop signs and street scenes, big sneakers and inkblots, wallpaper-balloons, funny creatures, weird birds, little people, shopping lists, a rogue-independent foot and a series of unflattering self portraits all explained by the effortlessly droll Julian Rhind-Tutt.
Are you alone? Are you some kind of man-beast unworthy of human affection? Watch this. You won’t find the secret to a healthy relationship but you will see some stylish, scribbly doodles brought to life.
We’ve featured Jon Dunleavy’s work on 4mations before. He’s currently busy working on “Crash Bang Wallow”, a 4mations Digital Shorts production with an 80s twist. In this interview, he talks to us about aliens, action, and punctuation. Punctuation?!?!?
Director Grant Orchard’s black comedy about a man who makes the mistake of going to visit a pal in small town Glaringly. It turns out to be Paranoia-central, chock full of surveillance equipment and suspicious towns folk who just can’t wait to mob-up. Our hero tries to help someone out but thanks to cctv spies jumping to the wrong conclusions and the gutter press spreading them about, he gets on the wrong side of an angry mob. It’s all done in the funky retro 8 bit style of an old timey video game.
Thank goodness this sort of thing could never happen here.
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