Viewing entries tagged with 'animation'
Digital Sushi
On January 22nd there will be the first filmfestival of my uni: digital sushi. There some short films which were created by students will be screened. Among them is The Robbery which I made in 2003 at Creative Media, Melbourne.
The festival is located in the Conrad Sohm club, Dornbirn, Austria. Entrance time is from 8 pm and it will start at around 9 pm with a party afterwards. The cost is 5 Euros minimum, the proceeds will be distributed to Licht ins Dunkel, an organization for social projects.
So if you feel like it and you are around then, just come over. I am sure it's gonna be a nice evening. And, hey, it's the Austria - actually the Europe premiere!
Melbourne International Film Festival
Once again the Melbourne International Film Festival is screening a very nice and special programme of films you can´t see at the big screen usually. I went to a few of those during this 52nd festival.
The "animation shorts programme #1" showed films like the British Aardman "Presentators" (three really great characters) and "Angry Kid" (not the most secret tip), "Atama Yama" by Koji Yamamura (the story is about a man who drowns in a pond located on his own head - weird and in a very nice style) or "Penguin Parade" (too slow, too long and too predictable for me - which is too bad for all the hard work for this stop motion animation). "I´m A star" (see image above) is a rather weird Austrian animation/collage about a macholike guy who had seen better days. "Flat" is a stop motion animation about the happenings in an appartment building - I really like the style. "Mother Tongue" is a piece about a Korean girl and her lost mother tongue (nice style, but I doubt that the audience really cares about the character). "Pan With Us" is a nice experimental work based on a poem by Robert Frost in a style I have not seen before throughout a whole piece. The real environment becomes part of the aninmation, or precisely it´s the other way around: the animation becomes part of the real environment. The Russian animation "Hash" tells the story of the three little pigs including some unexpected happenings. "The Pirate" is a very nice Czech animation about a pirate whose centre of interest is the bottle (of rum) and who has to get over some adverse conditions to keep his lifestyle. Here and there a bit too long, but alltogether very nice. The animations shorts programme finished with "Mood Motions", a great piece about how hard life can be when you are an abstract. Simple, funny, good.
The Robbery
This is the protagonist of my new animation »The Robbery«. Handdrawn again, because I prefer the style to vector graphics. It was the major project here during my stay at Creative Media, RMIT university, Melbourne. The originally planned 2 1/2 minutes grew to a 5 1/2 minutes epos, however, I enjoyed the work - although, as usual, I guess I can´t see it any more for the next few months. If I got the muse then I´d like to change the voices which I am not so happy with - but I just didn´t have enough time left to do so before the due date.
Thanks to Moira Corby, Aaron McLoughlin and Felix Hude (whose advice to "drop every concept which is deep and meaningful" had quite a big influence on this work).
So, please enjoy: »The Robbery«
By the way, I shrinked the filesize of my first animation, Café IMPERIAL to much nicer 10 MB instead of the more than 20 MB before. No quality loss.
Café IMPERIAL
I finished my first (handdrawn) animation in November 2002 at Creative Media, RMIT university.
Special thanks to Felix Hude.
The story in brief: An ignoring waiter and an unfriendly customer is enough to make a situation delicious.
Now you can watch Café IMPERIAL online.
Enjoy!
Computers are Useless, They Just Give Answers.
That´s a graffito on a wall in Melbourne. And the most important thing I learnt here in my semester abroad in Melbourne so far. Computers are a tool to realize ideas, but not to develop them. It´s as simple as that. However, it´s the main problem of in the first place multimedia students and also of people working in other fields. The approach of assignments is completely different here. Whilst at the FH Vorarlberg in Austria most of the students started to work on the computer at once, here at RMIT in Melbourne the computer enters the stage at a very late moment. I don´t say that the Austrian uni is that bad at all (it is not), but the kind of understanding multimedia work is obvious: on the one hand the technical equipment is really great, on the other hand there is not offered a drawing course to improve (or even get into) drawing scetches. There is nothing that´s worth more in developing ideas than to roughly (and quickly) bring it to paper. Technique is more important than ideas? This is wrong. It makes us to people who just do their jobs without thinking about it. The modern assembly line designer.
What´s worth more? A perfect 3d animation with a lousy idea or a simple scetch people can laugh about? Final Fantasy or Gary Larson? Without a good idea it´s not worth to start a work. You might love your photorealistic scenery, the audience doesn´t give a shit on the technique if you bore them. And THEY are right.
The Monster in My Mind
This is Gobbom, the main character of the short film which I will do this semester in animation class. He will get angry for about half a minute, which is all I want to tell you right now about the story. I was looking for a protagonist for some time and suddenly, this Monday morning, I remembered Gobbom, who I met the first time about two years ago. I knew he would be the best cast to get this job done.
I am Angry!
This is the title of the exercise for Felix´ animation class:
»In brief:
1. Think of something you are angry at.
2. Record a 30 second tirade about the subject.
3. Bring the recording to Animation class...«
»Have courage - the object of the exercise is to look idiotic. Why? Because idiotic characters are interesting.«
»Bring the recording in to class (...). We will play them in class and laugh at each other. The person voted most ridiculous by the group will win a nice cake - supplied by me.«
Sounds easy? It is not. Not at all. It was a very hard assignment for me, really. It´s a very rare experience for me to get angry. But in the end listening to all of the tirades in class was really great fun! Just try yourselves and get angry!
Just one thing which is not so plain to me: Where´s that cake, Felix?
Genesis
And this is the story how everything began, my way to Melbourne. I wrote this for the animation and animation workshop class of Mr. Felix. I am sure that it is not what he expected (or wanted?) me to write, but - to be honest - for me it was the attempt to tell a boring story in a more exciting way. So I just took him at his word: »There is no right or wrong, there is only interesting or uninteresting.« I wonder if he reads this now (Hello Felix!).
The reason for this biblical headline maybe comes from a few animation short films about the ten commandments by Phil Mulloy which I saw on the Melbourne International Film Festival yesterday. Dark British humor, but the characters in the Austrian movie »Hundstage« (dog days) by Ulrich Seidl were much worse.
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