Saturday, May 26, 2007

Some Sheridan 2007 Grad films...

Casper Konefal



Jarrett Young



Ray Xu



By no means an exhaustive list - Just what I could find so far! Hats off to the grads and thanks for posting their films to YouTube/Photobucket.

Posted by Cookedart at 9:28 PM

Labels: ,

4 comments:

AndyG 6:16 PM  

I respect the grads in their attempts to try something new and different. I am not in animation yet, so I do not know if my point is fully valid... yet.

However, I find the last film you posted to be the most interesting, only because of style and not the animation. The second one I felt did not push animation to it's fullest. It felt like a rushed job with the story and the animation. I couldn't make sense of it what-so-ever and it seemed to just drag in the most part. I mean, there was an "okay" walk cycle half way through, but the animation was unclimatic and uninspiring. The guy should've had more emotion put into him, and so should've the mouse. They didn't feel like they were at odds with each other at all. The ending was especially weak because the resolution was up in the air, there was no actual certainty to what happened.

The third one I really can't say much about, other than it has a good underlying concept, yet pieces of it seemed detached. The ending was funny to see, but this was the most detached part, it didn't prove anything other than the "ball" or "circle" was part of the ground and part of the cycle of nature. It could've been pushed so much more than it was. Same with the section where the man was getting transformed and squished. It definitely reminded me of Mr. Pindal's "What in the World" - which illustrated the transformation process brilliantly. This one was a little too quick and not enough time for the idea to sink in.

Casper's... I felt, even though the story was almost un-noticeable had the most animation between the set of three. I've always been a fan of Casper's work, well, what I've seen of his layouts etc. posted on his blogger account... but the pacing in this one is great. Sure, it's a bit untidy when it came to the major action sequences, and the flashing back and forth... but I'm sure that's something really worth working on. His identity with his art style plus the nice animation really puts it on top of the rest. Story I would give to the third one.

I hope you find my points at least valid in some areas, I'm not a professional animator and I haven't really gotten my feet wet as of yet... so I really don't know if my points are totally worthwhile discussing about... however, from a blatant movie goer, I feel these points are valid.

Also, may I say, I realize they are mostly 1 man student films created over a years worth of laborious intensity, and that I have taken that into consideration... but you must consider what Mrs Ludlow reinforces in first year... even from the greatest animators..

"story is everything, everything MUST push the story"

thanks for reading... :D

Jeremy Canton 9:07 PM  

Story is everything. And yet, in so many ways story has nothing to do with it...

You can have a story, but without an appealing vehicle to present it, who's going to want to listen (or CONTINUE listening)? In the case of the student films I don't think story is as important as it is in feature films (which is what I think Vivian is referring to). Story alone probably can't land you a job.

I really thought some of the films were sweet. Others, sorry, were pretty bad (and yes im totally aware of the hardships they faced). I felt that a lot of the films didn't have an appealing presentation. In particular, the use of sound was an issue. A lot of the audio and sound effects were synched poorly, horribly cliche, and most importantly just instinctively felt "off". It's like, you're trying to get into the film and believe these characters are real, and then some cheesy audio sneaks in and boom you're snapped out of the illusion. (And I'm not blaming Cyclops here but the creative choice).

So, I think our student films should be more concerned with achieving a high quality film aesthetic (the marriage of audio/visual) instead of a fancy story. Obviously a strong story would help a lot, but some of the best didn't exaclty have something elaborate. An elephant and a slamming door comes to mind haha.

You kno'wham sayinn Andrew?

Jarrett 5:31 AM  

Thanks for your opinion, Andrew :) It's too bad my film didn't groove with you.

AndyG 5:55 AM  

I respect all of your opinions, Jeremy and Jarett. I do understand what you are saying, Jeremy, and I respect the views on aesthetic quality from the quality of drawing to the synching of audio.

Jarett, its okay the movie didn't quite jive with me. I watched it a few times, and I finally got parts of it on the last few times I watched it. I checked out your blog, and I like your character designs... the rounded forms with dynamic straight lines makes the characters very effective. I see quite a number of potential animations flowing from your character designs... and seeing them all together, it would be awesome to see something done with all of them.

Good luck in the future to both of you, and I hope you land yourselves some fancy and wonderful times at animation/art/design studios of your choice :D

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