Pen over pixels


Lots of buzz this week over the feature length animated film nominees, notably that Lego Movie walked away with so little. Given that some recent posts here touched on David O'Reilly's perspective about what makes animation authentic, it was interesting to see this decision from that angle. In that artistry itself, not slickness nor commercial popularity, keeps an animation project fresh and ultimately alive. Check out this quick summary of how the award process works for animated films, which is different from that for other categories. Of course, winning an award is hardly the measure of what is good, and in the Lego Movie, I really liked the mix of slick computer generated effects with less sophisticated frames (I mean, Vesuvius dangling from a visible string in some of the frames at the end of the film) coupled with the traditional human actors at the very end. But ultimately, it seems Lego Movie came off as inauthentic, dismissed by peer animators for trying to pass off it's pixel driven base as an edgie indie production, which it really wasn't. Kinda like distressing a new table to make it look old (and more valuable). Take a look here at 3 nominees, hand animated, some not even 3D, that made the cut:

Boxtrolls
Song of the Sea
The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Ok - next week is the beginning of teaching Kodu and Sculptris with the UVa Saturday Enrichment series. I'll post when I can, but definitely look forward to sharing with you here what my classes uncover ...