The Snowman

The short film The Snowman, features many conventions. The film includes just two main characters (the boy and the snowman) with a simple storyline. The film features no dialogue, just music and sound effects which bring the animation to life. This is very conventional of short stories. The storyline also has many comical elements to it which is also a conventional feature. I really like the way in which the story is told purely through the characters movements and music.

Watership Down

The film Watership Down (released in 1978) was one of the first successful British animated films. It is feature length with a adventure genre. Its characters featured voices, music and sound effects were added. The film was a huge success, and in later years the characters were recreated and brought back in a series of short animated stories. I really like the way that it is coloured realistically and is not just aimed at children as there are very few bright colours used. I would not be able to create something like this as it is very detailed, however I would like to make my animation suitable for all ages.

Roobarb and Custard

The animation Roobarb and Custard is the simplest animation out of all of the one I have chosen to look at. It was really popular when it was aired on the TV as the character was so likable, meaning the producers were able to make a successful string of episodes/ adventures. The animation is very simple, being just a line drawing with some selected elements in colour. I really like the way in which the piece has been put together as you can really see how it has been animated as sometimes the lines don’t quite meet up so it’s a bit wobbly or the colouring is slightly different but I believe that this adds originality and character to the piece. The story is told through a narration which explains all of Roobarb’s movements etc. Some sound effects have also been added for a more interesting piece I think that it would be possible for me to make something similar to this as it is very simple, yet effective.

History and background of short films

At first I was not too sure exactly what you would class as a short film or what they include. I searched the internet and found some very interesting facts about how short films have developed. I also found out that Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks, included a short film alongside their main releases. These companies use these short films to gain an interest in perhaps a new feature length film that is coming out, or to just gain the attention of their audience. In institutions, time equals money and animation (especially hand drawn) takes a very long time, which is why the companies made a number of short films alongside their main feature films.

The style of animation has very much changed starting with the very simple black and white drawings such as the original mickey mouse cartoons (Mickey Mouse Original) to the obviously hand drawn basic animation such as Roobarb and Custard. Full colour cartoon became very popular with the creation of Looney Tunes, leading to many short films being made. I think that I would like to produce an animation which doesn't look like it has been hand drawn, with the possibilty of adding colour afterwards if I have enough time. I would create an animation more along the style lines of this animation about cats (Cats).

To find out more about how animation has developed over the years visist- Development of animation

Short films are anything that last under 40 minutes including the titles and credits. There is a separate category for really short films called Short Shorts, which are up to 3 minutes long. This is the sort of length that I will be making my short animated film.

For more information about the background of short film you can visit:
Short film hisory

Choice of Brief

For this year's project I have decided that I would like to create my own short film. I wasn't really looking forward to doing the preliminary filming for this project as I had never filmed before however I really enjoyed it and it was not a difficult as I had first imagined. For my short film, I decided that I wanted to try something different and create a hand drawn cartoon. I didn't know much about these so the next few posts are some research that I have carried out.