Beryl and Joanna Quinn at Swansea Animation Days 2006
Joanna Quinn and her studio partner Les Mills are winning awards all over the place for their latest animated adventure, “Dreams and Desires: Family Ties”, starring Quinn’s Beryl character.
BERYL is an unlikely hero. Middle-aged, not beautiful, overweight and an underdog…
The award-winning new film Dreams and Desires – Family Ties follows Beryl as she explores more about her life and it is seemingly a welcome return to the character who became popular after outings in Girls’ Night Out and Body Beautiful.
In the past four months, Dreams and Desires has won 14 major awards and it looks like there are more to come. It’s hard to beat that.
Here’s a picture of Quinn with Bill Plympton.
Quinn is best known in the States for her Charmin commercials but, as you can see, that’s only the tip of the iceberg with this extremely talented animator. You can own a little bit of Joanna Quinn’s art. The Adventures of the Charmin Bear
BAF06 – Bradford Animation Festival
The best animation festival across the Atlantic is the Bradford Animation Festival in the UK presented by the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television. The festival announced their November 2006 guest list:
Confirmed guests for 2006 so far include Joanna Quinn, Dave Burgess from Dreamworks Animation, Andreas Hykade, Marc Craste, Suzie Templeton and Chris Shepherd. If that’s not enough to whet your appetite BAF06 will also be hosting a special tribute to Paul Berry, taking a retrospective look at the work of Halas and Batchelor and commercial animation comes under the spotlight with an all-star discussion panel.
The highlight of that list is, of course, Joanna Quinn. Her multi-award winning film, Dreams and Desires will be shown at the festival.
A major figure in the world of animation, Joanna’s distinctive drawing skills, characterisations and humour, mark her out as a truly unique talent. Her graduation film, Girls Night Out won three awards at the world-renowned Annecy animation festival in 1987. She received Oscar nominations two years in a row, the first for Famous Fred in 1998 and again with Wife of Bath in 1999. In 1987, Joanna formed Beryl Productions International Ltd. with producer and writer Les Mills. Based in Cardiff, her highly talented team have produced a plethora of successful commercial work for clients that include Charmin, Whiskas and United Airlines.
She’s a super animator with a truly distinctive style. They don’t get any better. You can get a taste of her animation at Beryl Productions. Watch her showreel at your own risk. She’s so brilliant you might not be able to pick up your own pencil again. Don’t miss this festival if you’re in the UK from 15 – 18 November 2006.
[tags]Bradford Animation Festival, BAF06, Joanna Quinn, 2D animation[/tags]
The Triplets of Belleville – A 2D Animated Masterpiece
It’s time to return to an animation style that pleases the dimpled team. While talking about Disney is necessary since they’re the big dog, their animation style is not pleasing to us. We prefer less predictible and more interesting 2D animation story-telling. Our favorite animated theatrical feature in the modern era is “The Triplets of Belleville“. It is simply spectacular. The dog, Bruno, in “Triplets” is one of the greatest animated characters in all of animation history. This is not hyperbole. There’s not one false twitch in Bruno in the entire movie. Never before has a canine character been so believably animated. Bruno was brilliant. This is a list of the awards won by “Triplets”:
2004 Academy Award Nominee – Best Animated Feature Film, Best Song
2003 Telluride Film Festival
2003 Toronto International Film Festival
2003 Boston Film Festival
2003 Chicago International Film Festival
2003 AFI Film Festival
“Triplets” is the brainchild of Sylvain Chomet. It took five years for Chomet and his team to complete “Triplets”. From a BBC interview on the objective of the movie:
I wanted to do things in animation that hadn’t been done before. It’s a very rigid medium in what people think it should be. It’s always got to be for kids. It should bring good feelings, have bad guys and good guys, and end with a moral. But this means there are lots of subjects and things you can’t show, like someone smoking a cigarette for example. With “Belleville”, the aim was to go against that, and do something that wasn’t aimed at kids. It’s great that kids can enjoy the film, but it freed us up to go in directions that the animated movie hasn’t gone in before.
He succeeded in creating a masterpiece. In the same interview, Chomet comments on the use of CGI animation:
It was mainly to get rid of all the boring stuff. Objects, for example, always take a very long time to animate because they don’t change as they move. We used CGI for the cars, the bicycles, the boats and the trains, and it meant the animators had more time for enjoyable elements like the character acting.
This is exactly how CGI should be used. CGI is for the “boring stuff’.
“The Triplets of Belleville” is widely available on DVD. It should be part of every animation lover’s video library. Watch “Cars” and then watch “Triplets”. It’s a world of difference. “Cars” comes across like a soda cracker and water. “The Triplets of Bellville” is a feast.
