Monday, June 25th, 2012 Posted by Jim Thacker

Watch the Siggraph 2012 animation festival winners



Supinfocom Arles’ eye-popping homage to the joys of meat, Rosette. See (bits of) it in motion below.

One of the frustrating things about animation festivals is that you can never cover them properly.

If a show is worth its salt, its entry restrictions will forbid animators from showing their work online in full. And if a short is touring several festivals, that means it can’t be seen publicly for months.

Which means that you’re stuck with trying to explain verbally why the winners were good, or perhaps showing the odd still. As forms of communication go, this is about as effective as trying to explain why jokes are funny.

So although Siggraph just announced the winners of this year’s prestigious Computer Animation Festival, due to be screened in Los Angeles from 5-9 August, we can’t show you all of them.

But thanks to the magic of Google (plus a loophole that says that student animations are exempt from the ‘no public screenings’ rule), we can show you some of them. 45% of them, to be exact.

BEST IN SHOW AWARD

Réflexion
Directed by: Yoshimichi Tamura, Planktoon; France
Percentage online: 12.5%

As you might expect, we didn’t do so well with the overall winner. Described by one review as placing a glossy sheen on the famous Marx Brothers mirror scene, Réflexion came down offline a while ago.

The teaser above doesn’t really do it justice, but you can see more of creators Planktoon’s shorts – including the lovely ‘Do Penguins Fly?’ – on the studio’s website.

Visit Planktoon’s website

JURY AWARD

How To Eat Your Apple
?Directed by: Erick Oh, Independent; USA
Percentage online: 16.6%

Pixar animator Erick Oh describes How To Eat Your Apple as “animated poetry”. Again, you’d be hard pressed to tell that from the teaser, but you can see some subtly creepy related illustrations on his website.

Fortunately, you can see his previous shorts – including the very Pixar-ish HuBo – in full online, which gives you some of the flavour of his work.

Visit Erick Oh’s website

BEST STUDENT PROJECT PRIZE


Estefan
Directed by: Jeff Call, Brigham Young University; USA
Percentage online: 0%

We came to grief with Estefan. The Brigham Young University short features the world’s greatest hairdresser (“the Zorro of hair”) meeting his greatest challenge: a completely bald client. But we couldn’t find any of it online.

We did manage to turn up this video of animator Aaron Ludwig and director Jeff Call talking about the movie. But the film itself is one you’ll have to look for later, we’re afraid.

BEST STUDENT PROJECT PRIZE RUNNERS-UP

Globosome
Directed by: Sascha Geddert, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg; Germany
Percentage online: 100%

Fortunately, things got better with the first runner-up in the student project category – not least because we’ve already featured Globosome on CG Channel.

If you read our coverage from FMX, you may remember Filmakademie student Sascha Geddert’s festival trailer: an stylish abstract tale about the birth of intelligent life. If not, you can see it above.

It looked even better in full stereoscopic 3D.

Visit Sacha Geddert’s website

BEST STUDENT PROJECT PRIZE RUNNERS-UP

Herr Hoppe und der Atommüll (Herr Hoppe and the Nuclear Waste)
Directed by: Jan Lachauer and Thorsten Löffler, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg; Germany
Percentage online: 100%

You can also see the work of Sascha Geddert’s Filmakademie compatriots, Jan Lachauer and Thorsten Löffler, in full online, either by clicking through to YouTube from the clip above, or as a single video on this webpage.

Suburban drone Herr Hoppe doesn’t get any better at dealing with his nuclear waste disposal problem across the course of the three episodes, but at least it makes for some lovely Wile E. Coyote-style physics gags.

Visit the Herr Hoppe website

WELL TOLD FABLE (WTF) PRIZE

http://vimeo.com/30942025

Rosette
Directed by: Romain Borrel, Gaël Falzowski, Benjamin Rabaste, and Vincent Tonelli, Supinfocom Arles; France
Percentage online: 43.2%

We don’t remember the Well Told Fable award from previous years, so we suspect it was concocted specially for Supinfocom’s very WTF?-ish Rosette.

The tale of a woman whose love affair with her butcher leads to a very carnal exploration of the joys of meat, it probably isn’t safe for work. But it is very funny, and beautifully inventive.

You can see a minute of it above, and another, more explanatory (but less eye-popping) clip here.

GRAND TOTAL: 45%
So overall, that’s just under half of the winning entries online. We’ll come back and link to the full versions when they eventually resurface – which will probably be some time next year.

But if you can’t wait, and are going to be in LA this August, we’d advise going along to see the winners – plus all of the other shortlisted films – in full. Screening times will soon be available via the link below.

Read the official Siggraph 2012 Computer Animation Festival news release

Visit the Siggraph 2012 website