The Animation Show 2

The Animation Show - Volume 2

Curated and produced by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt

Released by MTV Home Entertainment (2006)

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Bunnies

Short, superflat, tightly controlled palette world of bunnies commuting and picking up hookers. They all end up at the movies to watch the film Every Bunny Needs Some Bunny. Nice, but rather short and ultimately inconsequential. Used as an interstitial by MTV.

Studio Soi

Guard Dog

An overexcited pug dog goes for a walk, imagining ridiculous threats to his owner. Some clever ideas, but grows a bit old. In the end, the dog ends up killing his master with his overenthusiastic vigil. A bit gruesome, if you ask me, although there are some pleasantly surreal gags.

Bill Plympton

F.E.D.S.

Short done using the distinctive rotoscoping software of Bob Sabiston as used in Waking Life (on which Drummond worked). Documentary clips about food demo specialists working in a big gourmet food store in Texas and their trials and tribulations rotoed in beautiful colors with trippy backgrounds. There’s an ungrounded feel as different elements float around, unanchored. Trivial, but charming and looks great.

Jennifer Drummond

Pan With Us

Incomprehensible Robert Frost poem about Pan set to interesting stop motion black and white animation concerning birds and leaves. The animation is done with the animator visible (“I don’t have anything against computers. As long as people are suffering when they make animation, they’re animators.”) so the animation (bird flying) is smooth, but the background and animator are jerky time lapsed. Interesting meta-animation technique, whatever it might mean.

David Russo

Ward 13

Australian claymation tale of a guy hit by a car who wakes up in a sinister hospital (á la Jacob’s Ladder). Massive action sequence—part Woo, part Chan—as a bandaged patient tries to escape evil doctors and henchmen. Really elaborate with all the current action vocabulary—lots of details cut together quickly. Confusing end—did it really happen, is he dead, or is it about to start all over again? Well done, if a little one-notey.

Peter Cornwall

Hello

Age-old tale (see I Can Dream) of a boy who lives down the hall from a beautiful girl that he’s too shy to talk to, but told with characters who have boomboxes for heads. Whenever she walks by and says hello, he fumbles for his tape and says nothing until she’s gone. He seeks the advice of a wise old soul (a phonograph in a room filled with vinyl) who throws out his crude attempts and finds the perfect song to play to her. They rhumba to happiness, popping out a bunch of iPods. Cute angle on the mix-tape as courting ritual phenomenon.

Jonathon Nix

Rockfish

Very detailed and textured computer animation about a miner on a distant planet and his silent Jar Jar Binks. Drilling deep (with a great sense of familiarity with the equipment and procedures), he incurs the wrath of a giant insectoid monster, who drags him through the Road Warrior landscape. Great sophisticated state-of-the-art computer animation (excellent grime!) done well. Impressively tactile.

Tim Miller

Magda

Joe Frank monologue about a contortionist and her 15-year-old admirer, the narrator. He saves her one night when she panics, and then becomes part of the act, cheapening their one real moment. Animated figure study models in a toy train landscape (complete with “Centerville” reference).

Chel White

A Painful Glimpse at My Writing Process

Short (60 seconds) montage of extreme writer’s block. Very Joe Franky narrative, with superfast collage pix and clipped words from magazines, like a ransom note come to twitchy life. Fantastic.

Chel White

Starless and bible black comedy about the matters military by the perpetrator of Cathedral (The Animation Show 1). Extremely detailed computer animation featuring a grotesquely exaggerated macho commander (Sgt. Rock squared) throwing young recruits off a tower. A twisted old scientist with Ranxerox shades takes a picture of the broken body of the soldier and has the picture delivered to a Brando-as-Kurtz guy in a warehouse. He adds picture to ones taken before and projects them into a hideous dance, each dead soldier making one frame of the broken and bloody ballet. Brando dances along, sheds a single tear, and then orders the next sacrifice

Fallen Art

Tomek Baginski

When the Day Breaks

Hand rotoscped urban morning vignettes, except all the people have animal heads. Central scene involves a pigette who bumps into a stern and proper older chicken at the market. The chicken., losing a lemon, walks off distractedly and gets hit by a car—nicley told in details of aftermath. Goes from scene to scene through electrical outlets and radio waves and features a 30’s style Pennies From Heaven song. Pleasantly boring in that NFB of Canada way.

Amala Forbis and Wendy Tilby

Fireworks

Rejected commercial for a liquor company (um...can you do it without the candy?) Clever candy animation of fireworks. Pretty and nice, but not as good as the supplemental bonus film...

PES

Kaboom

Fantastic WWII air bombing nuclear explosion film recreated with household objects. Brilliant juxtapositions, especially the clown head anti-aircraft guns and the ribbon bows and Xmas tree ornament explosions. Genius.

PES

The Meaning of Life

Mr. Cotton Balls magnum opus. He’s got homicidal balloons down, why not go for the meaning of life? Some nice bits—like the herd of people at the beginning, each with their own walk cycle and trademark saying á la yeshe or Tango—but it goes on a bit too long. Same business is repeated on other planets. Set rather sloppily to Tchaikovsky. So so.

Don Hertzfeldt

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