[tags]Triplets of Bellville, 2D animation, Sylvain Chomet[/tags]
Gitanjali Rao – Printed Rainbow
Dimples profiled animation rising star Gitanjali Rao a short time ago regarding her marvelous win at Cannes for her animated short “Printed Rainbow”. Dimples has bemoaned the absence of a website for Gitanjali Rao and/or her movie. Finally, a webpage is available for “Printed Rainbow” here. While there is still no way to view this movie on-line, the new webpage has several stills from the movie. Perhaps, if we keep talking about this film, someone will provide a trailer. Dimples will continue to keep hoping.
[tags]Gitanjali Rao, Printed Rainbow, Cannes, 2D animation, animation awards[/tags]
Mumbai International Film Festival 2006 – Animation Winners
The Mumbai International Film Festival in India focuses on documentary, short and animated films and is ranked the largest festival for these film categories. Animation is booming in all of Asia and one would expect this festival to be a showcase for new talent. Curiously, the judges declined to award a first place prize for animation deciding that no film at the festival merited that award. The “Second Best” animation film or video award was shared jointly by “Home Delivery” directed by Elio Quiroga from Spain and adapted from the Stephen King short story of the same name and “Boond” directed by Kavita Singh from India.
“Home Delivery” has been to numerous festivals winning many awards over the last few years. Naturally, as a Stephen King piece it’s an ideal story for film. Here is a summary:
Jenny, on the island of Deer, Maine, is a sleepy provincial and miserable town. Life in this coastal town will be savagely affected by the arrival of a plague that infects the whole planet: the dead are rising from their tombs and devouring the living. That which seemed impossible is happening. Zombies have invaded earth. Maddie, a young woman incapable of making her own decisions, lives a placid and grey existence alongside her husband Jack, an illiterate and brutal lobster fisherman. Due to a terrible accident at sea, the mariner will die, swallowed by the waves. But the plague which runs rampant throughout Earth will also affect Jack, who will return from the dead and rise from his watery grave to visit his beloved wife.
Here are two stills from the 2D animated short, “Home Delivery”:
Kavita Singh’s animated short, “Boond”, is a tribute to a friend who died from lung cancer and, like “Home Delivery”, this film has won multiple awards at other festivals. Like other award winning animators profiled on Darling Dimples from India, Ms. Singh does not appear to have his own homepage and Dimples couldn’t find a single image from his movie to display here and that’s just plain crazy.
In summary, “Home Delivery” is great and you can see it at the link provided above. “Boond” is probably great, too, but we don’t know where to find it on-line. If you do, please let us know.[tags]MIFF, Mumbai Film Festival, 2D animation, Home Delivery, Boond, Elio Quiroga, Kavita Singh[/tags]
Leigh Hodgkinson – Animator, Writer, Director
Times, they are a changin’. Women animators are breaking down doors with imagination and fresh perspectives. Leigh Hodgkinson is one of those women.
Have you seen “Cars”? The best thing you can about it is that it wasn’t all bad. A great technical feat? Yes. Enthralling? No. Did you see the special Disney show where the animators and director of “Cars” were interviewed and profiled? Dimples did. Did you see any women? Dimples didn’t but then Dimples was bored and didn’t watch the whole show. Movies are made better when made from multiple perspectives. Cars came from a boy’s perspective and it was ho hum as far as story and character were concerned. Hollywood needs more women animators, writers and directors. Dreamworks, as discussed in the previous post, has just hired the very talented Scottish animator Sharon Colman. Dimples thinks Hollywood needs to make a return trip to the UK and take a look at the work of Leigh Hodgkinson. She tells great stories with great characters.
From the BBC:
In 1995, after completing an art foundation course, Leigh went to University in Hull, leaving with a first in graphic design. 1999 saw her starting a post-graduate course at the National Film and Television School in Animation Direction where she made two short animated films, “Excess Baggage” and “Novelty”. “Novelty†has since toured the world at countless festivals bringing home numerous prizes and awards including the 2002 British Animation Award for Best Creative Use of New Media.
Leigh has been a very busy woman in the intervening years. She’s a working animator and director who has proven herself to be extremely accomplished at developing characters and telling stories in many different animation styles. Her film Moo(n) was selected for Sundance in 2004. A great selection of her films is available on her web page and at Slinky Films.
Here is an example of her drawing style from “Moo(n)”.
Move over Tim Burton. It’s creepy cool 2D animated delight.
[tags]Leigh Hodgkinson, 2D animation, Moo(n), Stalk, animator, director, writer[/tags]
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