So, here I am again, posting at 3 am Ottawa time for you guys (this is the time I get off party mode, which is essential for you to survive in this place imo).
Today was a pretty awesome day, (the best one so far) got up kinda early to catch the free breakfast at the Arts Court just before the meeting the directors from yesterday's Gala. Which was pretty cool. My highlights from that would be:
-The Renter by Jason Carpenter: Great animation short about a young boy who's dropped at a daycare in the middle of nowhere that is run by an elderly woman who rents a room to a nasty lonely man. Beautifully animated in flash, it was rendered with photoshop textures in a very painterly process according to the director's representative (Jason Carpenter couldn't make it to OIAF 'cause he's apparently becoming a father in a few days). I leave you with the film's website:
http://therenter.net/The_Renter/The_Renter.html
-Paso Doble by Jaime Metzger: This metaphoric animation poses the Paso Doble dance tradition as a comparison to bullfighting. The animation was great, very staccato I'd say. But then again, the juxtaposition of a very flat rendering of a female body melting with a red background fighting a scribbly black bull was a great piece of eye candy to me. I just cannot get around these kind of shorts. Here's a teaser:
http://vimeo.com/21377591
-The last Norwegian Troll by Pjotr Sapegin: The story of the last Troll inhabiting Norway, the predicaments it has gone through and how he has adapted to modern life's pace. Beautiful stop-motion animation with a nice plot. The sets for this short were just brilliant and the animation was pretty much great as well.
Unfortunately none of the directors for Paso Doble or The Last Norwegian Troll were at OIAF this year.
After that I attended Koji Yamamura's masterclass. This was both informative and inspirational. He explained how his whole process is heavily informed by the sound treatment and how meticulous it can be. Starting from finding the right rokyoku shamisen performer for Atama-yama to recording natural folley for Old Crocodile, it was great to see an animator's perspective being so thoroughly guided by the audio component of the film. The analysis he gave of his latest piece: Muybridge Strings (which I had the chance to see at tonight's Gala) was very personal. He related it to the fact that he scarcely sees his family due to the amount of work he has to produce, and how these slivers of quality time make him want to stop time and keepsake it forever, or as he puts it: Depicting the 1/24th moment of a second. This masterclass helped me t0 further analyse the posibilities in which a personal concern can be taken into consideration as a drive to complete a comission (I guess).
Then, la piece de resistance of my day: Animator's picnic. Getting to Strathacona park was possible thanks to the shuttles provided by the festival, here I had the chance to meet Thurop again and he remembered wrestling with me the night before, lol. At the picnic I had the chance to finally have a nice talk with Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilbis (more with Amanda than Wendy) and they gave me some really awesome pointers for story development and furthermore, introduced me to Madi Piller, President of the Toronto Animate Image Society, which at the same time introduced me to Gil Alkabetz, awesome animator and instructor. Networking-wise it was pretty awesome, but it got better. After that I went back to the Arts Court to catch the Canadian Showcase (which was packed) but I found a friend I met back in SIGGRAPH 2011, which was great.
Later on I went to the Gala and later on to the Salon des Refusés, where I had the chance to watch Ceci's film and reminisce with Kristen about our separate adventures throughout OIAF-land. Later on I met some of my RISD peeps and Thurop again and we went to the Avant-Garde bar to have a couple of drinks, it was nice... until they kicked Thurop out for being way to wasted, and we couldn't have a proper conversation with Pendleton Ward, who pretty much had to carry him out of the place. That aside, I got more business card trades with some RISD grads and Thurop himself. So I'd say Friday has been a great day for my networking progress.
'K, I'm exhausted guys, gotta catch at least a couple of z's before it's too late, tomorrow's a big day in terms of presentation, will need tons and tons of caffeine to survive it. Catch up tomorrow night guys!! (hopefully)
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