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Statement of the Computer Animation / Visual Effects Jury

Following are our thoughts and comments on the Honorary Mentions:

The Dog Who Was A Cat Inside: Siri Melchior; Passion Pictures, DK / UK
If only we could have seen this short as children, we could have carried it with us our entire lives as inspiration. The story of finding love inside ourselves, this little treasure is an intriguing combination of handdrawn illustrations, gorgeous animation and CG composites.

Pipe Dream: Wayne Lytle; ANIMUSIC, USA
Pipe Dream is a very cool integration of computer animation with a musical score. Lytle uses physics simulations to generate a series of balls that fly through the air; they magically land in just the right places on his three-dimensional rendered musical instruments to produce the perfectly synchronized soundtrack. The more you watch it, the more you are amazed.

Gestalt: Thorsten Fleisch; D
We received a fair number of abstract and experimental pieces of animation this year. Although many of them used impressive techniques that are both innovative and unusual, everyone agreed that it is just a lot harder to make a successful abstract film. Perhaps because our jury consisted mostly of narrative filmmakers, we were not eager to award films which existed solely to showcase a specific technique or algorithm. That said, everyone on the jury did agree that Gestalt displayed a spectacular use of fractal set techniques. Fleisch shows exceptional deftness in assembling a series of algorithmic transformations that are beautiful and really visually interesting.

The ChubbChubbs: Eric Armstrong; Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA
This year's Academy award winner, The ChubbChubbs is a well done, really entertaining short story and a very funny bit of character animation. Although this short was created as an experiment into the viability of a particular production pipeline, you can tell the filmmakers had a blast making it. The fun slips right off the screen and into your lap!

Mantis: Jordi Moragues; Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, D
We all agreed that this is an elegant, very quiet film. In beautifully composed shots that recall brush-and-ink prints, Mantis depicts the life cycle of an ordinary praying mantis. The film is rendered three-dimensionally, but it has a filter or post-process applied which makes the whole thing look hand-done. Spare but dramatic use of color and the natural, realistic animation make this film a standout.

3D Character Animation for Blockbuster Entertainment: Tippett Studio; USA
What could be more fun to animate (or more frustrating), than a hamster and a rabbit? This commercial campaign for the video-rental chain deserves praise for its fully-blown characters. No matter who you are or where you live, you immediately know these two personalities. We were also impressed with the abundance of well-rendered fur and good lighting.

At the end of the thread: Jérome Decock, Cécile Detez de la Dreve, Olivier Laneres, Mélina Milcent; SUPINFOCOM, F
What a strange, strange story: a character that literally follows a thread through various worlds and situations. Not only were the transformations in this story unique, we all liked the design of the lead character. Great CG animation and backgrounds. This should have come from a studio, but it is another amazing piece of filmmaking mastery from Supinfocom.

The most outstanding of the visual effects entries were GDF Dolce Vita (Luc Froehlicher; LA MAISON, F) and Untitled (Christoph Ammann; Vancouver Film School, CDN). GDF Dolce Vita is a commercial that features a sophisticated combination of effects and live action, depicting two nude figures: a male immersed in a sea of realistic, beautifully rendered bubbles, and a female descending in a cloud of swirling feathers. The piece as a whole is graceful and elegant. Ammann's Untitled impressed us equally. In this experiment, computer-generated robot scouts prowl around a live-action set. The motion of the robots is believable and the integration with the background is seamless.

Mike´s New Car: Pete Docter, Roger Gould; Pixar Animation Studio, USA
Pixar's entry this year, Mike's New Car is a short film that features the main characters from last year's Golden Nica winner Monster's Inc. While the film was not a technical innovation over last year's entry, it exhibited such a mastery of character animation and timing that it unquestionably belonged in our list of honorees. Specifically, the level of actual acting by these characters was remarkable.

Justice Runners: Satoshi Tomioka; Kanaban Graphics, J
This film is definitely a trip down the White Rabbit's hole. Although this short has a comic storyline, basically an escape from paying the landlord, it has all the horrible anxious feelings of a really bad nightmare; those super frightening ones that are set in broad daylight rather than deep night. We appreciated the complexity of imagery, the pacing, the amazing amount of CG models and especially the brilliant color pallette of this over-the-top gem.

RÖYKSOPP (Remind me): Ludovic Houplain; H5, F
H5's video for the Royksopp song "Remind Me" is most remarkable for its sophisticated use of design. Director Ludovic Houplain utilizes nearly every well-known style of statistical graphic in order to tell a story; that of one woman's workday routine in London. From the time she awakens to the time she goes to sleep, the various aspects of her life are represented comically, but also a bit disturbingly, by pie-charts, bar-graphs, cross-sectional illustrations and the like. The style of animation as she gets dressed and applies makeup is similar to the drawings on an airline safety-card –the one that points out all of the exits. Accompanying her subway ride to work is a graphical depiction of the relative speeds of the various modes of travel: walking, subway, car, plane. At lunch, as she drinks a milkshake, we see a technical breakdown drawing of the steps the milk has taken to get to her: from the glass to the milkshake machine, to the pasteurization plant, back to the machines milking the cows. The nonstop flow of informational motion graphics is beautifully animated and accompanies the music well. The overall effect is to poignantly remind us of the mechanization with which much of our lives are regulated.



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