What other folks do with their graduate theses

It was my friend Jennifer's idea that we go see one of NaFF's animated shorts programs and I'm really glad she suggested it. I found that, of these, the ones I liked best were the least slick, most homemade-looking pieces and I'm thinking that's because they're less interested in creating a space that replicates the real world (in the way that obvious CG cartoons do) and are more interested in creating brand new, weirder worlds.

The program we saw contained 11 shorts and had two extras tacked onto the end for the benefit of the Film Festival jury. The first of the two extras was this retarded bit if business called Once Upon a Christmas Village. It was voiced by Jim Belushi (a farting, loogie-hocking, trash-talking Santa) and Tim Curry (a self-professed evil and, uh, bisexual (he was, indeed, quite fey) one-eyed knight), and it looked like something out of the Pixar studios-- polished to a spitshine, even! And good lord, this thing was so full of lame jokes and saccharine musical numbers that 15 minutes was really far too long. Needless to say, it was my least favorite.

My second-least favorite was probably Dandelion. I guess it was a story about a little girl and her grandfather who were mystically connected through the wonder that is dandelion seeds... except that it made even less sense than what I just said. The grandfather had some outta-control eyebrows that covered his eyes and made him seem kinda creepy and the little girl sounded as though she'd been voiced by one of the girls who voices hentai videos... except she was supposed to be a toddler, not an animated nympho. Perhaps it would've been more exciting if she WAS an animated nympho. Oh, well. This was also very computer-y-looking. Slick and pretty with no evidence of the hand of the artist. Too, too bad.

Another one that kinda falls into the slick-n-pretty category is Mirage, except that it manages to scrounge up a little more pathos. It's about a robot with a beautiful baby face who needs water to live... and climbs this big pipe sorta structure and finds the fruit of the water plant (yeah, just bear with it...), which he taps and out flops a fish... which he decides to keep as a fun glowing pet within his body cavity (which also happens to function as the robot's reservoir for water). The face of the robot is what give this short its soul. It's frightening with its human expressiveness and I wonder that the animator (Youngwoong Jang) didn't actually film a kid and then transpose the video into the CG images. I'm not sure you could animate that kinda detail with a computer alone.

And then there was a slightly disturbing thing called Atomic Bananaabout a scientist and his chimp using some sort of Pinky-and-the-Brain-esque genetic mutating machine to turn themselves into a giant banana. The final image is of one big banana, one end having the scientist's head, the other end having the chimp's head... and the chimp hungrily eating this weird scientist/monkey/banana conglomeration-- which is maybe a little cannibalistic, I guess? I mean, it was kinda funny, I guess but there's also something dirty about a giant naked banana up there on the movie screen... I'm sorry, there just is!

Among the more folksy-looking ones was Dragon, about a little girl who becomes orphaned and draws a lot of pictures... until the director of her orphanage has a gallery showing of all her drawings, claiming them as his own... and then she sics her imaginary dragon friend on him for revenge. This one's interesting because it uses several different styles of animation to cue its audience about fantasy sequences and whatnot. There's a little claymation, a little classic Disney-esque painterly-looking stuff and a little line-drawing simple animation... and the animator (Troy Morgan) does a really great job of using all these different techniques to show us his character's different headspaces. Still, it's sad has an interesting Eastern European nesting-doll quality.

The program opened with a short called One Rat Short, which is a tragic love story about a street rat and a lab rat who are not destined to end happily, due to a terrible mishap involving a Cheetohs bag. This one was probably the most realistically animated piece in the show and it was certainly cute. However, the Cheetohs bag business was in such direct reference to American Beauty (it spends a lot of time blowing in the wind, as though it's filled with a soul), that I kinda felt like, yeah, ok, I get it: the Cheetohs bag is another character. Thanks for the explication! Still, it didn't leave as many plot holes as some of the others did... and as Jen said at the end, slightly ironically, "Oh, that was very sad." Such are the lives of street rats and lab rats and Cheetohs bags. Apparently, this one won a BAFTA, though.

