Animation Program (Yvette Edery/Cordell Barker/Various Directors, 2010): USA/Various Countries

Reviewed by Mathew Roscoe, viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival

The Animation Program this year brandished an incredibly diverse array of animated works that had content that ranged from dark and disturbing to delightful and bizarre, all of which were brought to life through animation techniques ranging from traditional hand-drawn animation (my personal favorite), puppetry, to CGI. As highly variable as the style and technique of the cartoons was the quality, as some were instant classics whilst others were pretentious trash. The two I am going to focus on represent what I felt to be the cream of the crop, the ones that stood out as the most unique, memorable, and inspiring.

The first, Jillian Dillon, was a delightful puppet short by Yvette Edery, an accomplished puppeteer artist who has delved into nearly every form of puppetry prior to this undertaking. This particular piece was brought to life through hundreds of simple yet endearing paper dolls maneuvered by rods. With the two-dimensional dolls being stiff and moved by highly visible rods, realism was certainly not the idea here. In spite of requiring a significant suspension of disbelief, Edery manages to create a thriving world bursting with color and personality. And through elaborate changing of the set and choreographing of the camera, Edery creates the striking illusion that the entire film is shot in one take, seamlessly soaring through every location and scene with no visible cuts or stops. The story is very simple, but charming. It revolved around Jillian Dillon, a young female Hippoplatypus, the daughter of a Hippo and a Platypus. For most of her life, she was ridiculed for her bizarre appearance, but eventually her so-called flaws become gifts that save day. In what is more or less a different take on the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer” story, we are told an adorable tale that teaches us to ‘love who we are’. The story is told to the tune of an incredibly bouncy song that the audience may find themselves humming or whistling well after their initial viewing. While there was nothing particularly deep to this short, it was an uplifting work of art that produced a large “Awwwww” at the end and left the audience with big, bright smiles. Even the director, who was present at the screening and did a Q & A session afterward, was an incredibly likeable individual just bursting with contagious happiness. With doom and gloom running rampant in most art, it’s pleasing to find works like this that want nothing but to make you smile.

The second cartoon, Runaway, delves far deeper into its material, however. Utilizing a very unique style of hand-drawn animation with some occasional CGI assistance, this short is brought to life by animator Cordell Barker, who has been nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar twice for his previous cartoons “The Cat Came Back”(1988) and ‘Strange Invaders’(2002). The premise is simple. A train holding multiple passengers from various social classes hits a cow and runs out of control. However, in what could have been an exciting but shallow action sequence becomes an ingenious social satire. The hysteria of the passengers in this dangerous plight, both the snooty rich men and the humble peasants, engage in a vicious class struggle in which no one wins. The cartoon is filled to the brim with hilarious characters, twisted humor, and big surprises. The insane, out of control mayhem of the situation is perfectly captured by the highly kinetic, exaggerated animation, showing further proof that there is a magic and style in 2-D animation that 3-D animation could never replicate.

There’s a lot mainstream animation could learn from gems like this.