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Statement of the Computer Animation / Visual Effects Jury
As never before in the Computer Animation / Visual Effects category, the Prix Ars Electronica Jury saw films that could not be evaluated on a technical basis, but for their ability to tell a story.

By Bob Sabiston & Rita Street

As jurors we imagine the fear and trepidation of artists submitting their work for our evaluation. We imagine them imagining us — how we arrogantly sit, smoking our Cuban cigars in the comfort of our dark screening room, critiquing, musing, thinking big thoughts, talking big talk, declaring, proclaiming and ultimately — for no particular reason — eliminating.

Wow! If they only knew. Our experience as jurors was so profoundly different from that imaginary picture. The Computer Animation / Visual Effects Prix is not about comfort or egos; it’s about endurance and community. Can we actually view 375 films in three days and can our new found friendships survive the process of declaring a winner?

Contrary to what artists might expect, there is a secret desire, a hidden wish held by every Prix Ars jury to have a perfect moment, a moment when we all agree and say, “Yes! Yes! That film is the Golden Nica! No doubt about it.” It is this desire to agree and feel that we have made a good and right decision that drives us.

For a jury, coming to a unanimous decision is like winning a Golden Nica ourselves.

This year, one film brought us together for the first day and a half but, for the last day and a half, threatened to tear us apart. That film was the brilliant, clever and extremely well crafted Tim Tom. Although computer-generated, the animation boasts an organic quality that resembles clay stop-motion.

The storyline features two figures with paper notepads for heads. The pages of their notepads tear off to show changes in their expressions which are drawn, quite simply, onto the blank surface of the pads. Tim and Tom want nothing more than to shake hands across a stage (perhaps the stage of life?). Unfortunately their salutations are foiled by divine intervention: the giant hand of the animator himself reaches in to separate the two little figures. Again and again the characters approach each other only to be aggravated by the mischievous animator.

Tim Tom boasts excellent timing and character animation. Its plot is clever, full of self-aware references to filmmaking and animation. At one point Tim falls through a hole in the frame of the film and lands on the optical soundtrack. Anxious to help, his friend blows a horn, which produces a ramp in the soundtrack for the character to climb up, back into the frame. Tim Tom is definitely a homage to the films of Keaton and Chaplin, yet it is very much its own creation; a unique offering that stands on its own. It is silly and fun and could very easily have been made by animation greats like Chuck Jones, Tex Avery or Bob Clampett.

In every sense Tim Tom meets the qualifications of animation’s highest form of art; it is a perfect cartoon — a perfect cartoon made, not by two directors from Walt Disney or Warner Bros., but two students Romain Seguad and Cristel Pougeoise from France's noteworthy academy, Supinfocom. Of course, this was almost reason enough to award Tim Tom the Golden Nica, the fact that such mastery could be achieved by artists just learning their craft, but Tim Tom exemplifies one other very important quality for the 2003 jury — it did not look, feel, or “act” computer animated.

As never before in the history of the Prix we saw films that we did not immediately think to evaluate on a technical basis. We would estimate that at least half of the films submitted impacted us not for their digital wizardry but for their ability to tell a story. Suddenly we were faced with evaluating submissions as works of filmmaking art rather than experiments in a medium.

And, more interesting, we weren’t always able to tell how some of these films were made. In years past there was a very obvious thumbprint on both technique and software, so that we could say, "Oh, that visual effect was created using a particle tool inside Softimage, however, that character model was obviously set-up in Maya." As if to highlight this conundrum, we were presented with Atama Yama ("Mt. Head"). We were particularly intrigued by the subtle combination of traditional drawings, computer animation, digital ink-and-paint, digital compositing and editing in this beautiful Grimm-like tale from Japan's Koji Yamamura. It is, quite simply, breathtaking.

The story is a fable about a man who is so stingy that rather than discard the pits of the cherries he has scavenged, he eats them. Karma being karma, the man soon grows a cherry tree out of the top of his skull. When people congregate on his head to relax in the shade of the tree's blossoms, he gets angry and chases them away. When he rips the tree from his head, he creates a hole that fills with water that attracts happy swimmers. The stingy man, unable to cope with the loss of his privacy, eventually falls into a watering hole of his own.

The film is complex and funny; it plays with scale and logic in appealing ways. Because it exhibits multiple layers of meaning and rewards repeated viewings, we gave Atama Yama one of our two awards of distinction. And, then we were back to rewarding more cartoon-cartoons. Admittedly, all of our top 15 selections made it into the top three positions at one point, but there was something about Gone Nutty from Carlos Saldanha and Blue Sky Studios that grabbed us and kept us laughing. We didn't really mean to give it an award, but that silly Scrat, the Sabertooth Squirrel from the 20th Century Fox blockbuster, Ice Age, just got to us. In fact, when we were feeling really grumpy and disheartened, we simply stopped everything to watch it again — not to judge it, just to get some relief.

Actually, it's hard to say why we choose Gone Nutty over the equally appealing offering this year from Pixar, the cartoon spin-off from Monsters, Inc., Mike's New Car. Both made us belly laugh, but that ridiculous Scrat with his bug-eyed passion and ridiculous quest to keep his acorn nabbed us. On the technical side we were particularly impressed by artists' use of secondary animation techniques (follow-through movements typically seen only in traditional animation) evident in the movements of Scrat's furry and fantastic tail.

Yet, here again, was the horror and guilt of awarding a major prize to a cartoon. Shouldn't the Nica and the Awards of Distinction go to works that pulled at our heartstrings rather than tapped our funny bones? And isn't this the ultimate conundrum of the Oscars, that the award to best picture typically goes to a drama and seldom to a comedy? This was the big talk we were engaged in as jurors. Could we, in all seriousness, award the Golden Nica to a cartoon?

Well, yes, of course we could and we did. But it was this question; a question concerning content and appropriateness that bothered us for long hours. It shot Tim Tom down and, in the end, it brought Tim Tom up. Although we were never wholly united on this front; although we did not have a unanimous "Ah, this is it!," we did leave our experience as jurors happy and fulfilled.

Yes we were exhausted. No we did not sit in comfortable chairs. Yes, we smoked, but outside. Yes we drank, but Red Bull, not wine as you might imagine … (Well, we did sneak in a few beers). No we didn't agree. Yes we enjoyed our experience. And, now, more than ever when we imagine contestants imagining us, we hope they imagine us as a different sort of jury — not a group of technologically savvy elistists but as handful of jittery and very excited members of what every contestant wants most of all — a great audience.



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18.6.2003
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