Probably the goofiest among them was called First Flight about a pot-bellied sad sack of a man upon whom a little bluebird chick imprints. Yep, tiny bluebird... totally convinced this big goober with an ink stain on his shirt pocket is its mother... surely, this is the stuff of greatest comedy. The whole thing is kinda ridiculously cute, all the way down to the man's impromptu wings made of yellow post-its. Endearing through and through.

There was another strange one... I guess it was about death? Or angels? Or a little girl with a bad heart? Not quite sure... but it was all done with animated etchings and the animation itself was really something to look at... all scratchy and primitive. It's called Tragic Story with a Happy Ending and it just won an honorable mention for best animation. I suppose I liked it so much because it has that old-school styling and craftsmanship that reminds you what hard work hand-animation can really be. And I don't know but I imagine there was some computer work in this piece, too, but, man, it has a beautiful old patina for being so new.

So, it looks like The Wraith of Cobble Hill won for Best College Student Animation... and this one probably had the most realist subject matter of any of them. It's exceptionally well-done clay-mation and a pretty touching story about a kid's inner conflict with regard to responsibility within his Brooklyn neighborhood community. The animator, Adam Parrish King, employs some really effective lighting techniques that remind me a little of that old black-and-white movie of the Anne Frank play. You can tell that the spaces within which he's working are tiny... but his shadows and shadings are moody and demonstrative and exacting. Really just great.

In this collection was also this year's Oscar winning animated short, The Danish Poet, which was not really my favorite of the series, but was certainly pretty good. Its animation was simple and reminded me of some of the shorts they used to intersperse into shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company. Except that it's all about the way writers influence each other and influence their cultures... and it's about simple mishaps that lead people into love. It's sweet, really.. and I might be inclined to say that it's too sweet except that there's a repeated series of frames in which a bunch of Scandinavian drunks board and deboard a boat... and it's hilarious. Oh, also, the subtle commentary about nationalistic feelings between different Scandinavian countries is pretty interesting. If you can get your hands on it, it's quite enjoyable.

Now, one of my two favorites from the main program, it seems, got an honorable mention for Best Student Animation... and that one's called Windows Masks Doors. This was probably the least narrative of all of them but it reminds me Jonathan's collection wall in the Everything Is Illuminated movie-- or a Rauschenberg sculpture or something. It's detailed and palimpsestic and crinkly and a little dirty and old-looking. It's mostly abstract but has a funky little conductor guy leading several tableau inside an ancient radio. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Sarah Orenstein, the animator, has a little Julie Taymor-like career in her future.

And for all its macabre silliness, I think I loved Ujbaz Izbeneki Has Lost His Soul most of all. It's a totally rinky-dink little Scottish clay-mation about a guy who loses stuff and ends up having to go to Hades to find his soul... and winds up losing the devil while he's there. Besides the fact that his name is Ujbaz Izbeneki, which is comical unto itself and more comical when spoken with a Scottish accent, it's got a nice little corporate-bureaucracies-are-hell attitude about it and is lovely and deadpan in its minimalism. I think I have a little crush on it, quite frankly.

And then there was the other bonus short they showed for the jury... I can't seem to find a title anywhere... but it was another favorite of mine-- with a sad lonely mousy sort of creature on a ship. Something poetic being spoken over what appear to be mostly hand-painted images... mostly gray and black and white with a trickle of red and brown now and again. Damn, I wish I could find the title!

So, most of these are the masters' theses of artists from different schools all over the place. What fun it must be to spend two or three years working on projects like these. And probably, they are as insular and idiosyncratic and academic as anyone else's graduate project but I'm really glad they have fora for greater viewership than, say, a manuscript stuck on a shelf, all nicely bound in green.... just to use a completely hypothetical example.

May you all pray that they wind up on YouTube so you can all have a look!