“My Bloody Lad” by deadWALTER

By
on

My Bloody Lad was produced as part of a summer training program at Paris based production house WIZZ, between July and August 2011, by Cyril Chauvin, William Dousse, Thibaud Petitpas and Pierre Rutz (collectively known as deadWALTER) – all first year students at the Ecole des Gobelins.

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  • gbop

    hahaha awesome, a nice treat during my morning choco puffs!

  • http://stroeherz.blogspot.com Zach Stroeher

    Disturbing… but pretty awesome. Watched the whole thing with a smirk on my face!

  • John M.

    Holy crap that was cool… and by 1st year students? Very impressive. What a thoughtful birthday present.

  • Justin

    Yeah, this was great!

  • Cath

    so so good. cant wait to see what they come up with next!

  • anon

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  • http://zeteos.blogspot.com/ Mick

    so many nifty bits and great editing… plus that tune is ideal. ding dong

  • breakbot

    It looks ok, and the animation is fine. But COME ON ! Am I the only one thinking the story is super lame ? Apart from the fact that it barely makes any sense, the characters have no depth, they’re not appealing and it’s not funny at all.
    Young animators, I beg you. Please write a GOOD STORY before spending months of hard work (as these guys obviously did).

    • http://www.FredtheMonkey.com/ JK Riki

      Yeah, kind of agree here except I thought that it looks and moved very, very well. Despite that, it didn’t hold my interest because of how shallow it all was. This seemed like a well-animated version of something you’d see on Newgrounds, and frankly most of that is just quick-cut gore-fests with no soul behind them.

      I can’t fault them for their artistic abilities, though. Fantastic. Hopefully for the next short they hire a writer with the skills to match.

      • Rajesh

        Define “good story”.

        And what happened to just entertaining? I found this far more refreshing than many animated features coming from, well, anywhere. While the characters lacked in personality, so do many animated features coming from studios claiming story is king.

        That doesn’t excuse the lack of it, but it’s clearly not necessary to entertain the masses.

        Gobelins is a trade school and they’re training them to do what employers are seeking – keeping masses solid and moving things around in a visually appealing way.

        Personal statements and art can come after the artist has learned the basics. You can’t expect kids to write a great novel till they’ve learned the basics of spelling, grammar, etc.

        I’m more interested in seeing some before and after work of students at Gobelins before I criticize them.

      • http://www.FredtheMonkey.com/ JK Riki

        “That doesn’t excuse the lack of it, but it’s clearly not necessary to entertain the masses.”

        I’m not exactly sure what you’re arguing here, but frankly you can entertain “the masses” with very little. Just look at your own comment of “many animated features today lack personality.” I don’t think most of the people who frequent Cartoon Brew are “the masses” who blindly accept such, bluntly, drivel.

        At some point you have to set a higher standard, which is what several people in this case are commenting on. The work is very good, but needs to be better. Otherwise there’s little point to making it this good in the first place. Save yourself some work and do the whole thing South Park style, where animation is essentially worthless. It seems to me that the creators of this short are trying for more, not just “what will entertain the masses.”

        “Personal statements and art can come after the artist has learned the basics. ”

        Agreed. What I disagree on is the fact that the animation above is NOT the basics. This is FAR from the basics. This is a polished, complete piece that showcases extremely talented artists. Basics are bouncing balls. Basics are pencil tests to learn timing and form. This is most certainly not basics. This is a finished piece by a production house. It may have been part of TRAINING, but basics it is not.

        I hold the work of students at Gobelins in EXTREMELY high regard. They truly do some of the best work I’ve seen out there- Students or NOT. It’s kind of akin to Pixar, in a way. Pixar has a track record of incredible work. When they produce something subpar (even still great but subpar for THEM) then there’s an issue. Not because people want to complain, but because the bar has been set so high. Gobelins has a very high bar, not just in terms of animation (which is always beautiful) but appeal in character emotion and story, however brief. This, a few people are expressing, doesn’t live up to that. We could go into great detail as to why (I believe it’s due to the main character being so unrelatable) but I think the opinion some folks are trying to express is just that this doesn’t get to the level of greatness we’d like to see. Just as you feel the level of many animated features doesn’t hit that greatness. It can still be entertaining, but it can also be so much more with the flaws corrected.

