Part II of my re-cap of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Mr. Schwarz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker

Okay, So this category is divided into three sections: High School; Undergraduate; and Graduation.

High School Animation The main thing here, the very best thing, is that there are high schools out there dedicated to encouraging their students to make cartoons. And pretty good ones, too. My favorite film here was by Hye Jin Park, Hyun Joo Song, Ji Na Yoon, and Min Hee Jang from Korean Animation High School. “Black Box” featured a TV-addicted bear finding out what really goes on inside the black box.

Black Box

Undergraduate Animation Without a doubt, ”Le Building”, by Marco Nguyen, Pierre Perifel, Xavier Ramonede, Olivier Staphylasm and Remi Zaarour at Gobelins in France. I feel everyone and his mom has seen this short short by now (we even featured it in a Channel Frederator episode a while back). Click here to see it. I never get tired of watching this cartoon.

Dachau Near Munich

Graduation Animation. Really tough call. My favorite screening at last year’s festival was the student screening. This year, the student films were folded into the five shorts screenings. Pound for pound, these films stood out as the most exciting of the festival, at least to me. I keep going over the eight graduate cartoons here, and after narrowing it down to two – Frederik Ring’s “Dachau Near Munich” and Stefan Mueller’s “Mr. Schwarz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker”, I’m going to have to go with the latter. The two films couldn’t be more different (except they’re both German). Mueller’s film was the quickest 7:40 of the festival. And it was funny, too.

One quick note: My three picks above all were featured in Short Competition 5, which featured fifteen films. It was an awesome screening, every cartoon just extremely good, in my opinion.

For the categories above, the Ottawa jury awarded “Le Building” and “Mr. Schwarz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker” first place prizes with “Black Box” receiving Honorable Mention in the high school category. The nifty one-minute Flash film, “Check, by Canada’s Samuel MacKinnon, won that prize. And Chris Choy’s “The Possum” received and an honorable mention for his undergraduate CalArts film.

Congratulations, everyone. I hope your films reach animation lovers everywhere.

Still from “Le Building”

Still from “War Photographer”

The results are out for the Ottawa International Film Festival. It has been announced that Joel Trussel’s musical viking march to Jason Forrest’s “War Photographer”, and the Gobelins film, “Le Building”, have both won their respective categories.

“War Photographer” Took Best Commissioned Music Video, and “Le Building”, Best Undergraduate Student Short.

If you haven’t seen them yet, “War Photographer” can be found on Channel Frederator Episode 2, and “Le Building” can be located on Episode Numero Five!

Congrats again guys. It was a well deserved victory.

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Melissa

Well the first few backgrounds are trickling in from our insanely talented bg artist, Dan Chessher. Dan’s cut his teeth on coloring such amazing hit shows like, FAIRLY ODD PARENTS (never heard of it) and DANNY PHANTOM, a show about a dead kid or something.

(CLICK ON ALL OF THEM FOR LARGER PICTURE)

Look at the amazing candy coated colors and textures! Dan did a great job interpreting Jim Worthy’s layout and endured my endless backlash and incessant requests to change this, shade that, texure this. And then change it all back when I realized I was wrong.

I think we also get the award for longest BG pan in this Seasons batch of shorts.

Don’t you just want to lick your screen? Don’t do it though!!! You could get a mild electric shock. And people look at you really weird if you get caught. I haven’t seen Alan look at me like that since I played “Popeye the Sailorman” with a kazoo inserted in my buttocks at his wedding.

Bloggingly yours, Alan and Manny

Seems as if we had some internet gremlins gum up our scheduled cartoon with some technical glitches earlier this morning. Sorry about that! If you never downloaded the defective version of today’s cartoon, just charge ahead as usual. If you have already downloaded the incomplete version, go here.

Anyway, the Just Plain Weird Week installment you were supposed to see, “It’s A Bird,” comes direct from our Wotthehell Department. It’s the story of a guy looking for a metal eating bird, using a worm dipped in aluminum paint as bait. Sounds plausible.

We owe this early 30’s bit of whimsy to the imagination of circus performer turned sign painter turned pioneer animator turned silent movie comedian turned sporadically employed Renaissance man, Charley Bowers. For decades, the guy was a footnote to a footnote in cinema history, but his odd mixture of live action comedy and goofball puppet animation has been somewhat re-discovered in recent years. What else? Oh, yeah — his character designs look like they were a big inspiration to Dr. Seuss.

