Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts 2019

As preparation and research for creating my own animated short, I recently watched the short animation which have been shortlisted for the 2019 Academy awards. As voting for the category was open until the 14th of January, the shorts were made available online so they could be seen by members of the academy, as well as the general audience. CartoonBrew, an online animation magazine made an article with all the videos, available here. Due to the closure of the voting period, some of the shorts have been taken offline again, or have been made unavailable to the public.

While watching the shorts, I was struck by the length of many of them. While I am aiming to make a short film of 7-8 minutes, these shorts were either under 5 minutes, or over 12 minutes long. (Due to the assessment criteria, I can't really make anything shorter than 5 minutes, as this is the length of our supposed trailer.)

The stories told in the shorts were mostly human-centric, with a few shorts with animals in lead roles. As such, the connections between humans were examined a lot (no connections between humans and animals, though). Regarding this, what was remarkable to me, was the lack of dialogue in most of the short starring humans. This reliance on visual storytelling was striking and inspirational. It helped me realise that having a solid idea of what to do visually can make or break a film. As such, I have been looking at how to tell my story more visually, and thus with less reliance on dialogue. This also helps to keep the animation manageable, as animating moving mouths and faces is a difficult feat and I am still just learning to animate as is. 

The short that especially inspired me was Weekends by Trevor Jimenez (see trailer here). This fifteen minute film did not rely on smooth animation, but instead was able to tell its story though creating places with sound and colour. The lack of smoothness through skipping frames did not take away from the story in any way. This coupled with the clearly hand drawn style, creates a visual identity which spoke to me. (Of course, this might mostly have to do with me realising that even award nominated animation does not have to be smooth, so I can be less hard on myself). The use of music also created clear identities for the characters, allowing them to speak through its use, as the characters themselves are silent. EDIT: In the article about the visual development of Weekends, it is explained that all the initial drawings of the characters and their environments were made in charcoal and scanned to be coloured on a computer. This way of working is similar to what I am planning, with the initial drawings happening on paper, but colouring happening in a digital environment. 

What furthermore stood out was the use of sound in all these shorts. While sometimes music might be used to force emotions, the mix of diegetic sound and music in all the shorts worked very well. (That being said, Animal Behaviour did not have any music at all, but instead had the most dialogue of all the shorts). The use of objects to make sure the sound is part of the world really helped create a more immersive atmosphere. As such, I will have to start looking at sound a lot more in the upcoming weeks, as just creating visuals will not be enough (although I was already aware that a film with beautiful visuals but bad sound is never going to work).

I am not going to speculate about which short will win the award. I have my favourites, but an aware that my opinion when it comes to awards is often not the majority opinion. Let's just say, all these shorts are wonderful, and I can only hope to emulate some of their styles and beauty within my own work.