Animation 101

Absolut Panushka, Jan-Apr 1997.

Animation 101

By 1993, the official ASIFA register of schools that teach animation listed more than one hundred schools in 40 countries. A few decades before, there were only a handful. If schools can be judged by their graduates, some of these programs must be good indeed.

Wendy Tilby attended the Emily Carr College of Art & Design in Vancouver, where she made the wonderful student film Tables of Content. Painted on glass, the film sensitively explores the subtle interpersonal politics between a group of people who eat regularly in the same restaurant. Tilby's subsequent career at the National Film Board, where she made the fine film Strings, is no surprise.

Mark Baker studied at the National Film and Television School in England and spent several years working on his 18-minute student film Hill Farm. Even though it won prizes, the gentle, pastoral film could hardly have been produced on a commercial basis.

Shadrac, Sara Petty's student film at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, contains the seeds of her first masterpiece, Furies, in which two cats cavort about a house, sometimes oozing into pure abstractions of their speed and sinuousness. Her subsequent Preludes in Magical Time, which originated in a dream, is a continual flow of metamorphoses, drawn in pastels on paper, which move with a dynamic, musical choreography. The film is almost a pure abstraction, with only occasional references to something like a piece of cauliflower. Petty is currently engaged by Disney to work on the Beethoven section of Fantasia II.

Moritz, William. "History of Experimental Animation." Website. Absolut Panushka, curated by Christine Panushka. (Jan-Apr 1997).