OIAF 2011- Day 5

Well, It's over. Those marvelous, precious, joyous and yet very exhausting 5 days at the Ottawa International Animation Festival are history. It certainly felt like a month to me (and Kristen can vouch for it)

But first things first, a summary of day 5:

Got up, went to the last Animators's breakfast at the Arts Court and stayed for the first of two panels of 'Meet the Filmmakers'. I gotta say, this panel felt like it was a last minute adjustment due to the lack of the usual moderators, because that guy had a really hard time to organize both his commentaries and making the panel engaging.

Then I rushed to the shuttle for Museum of Civilization to attend the Making of 'La Luna' panel. Seeing Enrico talk about his process and how his team managed to pull of his self-labeled 'Little water-plane' off the ground was great. I was particularly engaged by the textural work they did in the backdrops and the props since it was all done traditionally and then incorporated as both texture and normal maps, giving it that extra natural/traditional quality to the already vibrant palette.

After that I hit the road again to catch the School Competition: RISD vs Tokyo University of the Arts. I'm quite sorry for my RISD friends but the Tokyo selection kicked their school's ass brutally. I mean most of the RISD pieces were nicely crafted and somehow engaging, yet the timing, the craft and (well, not so much the content) but you could say the passing of TokyoU's films was amazing. Particularly the stop-motion ones, they were quite well crafted. I was also impressed by Yasashii march by Wataru Uekusa. The character design and animation quality, was GAINAX quality. Then again, apparently TokyoU is a post-grad university, so their top-notch-ness compared to RISD is understandable...

Then it was Chico & Rita. Great textures, loved the painterly CG, hated the ending. Here, I leave a link to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTWxB9hRjwI

After that I decided to finally chill for the next 2 hours 'til the Closing Ceremony (since I had already seen the next screening). So I went around parliament and downtown just taking some pics and strolling.

Closing Ceremony was unexpectedly long, the masters of ceremonies drifted a lot off topic and we ended up the whole thing an hour later than expected. After that we rushed to the Arts Court since we were not interested in watching The Best of OIAF (since we'll be watching it at ECU anyway) and walked down the bridge to downtown (last bus had already left)

Kristen stayed home and I went to the closing Party (which was unexpectedly a smattering more than a party) I said farewell to all my RISD new friends in hopes to find each other either at OIAF 2012 or along the animation road.

And so this concludes my brief and weird chronicles of the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2011, I left feeling like I had spent there an entire semester (which in terms of knowledge and people I met is quite equivalent I guess) It was one of the greatest experiences I've had as an animator so far and can't wait to repeat it, even if it is not next year, in the near future. It just reminded me of the so varied and great things I love about this medium and taught me to love it even more.

OIAF 2011- Days 1&2

Hey guys, so I didn't update you yesterday (well, it is technically Friday in Ottawa right now, but bear with me here) mainly because I didn't have the time. Regardless here's a summary of days 1 and 2.

Day 1

So, short competition # 1 was nice. Main highlights from that one would be Maly Listonosz (Little Postman) by Dorota Kobiela. Set to Chopin's revolutionary etude, it shows the determination of a child-postman to deliver war-torn Warsaw mail no matter what happens. Animated with 3D models it was then projected into a wall in Warsaw so a team of painters could render it frame by frame conveying a beautiful painterly style with an amazing sense of depth. I couldn't find a trailer but here's a link to a still from the short. http://grafik.rp.pl/grafika_zw/544570,322447,9.jpg

Next is Swimming Pool by Alexandra Hetmerova. A night love story of two outsiders, who meet in a closed swimming pool in the middle of a big city. This film was simple but effective, hilarious to say the least. The filmmaker wasn't at the 'Meet the Filmmakers' event because this is a 2010 film and running in other festivals as well. Again, since it is in the festival circuit I couldn't find a trailer but I'll leave a link to her portfolio so you can see her stuff and some stills.

http://alexandrahetmerova.blog.cz/

And last but not the least there's Strata #3 by Quayola. An abstract film which reaches and unveils that which lies beneath the figurative complexity of a painted ceiling, creating an abstract landscape. This was quite amazing, sadly the director of this film was not present at the 'Meet the Filmmaker' event, but luckily I could find an article with a pretty decent trailer for you guys:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/11750/quayola-strata-3.html

So that was pretty much day 1, I got to Ottawa pretty late and after the Gala I was exhausted so I miss what, according to some people, was an awesome kick-start party.

Day 2

Got up pretty early in the morning to catch the 'Meeting the Filmmakers' event which gave me a more in-depth perspective about the films and the process behind them. Particularly at the Little Postman one which was my fave. I met some people from RISD at the Student Competition which was also pretty neat. I got the chance to say hi to Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, both directors of 'When the Day Breaks' (for those who haven't seen it, here's the link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuUwDuV8GNY and 'Wildlife' (I couldn't find a trailer for Wildlife, but they're both fantastic films) and attended their masterclass. This was very inspirational and gave me some very good pointers about the development of my grad-film and how to work with a different storyboard and reference approach. Their commissioned work was pretty impressive as well, here's a link to one of them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL_wG5gc4uc

Then again neither Kristen nor I have had a chance to properly present ourselves, since tonight's Gala was right after the masterclass. I hope I get a chance to talk to them tomorrow at some point though.

Then, Kristen decided to call it a day, but I went to the Student party, which was... alright, I mean, there was no music, I couldn't really get a glance at the Algoquin student's showcase since it was kinda packed, but I met lots of new people, traded some business cards... oh, yeah and I wrestled with Thurop Van Orman, creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. No biggie.

Seemed like the right thing to do, I mean he was wrestling with his fellow CN workers and all the kids were too scared gawking at him to even talk to him, so I approached him and I said: Hey, I want to wrestle! Thurop: Cool, so let's wrestle! and then one of the volunteers stopped us. Then again I got a chance to present myself to the guy and shook hands after. (he was way to hammered so I don't think he'll remember, still, awesome!)

So that's that for today guys, I'll update you on more OIAF 2011 coolness tomorrow.

see ya!