All animation, whether it depicts a whistling mouse, a walking dinosaur, or a leaping superhero, is a kind of magic trick. It’s right there in the name of one of the earliest devices used to project slides: the magic lantern.
If you take an image of an open hand and an image of a fist and project the two in sequence, you’ll convey the illusion of a clench.
“What happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame,” Scottish-Canadian experimental animator, the late Norman McLaren — a director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and a respected pioneer of hand-drawn animation and drawn-on-film animation — once explained, stating that ‘Animation is the art of manipulating the invisible interstices between frames.”
Arising from VanRamblings’ coverage this week of the meaning behind the majority BC NDP win in the recent provincial election, we failed to make mention of International Animation Day — which occurred this past Wednesday, October 28th — celebrated by the National Film Board of Canada through the streaming of 12 films, all of which are permanently available now – for free viewing – on the National Film Board website.
As Mercedes Milligan wrote this past Tuesday in Animation Magazine …
Now in its 14th year, this annual NFB event gives Canadian audiences the opportunity to explore a host of new works by Canadian and European filmmakers working in the National Film Board’s cutting-edge, internationally renowned studios. The rich 2020 selection puts women in the spotlight — both female directors and strong female characters — and features a wealth of different animation techniques.
</ br>Vancouver-based animator Ann Marie Fleming’s new animated short, Old Dog
Made by world-renowned animators, the outstanding animated films in this year’s International Animation Day programme have won prestigious awards and screened throughout the global festival circuit.
Long one of VanRamblings’ favourite arts and culture writers, Katja De Bock is now a publicist with the NFB (lucky, lucky them!). Here’s what she wrote to VanRamblings earlier in the week on one particular film she cherishes …
Old Dog, the latest film by Vancouver’s Ann Marie Fleming, started off as a way of talking about aging, inspired by Ms. Fleming’s namesake, Ann-Marie Fleming, whom she often gets mixed up with in Internet searches.
Ann-Marie has a company in 100 Mile House, B.C., that makes technologies for aging dogs, and also for their humans. Animator Ann Marie was struck by the compassion her namesake has for these vulnerable animals, as she helped them to navigate the latter stages of their lives, and by how much dogs have to teach human beings.
The COVID-19 pandemic made Ms. Fleming (the animator), whose elderly parents live overseas, reflect on how we take care of our elders and how our global values are being put to the test.
According to Ann Marie, animation is the perfect medium to tell this story. It makes the experience of the human and the dog more universal and helps us understand the unbearable lightness of being.
Now, as it happens Ms. De Bock informs us — and now, you — Old Dog is also featured at this year’s SPARK Animation Festival in Vancouver — which, by the way, began yesterday, and is set to run through Sunday, November 8th, and in addition to films will feature workshops, panels and talks by the world’s most talented artists, directors, and studio luminaries.
This year’s SPARK Animation Festival pass is only $25 — which will give you access to the dozens of films SPARK has on offer in 2020.
Guess what VanRamblings is going to be doing for the next nine days!
On Arts Friday, VanRamblings will leave you with this special treat …