    • Funkybat

      I guess a lot of you guys either forgot about or just plain never cared for “Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Festival.” This kind of “story” would have fit right in with most of those shorts, and the animation is better than many of the shorts I remember seeing there. If this were entered in a “Sick & Twisted” I would expect it to win the grand prize, both for art and “sickness.”

      I personally prefer animation with more developed stories, lots of continuity, backstories, etc. But I don’t have anything against talented animators doing something gross or even gratuitous, as long as it’s entertaining. This one was pretty good, up there with “Trucker’s Delight” I’d say…

    • DC

      uummmm its just filled wtih good ol entertaining value. Its nice to just turn the brain off once in awhile. For a super short short this does what it is supposed to do-give us a fun ride. Take a chill pill buddy… and go make a cake or do something valuable with your time

  • Amy

    It would be nice if they taught these kids CHARACTER animation.

  • diggy

    Really cool looking, but unfortunately like most things Gobelins– all design and action, no character or heart.

  • cbat628

    I really enjoyed this short! It was kinetic but still well-paced, had really nice colors, and was very humorous. As for the characters and story, I actually enjoyed both. I thought it was impressive that deadWALTER communicated the personalities of the two leads in such a short time. And to be honest, I was a little saddened by the ending the first time I saw it. It was almost comparable to when (1931 SPOILER) Frankenstein’s monster accidentally drowned that little girl. However, since I have no experience in animation and am an amateur writer at best, take everything I say with a grain of salt. But for what it’s worth, this was really fun film.

    Also, the music for this was a match-made. I’m not a big fan of dubstep, but it always seems to work well when set to certain videos – especially videos like these!

  • Mark the witt

    I love Gobelins work but is it me or do we have some very generic things that happen in almost every short they do? For example, a chase with characters spralling out of somewhere and running unsteadily to the camera? ..also the design style was a quite reminiscent of another Gobelins classic, “Jean luc”

    That said, this is still a fantastic effort by first year students.. Gobelin again confirms itself as probably the most exciting animation school out there!

  • joe

    Yeesh, what’s with all of the story snobs complaining about lack of story and character? I thought the story was pretty clear; a spoiled rich kid gets a monster for his birthday. Not enough ham-handed pathos for you? Not every short has to has a ton of layers and a “deeper meaning”, which is just there to make you feel intelligent. :\

    Simple plots like this have better execution if you ask me, and forces the animator to focus on CHARACTER for a change.
    And the character animation and design on this film is great. From the first look of the main character you can tell he’s a spoiled brat and the artist makes that very clear staging him in the middle of a bunch of toys. The zombie dude is animated extremely well and also has a good character design. And while the ending is predictable, that is in no way an insult, since the EXECUTION was just so damn great, and really stays true to the simple character personalities we were introduced to earlier in the short.

    I really liked this. Simple, well animated and very entertaining. Just like a good Looney Tunes short.

  • http://gdousse.blogspot.com Guillaume

    Hi there.

    That is cool to finally see some critical comments. I already apologize for my english… I am one of the four guys who did this film.

    I won’t try to change your mind about the purpose of this film. To place this short at the place it needs to be, we directed it with the only desire to have fun making it. At first, we had another project, maybe deeper (not very hard ;) ), and with less violence. the production studio where we did this film is a studio doing mostly of the time advertising. They don’t use to produce short independant films. I definitly understand that you could not like it, it is violent, heartless, etc… the scenario is maybe written on a stamp, but the exercise was to do a dynamic film, and to be entertaining.

    I could speak more about it if some people want to (even if you don’t like, or hate it…). I am not a disturbed person, as my three friends, and we all knew at the beginning that not everyone would like this short (even my dad).

    I just precise that at Gobelins, we are not a scenaristic school. We learn animation, and we would love to have more scenaristic classes. But don’t ask us to be great writers when we learn animation during only three years. Next time maybe :)

    Everything is said. Thx