Elk Hair Caddis is another mini-masterpiece from those crazy kids at Denmark’s Animation Workshop: Peter Smith, Alice Holme, Anders Brogaarde and Magnus Moller.

Peter Smith told us:

One of the goals with this piece of animation was to explore some of the boundaries of the 3D media, and how close we could bring it to a 2D feel in terms of broadness and flexibility. One of the very important inspirations that made us think along these lines was the work of the Swedish company Meindbender. Particularly the short Football vs. Rabbit was a very helpful source of inspiration. For the animation we used Maya and Blender (Anisculpt) and for comp we used Fusion.

I woke up this morning (this afternoon, to be honest) hating animation. Blame it on last night’s interminable ASIFA-East screening of uninspiring and insipid indie shorts. Only something truly beautiful could uplift my spirit and make me appreciate this art form again. Thankfully, I stumbled across Volgens de vogels (According to Birds), a 2008 graduation film by Linde Faas (b. 1985). Touches of Norstein throughout, and that’s not a bad thing.

Speaking of the Oscars (isn’t everyone?), when I attended the Academy Feature Animation Symposium the other night I briefly met Bevin Carnes, winner of the 2007 Student Academy Award for Animation (Silver Medal). She made her prize winning film, A Leg Up, while a student at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, and recently posted it on You Tube. Since winning the award, Carnes has since worked for Rhythm and Hues, Disney (on Bolt) and at Blue Sky, as an animator on Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinisaurs. Here’s her film:

Tobias Gundorff Boesen’s Out of a Forest is a stop-motion effort out of Denmark’s The Animation Workshop, the same school responsible for Vegeterrible, which was featured on the site a few days ago. A lot of Out of the Forest was shot on location in forests around Viborg, Denmark, and the presence of prim and proper bunnies in this natural setting lends the film a magical flavor. The film was animated by Katrine Kiilerich, Frederik Villumsen, Christophe Peladan, and Tobias Gundorff Boesen, and the song,” Slow Show,” is by The National.

The Animation Workshop’s students first caught my attention a few years back with John K. Mortensen’s short Fishing with Spinoza (2007). If Out of a Forest and Vegeterrible are an indication, the school’s Bachelor program, which only began seven years ago, is worth watching closely.

Animation students Henril Sonniksen and Benjamin Neilsen made Vegeterrible in their third year at The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. The film takes place inside a refrigerator, where a hungry, rotten avocado crashes a Mexican fiesta and starts devouring the guests… and the struggles of a tomato’s fight for survival.

Electropolis is “the product of roughly 7 months of work from 13 students in the 3rd year of the BAA Animation program at Sheridan College.” It’s interesting to note the rise of student films made in groups at North American animation schools. No doubt the success of group student films from French animation schools like Gobelins and Supinfocom have played a role in encouraging this trend.

I saw Tim Beckhardt’s Pellet Gun in Ottawa a couple weeks ago. It’s a student film from RISD. I liked the crisp linear style and it made me chuckle even though I didn’t get it. Tim explained it to me afterward, and the explanation was quite reasonable, which made me wonder why I didn’t get it in the first place.

A graduation film by Sjors Vervoort of The Netherlands, with sound design by Steven Aerts. While I would have liked to see the interplay between the cardboard creatures and their real-world surroundings pushed even further, there’s some imaginative ideas throughout the piece.