The Animator and the Animated

I am an animator.  I have recently remembered this facet of my life, after more or less neglecting it for a few months, and I've decided to do something about it.

And this right here is that something:


On a not-so-distantly-related note, last night I finally got round to seeing Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.  It won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003, making it the only cel-animated film and the only Japanese film ever to have done so.  And until last night, it was the only Best Animated Feature Oscar winner which I hadn't seen.  So now I can claim my viewing to be complete, unless you want to get really nit-picky and claim that the English dub doesn't count and I have to go and watch it again in the original Japanese.  Please don't get nit-picky; I don't speak any Japanese.

I must admit it was quite a bizarre experience, and not something for the easily confused (a film set in a bath-house for the spirits?  Not something you're likely to find in any western-made movie), but enjoyable nonetheless.  It was the second Miyazaki film I've seen, following his 1979 feature debut The Castle of Cagliostro, which was a bit easier to get one's head around by dint of it being set in Europe.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to maintain my claim to have seen all of the Oscar-winning animated films, what with the next round of awards due in just a few weeks, but chances are the next winner will be either Toy Story 3 (which would be the first sequel to win the award), or just-maybe How to Train Your Dragon (which would be the first win for DreamWorks Animation since Shrek, nine years ago) - and I've already seen both of them.  So I might be safe for a bit.

And in the meanwhile, I've got a couple more ideas up my sleeve for Arbitrary Stopframe 2 and beyond...

Keep watching this space!


- The Colclough