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I agree

Fun, audacious and well done. That's a brillant project ! Thank you for sharing it !

"Hey guys, don't forget to save" just killed me



(CalArts : the only school where AC is so strong, students must wear a duvet to keep themselves warm xD)

with something more innovative

I can't get why animators take such long time and hard work to come out with such meaningless.
Innovation is hard to do for young students. In most cases it comes from a longer process.

But I would like to make a plea for sth. much more personal (story) at least.

I find all animation schools are too isolated from the core of humanities studies most of them are affiliated with. Innovation comes from acquiring a broad worldview which a crafts oriented discipline such as animation can't offer. It's up to the instructors to encourage students to take courses in literature, drama and the fine arts, but I could only rarely get any of my students to read even a picture book, so who am I to criticize? It's like expecting students learning to become automobile mechanics to come up with innovative ideas for an automobile design.

I don't know if I'm the right person to agree here, since I'm spending a lot of my day just watching animations on the net, but I would like to agree to you. I guess that's a big problem with a lot of cultural industries, they watch a lot of the stuff, made by their own people, which is surely a good thing, but if you don't take the time to inspect other art forms you get some kind of tunnel vision. And so you starting to make animations for the sake of doing animations and to show of your skills, not to create something special, in some kind of way.

Well, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Animation is a vocational skill but the substance should derive from life. In central European lands it used to be the established practice to send a youngster who finished his apprenticeship in his chosen vocation to go "into the world" to have him learn the rest on his own.

A few years ago I was impressed at a film festival in Israel how mature the student films were, compared to any other student films I had ever seen before. I am talking about all student films, not just animated ones. It was explained to me that to be fair, Israeli students from academia tend to be older than students elsewhere because after high school they are enlisted into the army for a couple of years and once they complete their service, they travel to other countries, just like the old apprentices of yore. Considering this, it is easy to understand the maturity of topics and ideas that come through their films.

I really don't see the need to come down so hard on what looks like just another exercise from a bunch of students.
I think it was fun and it looks like the makers were having fun. That's not unimportant.

Or why come down so hard on anyone who has something more constructive to say than "I like"?

EDIT: OKAY, I'll be more specific than that; this film was presented as something well done, which I cannot agree with. When someone downloads a film I don't care for without presenting any opinions, I usually will not bother to give mine. And by the way, I don't think that anything said here could be construed as "coming down hard" if one wants to talk about fairness. That is an overly harsh definition of a simple conversation over what student films should or should not be like.

I use to like serious, mature and complex animations too (like the films from Michael Dudok de Wit), but those students just wanted to have fun and created a fun film : I laughed a lot actually !
It's pretty good technically speaking too, on many points. I also feel the creators had a lot of fun in making this, which adds a lot to the overall/global quality.

Paul, the purpose was probably not to innovate in the way you suggest, but they dared to do something different compared to the classical 2D animation shorts made at CalArts every year.
How older are you compared to those people ? About ~ 3 maybe 4 times older ? You just have different things to say in your own stories **, but it doesn't mean their job is so bad or not innovative.
I think there are probably many codes and references in this film you just don't get, but for those who know them (sentai, comics, manga or bande-dessinée, etc.), it's pretty funny and well done and also it's not as stupid as most of the current hollywood animation blockbusters, that are supposed to make the public laugh.

Also, I don't get how you can say all you said about this short in your previous posts, especially without viewing the whole thing.

- - - - - -

** "your own stories" is not adequate : you most often create animations from existing books. Is it innovative ?

Call me a wimp but the combative, downward spiral of this thread is making me feel very uncomfortable and I need to drop out.

I think this film was done as an assignment: "do something which clearly shows you've mastered this and that technical process", and as such it is successful. If this were my class, I'd give points for:
- consistent story (not original, but hey, show me original Hollywood films nowadays)
- well executed SFX
- combination of animation with live action well done, in some cases really clever (like when the big robot apears and its head opens and the woman pops out: they filmed her standing on that balcony so they didn't need to greenscreen her. Very clever.)
- managing a group project with a hundred contributions.
It has not the greatest animation on the planet or any relevance outside the student world. So what? It's good enough for any student's film screening.

And speaking from a teacher's position now: I try and show the students meaningful stuff by the dozens, but in the end I will be quite happy if they just finish their films and don't fail the exam. They're young. Most of them are there because they like animation and comic and thought it would be fun to do that themselves. I can't bother them with "but you need to tell something original and important!" for too long because they will get frustrated, and it's not fair anyway because most of them haven't experienced much in their life so far.

You said it in a better way than me Markus. : )

Another short animation by Tony Dusko :

By Sardinha em lata

My first attempt at animating a scene. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of planning going on and I pretty much animated everything "straight-ahead". While this can allow for much creative spontaneity it can also be a bit problematic. So this was really a learning experience as I wanted to try parallax scrolling and play around with various effects.

Created in TvPaint 11!

***The animation contains a snippet from an instrumental piece called "Midnight Drive" composed by James Joshua Otto. I found on the Free Music Archive webiste, freemusicarchive.org.

Music: Midnight Drive from the album, "and then, the mountains moved" by James Joshua Otto
freemusicarchive.org/music/James_Joshua_Otto/And_then_the_mountains_moved/Midnight_Drive