Dark Years...

Posted by Arna:

THE DARK YEARS is a three-part animated docudrama. Produced by Barna-Alper Productions in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada and in association with History Television. You can see it on the History Channel this Friday, March 21, beginning at 3:00 PM. Start times are 3, 4, and 5 pm for the entire three parter.

Set in the 1930’s in Canada, it follows the path of the great Depression as told by reporters of The Toronto Star newspaper.

Our pal, John Halfpenny directed the animation, that is to say was co director of the three parter with documentarian Stephen Silver.

Here’s John in an interview describing the process.

This is an ambitious animated epic all done in FLASH, full of great moments. Though I feel it does not always ‘work’ in the story sense, I find its images always compelling. I love the rawness of the animated forms and the stark simplified way the characters move against the textured backgrounds. There is really nothing else like it.

Backgrounds for this epic evoke the art of the era, all the more remarkable since they were painted digitally by artists Maureen Paxton and Clive Powsey.

Here’s a still from a crazy sequence in which the reporter Gordon Sinclair interviews Adolph Hitler! Chuck Gammage did the animation posing for this sequence. Rex Hackelberg designed the characters for this part.

Go to the NFB multimedia pages and watch a bit of the film.

Persepolis!!

Posted by Arna:

Here are some stills from the soon to be released animated feature film, Persepolis:

Based on the books by the same name:

On the first night of this year's TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) we saw Persepolis, the movie, and it was good.
A few facts:

-Approx. two years in the making.

-Based on the graphic novels 1 and 2 of the same name by Marjane Satrapi.

-Directed by artist and writer Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.

-Created almost entirely in black and white in France, using traditional animation techniques with some CGI enhanced shots.

-Set against the fundamentalist Iranian revolution of the 1980's, the story follows writer artist Marjane Satrapi's life starting when she was a ten year old girl in an educated liberal family, to the time she was a young adult, living in exile in Europe. As Marjane Satrapi was careful to explain at the screening, this is a story based on her life, but not a true autobiography, since there are events that were altered from reality during the making of the movie.

-The version we saw was subtitled, but this movie will be dubbed in English and released later this year for the North American market. I hope that it will see a good size release in theatres. Certainly the audience at this night's screening reacted with genuine delight and much spontaneous laughter.
This style of animation is what is now known as ' 2D traditional'. Hand animated on paper, then in-betweened. And then in this case and most amazingly, the animated line was all traced by felt tip pen to give the look and feel of Satrapi's original graphic novel. For more on the technique, please check the nifty 'making of' documentary which you can watch on the Persepolis website. In order to create the felt tip traced line that you see on every drawing in this film, the filmmakers searched out a respected semi retired French hand-inker named Franck Miyot (or Miller...sp?) and asked him to train a young crew of approx. 20 artists in the art of hand-inking. As a result there is a group of talented artists in France who have brought this labour intense animation tradition back to life in that country.

Can't say anything bad about this film. OKAY maybe once in a while the score was a tiny bit too on the nose. Even so the music was workmanlike and better, and at often genuinely uplifting. Listen for a quirky and totally appropriate version of 'Eye Of The Tiger' sung in a raw slightly off-key style by the heroine. ~Woohoo! The song pulls you out of a sequence that focuses on the teen Marjane's mind-numbing depression, exacerbated (always wanted to use that word in a sentence) by a doctor's over-prescribed drug regime.

The film makers could have divided this story up into two parts, but maybe they thought that they'd get just one kick at the can. They'd edited the two books into one tale and told it well. The art direction of the film elaborates on the simple black and white style of the books, sticking mostly to black and white but adding shades of grey, laid down in richly textured washes. The look of the film sometimes feels like German expressionism... (a little Cabinet of Doctor Caligari perhaps?) in it's use of scumbled blacks and murky lighting. Or a reference to the Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez. Then during the battle scenes and historic sequences, there's a echo of the silhouette animation of Lotte Reininger, and you can see the influence of Goya during the riot/execution sequences.

Favourite characters:

Young Marjane. A bossy outspoken little girl, innocent and possessing faith in her world and her God... soon to be tested.

Grandma. Wise in woman's ways and Marjane's rock.

Persepolis will be screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival later this week. It's a great time to read the graphic novels before the English language version of the film debuts in December. Or re-read them, which I'm off to do next!~ Arna

Reviews of the film: Here, here, and here. Update: here's a new review on Michael Sporn's 'splog' and this review posts a video of the Persepolis trailer.

And here's Nick Sung's review of several TIFF films including Persepolis. Nick's review comes complete with watercolour illustrations!

Persepolis!

Check it out!

A gripping tale told from the point of view of a ten year old Iranian girl. Now a 2D animated movie made in France and directed by the original writer/artist Marjane Satrapi, and Vincent Paronnaud. Hopefully an English language version will be released soon. You'll find some intriguing (French language) videos on the Persepolis MySpace site.

Update, July 17_07: Cast announced for the English language version include the voices of Sean Penn and Iggy Pop. (read more from Animation Magazine)

Sony Classics Persepolis temporary site

Through a funhouse mirror...

Posted by Arna:

While flipping through some older material earlier today, I found a few designs from a feature film project John and I both worked on years ago. These are sketches I did originally in pencil and xeroxed to 'lock in' the line, so's I could render some tone with marker. These days I might just scan and do the tone with photoshop, but I still like to work with a pantone warm grey.

Jacques Le But...

In honour of NHL season starting up again, here are a couple of sketches of a shinpad-wearing, hockey stick-wielding superhero from the Great White North, eh! John drew these in black prismacolour earlier this year while working up another series idea.

And while we're on the theme of hockey players, be sure to check out Mr. Dot's exquisite (and very funny) painting here.

a few sketches...

Here are a few of John's rough characters-in-progress, done in brush marker over light pencil:

Thief Of Always

We're just back from Ottawa Animation Festival. Coolman! did not win a prize but we got some very good feedback at the screening. The winner in our category: 'Animated Television Series For Adults' was the hilarious Harvey Birdman. We were honoured to be in the competition. More about the weekend in a future post.

We recently saw Uli Meyer's lineup for The Thief of Always on his blog and thought we'd post these rough development sketches of Mr. Hood that John did in 1994. He was the AD for director Robin Budd on this feature animated film which unfortunately was never completed.

Enter...'MoosieFrog!'

Here's a character/series idea that John's been having fun with. I (Arna) had a friend, Lanny, who gave me the nickname "MoosieFrog" when we were kids. He was always teasing me with poems about a particular hat I wore in the winter. It was red with pompoms on it. Functional but silly-looking, I'm sure. John loved the name 'MoosieFrog' and the idea took off from there...