Inspirations

August is slipping away like sand in an hourglass. The Summer quarter ended the first week of August so I'm officially on Summer break. Yeah right, like I actually get a real break. Not when I have to get up at 7am everyday to shuttle the kids to school!

I've spent the last couple of months struggling to come up with a story that I'm eager to tell through my personal animated short film. For a while I was getting NOTHING, like a writer's block. I started to read a lot; hoping to get some ideas and inspiration from the readings. I read historical books on the Qin Dynasty, books by my favorite Chinese author, stories written by Han Christian Andersen, my collection of Calvin and Hobbes and animated shorts by both well-known and unknown animators. Some days I would get an interesting idea only to find it boring and pointless the next day. I was trying to define the boundary and theme of the film and I think I was setting too high of a bar for my first film. So a few weeks ago I decided to think smaller and simpler. It helped. I now have an idea that I played with and still liked after several days.

It was interesting to re-read Andersen's stories because like most people, my first exposure to them was as a kid. The stories hold different meanings now that I read them as an adult. Even as a child his stories always made me sad; even the ones with the happy endings (The Ugly Ducking). Some of them gave me the creeps (The Snow Queen). Now they give me an insight into the writer himself. It was interesting to learn of his private struggles and see them as his inspiration for his stories. The best stories come from the writer's inner reflections on the world around him, and inside him.

I've come to know the work of an animator who made films that touched me like none has before. Michael Dudok de Wit is a Dutch animator who started out as an illustrator. His film The Monk and The Fish was nominated in 1994 for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film and his film Father and Daughter won the award in 2000. One of his earlier films, Tom Sweep, is another one that I enjoyed tremendously.  You can't get more perfect of an animated film than Father and Daughter. The story, the drawings, the characters, the animation, the camera work and the sound track are excellently done. I can watch it over and over again without ever getting tired of it. As a matter of fact I found myself doing just that with his films to draw inspiration for what I would like to accomplish in my own film.

Here are the three films that I mentioned above. Another great thing about his films is his choice of art medium. He uses ink and brush for all of his drawings. The variety of thickness in the brush strokes gives a fluid and dynamic look to the characters and backdrops. The watercolor is a wonderful company to ink and helps set the softness in the scenes.