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Dave Kirwan

One small girl battles the creatures that stole her heart, using the only weapons she has…

Creator Kelly Matten completed Paper Hearts in two years, and in two countries. All of the pencil animation was done while on exchange at Gobelins l’école de l’image in France, while the storyboarding, coloring, and post production were done in America.

This is a wonderfully told story, heightened as well with the musical talents of KiloWatts and Nathan Board.

Thanks so much Kelly!

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Melissa

Larry Huber, co-creator of “Bitboy” is in Korea right now checking in on his show which is being animated over there, but he has provided us with some terrific stills. Here are a few background layouts of Dr. Dee’s laboratory. There are plenty more where these came from, and I’ll be helping to post in Larry’s absence. When Larry gets back from his Korean excursion, I may even get a quote from him!

Melissa

You can have all your fancy shcmancy computer age morphing — back in the 1920’s, pioneer animator http://www.ottomessmer.com/]Otto Messmer[/link] was a master at transforming cartoon characters into different cartoon characters. Check out today’s ReFrederator offering, “Felix Woos Whoopee” starring everyone’s favorite feline, Felix the Cat. Elephants turn into apes.

Snake monsters with feet turn into cute little cars.

All of which shouldn’t amaze our hero too much, since his own tail is just as likely to change into a walking stick, lit cigar or the ubiquitous question mark at a moment’s notice.

You never know what things will turn into here at ReFrederator during our Just Plain Weird Week.

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Dave Kirwan

Part I of my Ottawa International Animation Festival re-cap.

“Rabbit”

There were a few films I really enjoyed in this competition, which is divided into two sub-categories: Narrative Short Animation and Experimental/Abstract Animation.

I’m not a huge fan of experimental animation, and although the programmers divvied up just eleven nominated shorts across five screenings, it still seemed there were a lot more than that (maybe it’s because the student experimental films were thrown in the mix as well). Most of them I forgot quickly, but the one I remember most was “Jeu” by Switzerland’s Georges Schwizgebel. The festival’s jury awarded “Jeu” Best Experimental/Abstract Animation under 35 Minutes.

“Carnival of the Animals”

There were a bunch of good films in the Narrative category, as usual. There were also four or five films that made me want to jump off a cliff. I especially loved Obom’s “Here and There”, “Tiger” by Guilherme Marcondes, Jonas Odell’s “Never Like the First Time!”, Run Wrake’s “Rabbit”, and “Carnival of the Animals” by Michaela Pavlatova. However, by a smidgeon, my favorite film – the one I’d encourage friends to see first – was Joanna Quinn’s “Dreams & Desires: Family Ties”. I couldn’t understand a word spoken in the film, but it was such an enjoyable short from beginning to end. Quinn’s film won this year’s Nelvana Grand Prize for Best Independent Short Animation. “Here and There” took home Best Narrative Short under 35 Minutes honors, while “The Carnival of the Animals” received an Honorable Mention. Try and track down all of them.

Congratulations to the filmmakers.

Okay. What we were thinking, see, was a week of off-the-page oddball cartoons — a collection of films just a little too offbeat to classify as anything else than Just Plain Weird. We’re outta the box today with “Felix Woos Whoopee” wherein Felix the Cat ties one on, then stumbles home to face the wrath of Mrs. the Cat. In between he encounters an endless series of hallucinations ranging from rubber sidewalks to gorilla monsters with little angle wings. Except maybe he DIDN’T go out that night, ‘cuz the whole thing turns out to be a dream in the end. I think. Hard to tell. Well — rest assured, this is a crazy one.

As they say, I’ll have what HE’s drinking.

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Dave Kirwan

So Melissa, Fred, and I are back in the States now that the 30th Ottawa International Animation Festival is over and done with. For a variety of reasons, I had a much better time at last year’s shindig. Over the next few days, I’ll give a re-cap of what my favorite films were and what I would’ve chosen as the winner of each category. I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats.

Festival Highlight: Why, the Channel Frederator party Thursday night, of course. Crush, Kill, Destroy indeed.

Oh, and the city of Ottawa is too gorgeous for words.

Festival Lowlight: Literally minutes after a fatal traffic accident, with the corpse still lying outside the screening theatre, misanthropic festival director Chris Robinson, in his opening remarks, making a joke about the tragedy.

More fun and games to follow throughout the week.