parakkum

This Friday, Littlestar and I attented our second (annual) viewing of highlights from the Ottawa International Animation Festival, courtesy and in support of Shrunkenheadman, the San Jose State animation/illustration club.

Last year's festival highlights ranged from interesting to scarring, and this year's ended up repeating the pattern. The trauma was just as traumatic this year, and once again left me wondering "Why?" This year I was driven to look at the Ottawa Festival site to see if they have any explanations about why certain selections were chosen as winners. As it happens, they do, but I'll let you decide if you want to look for yourself. Rather than go hunting for online videos of this year's trauma, I'm going to stick to what I actually liked, starting with just over four minutes of pure awesome:

Music video for the Jason Forrest song "War Photographer," done by Joel Trussell. Made my evening.

Eclectic, creative and beautiful:

You can download a higher-quality version of this one ("Tyger" by Guilherme Marcondes) from their website.

Great execution:

That one's "Lightning Doodle Project [pikapika]", by Takeshi Nagata & Kazue Monno. And yes, they did it all by moving lights in front of cameras, as far as I could tell.

Other fun movies that I can't find links to included the drug-induced "Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker" by Stefan Mueller, the excellent-camera-POV trip of "Dreams & Desires: Family Ties" by Joanna Quinn, and the well-characterized "The Possum" by Chris Choy of Cal Arts.

You can, of course, watch the show at an upcoming venue. Be warned, there's some trauma mixed in with the fun, and the show is probably not really good for kids.