There were a large number of the Flip Animation Festival Shorts that I really liked for various reasons. Of the first set of shorts Escale by Elea Gobbe-Mevellec struck me as an incredibly beautiful piece of animation. The story itself was very touching, but the style in which it was presented was even more impressive it was handrawn with a very simplistic style of line at times, especially when it came to drawing the faces of characters however the rest of the image retained a lot of detail. Scenes in the bar, where the sailors spent time when at port, were amusing especially the relationships between the women and the patrons of the bar.
Also from the first set was Deadline by Bang-yao Liu, this piece was impressive as it was shot in stop motion with the animator working at his desk and the animation being made on the wall above him using only post-it notes. The use of post-it notes gave the things he was animating a really pixelated feel, but none the less looked very different due to the use of the different medium. This was the main reason i liked the piece because of its unusual style and for using a material not normally used in animation. Also sections when the character of the animator was interacting with the post-its on the wall.
In the second set of shorts I watched I particularly like "the Hidden life of the burrowing Owl" by Mike Roush. The layout of the animation as a documentary was a nice touch. But what struck me as a brilliant idea was the parts of the story was the sections when the character of the burrowing owl acted in the opposite way to which the observer thought the species should act. The ending in particular when the burrowing owl, instead of hiding like he should attacks the car that killed his mate was rather ironic and ended the piece with me laughing because of it. For these reasons I thought it was a really good piece of animation.
The Final short I am going to talk about was from the Brother's Mcloed's ten animated films that had influenced them in certain ways. I found two of the shorts on their list rather disturbing, the Adventures of Pocketboy for the obvious reason that I was warned about before hand when the brothers Mcloed said "if yo u have an aversion to plastercine penises please leave now". But the other film that I wasn't so keen on was Suzi Templeton's Dog, the short film was incredibly dark and bleak and despite the animation being very good did nothing but depress and disturn me when the boys father tries to smother the dog to death and failing that caves the dogs head in with a lamp. The culmination of the entire piece I didn't find enjoyable at all because it was relentless in how depressing it was.
