My favorite short of the festival, and I think many other attendees will agree, was Claude Cloutier's "Sleeping Betty". Apparently the judges thought so, too, because it won "Grand Prize for Best Independent Animation".
This trailer doesn't do it justice because the storyline was just great. At least you can see some of the awesome drawing skills that are throughout the piece in this clip, though.
Another favorite was Jesse Rosensweet's "Paradise", although I don't think it's technically animated. Still, an outstanding piece.
I enjoyed Augenblick's "Golden Age" shorts, although there was just a few too many. I missed it, but apparently during the first shorts competition on Wed night there was a projector failure and the Golden Age piece didn't play, which consisted of about 10 different clips. So OIAF decided to break up the clips to play 3-4 throughout the other shorts competitions screenings. I enjoyed watching 3-4 at a time, but on Friday night they played the entire piece, with all the clips and it was just honestly too long. By the 8th clip, you're saying "wow, another one??". All in all, they were pretty funny.
Some other miscellaneous favorites include Nick Cross's "Waif of Persephone" (which I had seen before), Trevor Jimenez's "Key Lime Pie", Matthew Walker's "John and Karen", Michael Langan's (whom I met at the Animator's Picnic) "Doxology", Juan Pablo Zaramella's "Lapsus", Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski's "Madame Tutli-Putli", and Luis Cook's "Pearce Sisters".
I attended the Blogging for Animation panel and was happy to hear what bloggers who I read just about everyday had to say about their take on getting involved in writing about animation and what they think the future holds for blogs. Jerry Beck, who I first met at John K.'s house a year and half ago, said he first began writing for the web in fanzines and just wanted to share his knowledge and love for animation. He said he wishes he could get paid fulltime for the blog he co-writes with Amid Amidi, which I thought was a great point. You read other people's blogs, who spills so much information to you for free, yet they are doing it at their own will. I get so much more information out of blogs than I would in a magazine. Michael Barrier, Mark Mayerson, and Jeff Hasulo were the other panelists.
I'll be back later to update this post soon with some photos I took!
