So far this April I think it’s rained once… any way, here’s a few of the things I’ve been working on recently.
Let’s see… I story boarded a couple of highway safety commercials for the Governor…
… worked on concept art for a DVD…
painted some lovely cherry blossoms as part of a project for Cherry Blossom Salon…
I hosted a screening at the Atlanta Film Festival and the ensuing Q&A…
…and on the first of the month my speech was read in my absence at the opening of the Tournées film festival ( I had to work) which can be read in it’s entirety below…
When I was at University studying animation in England I heard whispers whilst working on my ball bounce exercises. “Scotland.” “Triplet’s of Belleville” and in the most breathless of whispers “ Sylvain Chomet” saying the name felt like melted chocolate, “Sylvain… Chomet” and I worried if I said his name too loudly the whole thing might disappear. It was the fall of 2008, and graduating animation students from the previous year had been scooped up, and bundled away to Edinburgh where they were working away furiously on his new film, and all of us budding young animators were enchanted with the idea that somewhere close by they were making a traditional feature length animated film by hand.
Sylvain Chomet certainly has a reputation, and to a young animator he might as well be Walt Disney reincarnate. He’s one of the living legends of modern animation who’s name rings similarly sacred to Richard Williams who’s Roger Rabbit enchanted me as a child, and forever convinced me that cartoons and people can live together.
In Chomet’s Illusionist, real human emotions are embodied within the animated characters, and this is perhaps the next step in the evolution of the relationship between people and cartoons living together.
I didn’t know it at the time but what I was hearing whispers in my first year of University has come to exist as the film that you are about to see here tonight. The Illusionist started life out as a script by the French comedian Jacques Tati, known simply as “Film Tati No. 4” was written as a love letter to his estranged daughter. These are the two main characters portrayed within the film, and helps to explain their relationship. The Illusionist stays away from archetypes, and instead embraces the complexities of human emotion that often exist between parental figures and their offspring. I hope as you all watch the film you will take the time to appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making it possible. It’s a modern traditionally animated feature film, and that makes it a rare breed in this digital age. I hope you all enjoy it.
…. So that was all on my days off.
Animated Oakland update: The voiceover is recorded! Next up the animatic, and more storyboards! GPB has graciously given the production a studio for the next couple of months in which to make the proof of concept. Here we go!
Till we meet again interwebs!
xoxo
Aurorah
