Talk to the Snail

Part III of my mouth-watering thoughts on this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival.

FedEx: Stick

The category of Commissioned Animation was broken into three sub-categories: Promotional Animation; Music Video; and Television Animation for Adults.

Promotional Animation I.E. commercials. Going back over the list of these 17 spots, ranging from 15 seconds to a minute, it’s sort of tough to remember all them. I mean, heck, I saw them for just a few seconds a week ago, after all. There were some nifty ads, promos, and PSAs by J.J. Sedelmaier and our friends at InterSpectacular. We saw two of the United Airlines ads and a pair of Dodge spots. Basically, everything was pretty much fun (the fact that I, along with clearly a lot of people, have the attention span of a poodle often makes these shorter films come as a relief). Ultimately, my favorite spot was David Hulin’s spot for FedEx, “Stick”. Watch this film here. If you’re like me and don’t watch too much TV, you’ll get a kick out of seeing this for the first time.

Music Video There were five films in competition here. Too bad for the four really good ones that they were up against a really great one. I won’t apologize if you’re tired of Melissa and me always raving about “Jason Forrest: War Photographer” on this blog but it’s really that good. The response at the screening for the film was certainly among the best of the festival, too, so we’re not alone. Joel Trussell created this film to Forrest’s song. We featured it on Channel Frederator early on, and you can see it here.

Television Animation for Adults So. Seven films made it into this category, five of which were The Brothers Pistov shorts. Now, in full disclosure mode, “The Brother Pistov” is the creation of Random! cartoon creator Mr Lincoln Peirce. Also, I really enjoy them, and they were a highlight for me on Cartoon Network’s Sunday Pants show. However, five of them? Not only did I think it might’ve been nice to see some other shows represented, but having five nominated probably split the votes. For what it’s worth (nada), I would’ve selected the Pistov short “Dangerous Situations” as not only my favorite of the five, but also my favorite of the category. All the Pistov shorts were directed by Dan Sousa at Global Mechanics.

The Ottawa jury, finally, chose “Journey to the Disney Vault” by Robert Marianett, David Wachtenheim, and Glenn Steinmacher as its favorite TV Animation for Adults winner. “FedEx: Stick” nabbed Promotional Film honors, with Jamie Caliri’s “United Airlines: Dragon” getting Honorable Mention (Caliri directed the end credits of The Series of Unfortunate Events movie, worth the price of admission alone). And “Jason Forrest: War Photographer” won best Music Video. And, the Grand Prize for Commissioned Animation went to “FedEx: Stick”. Congratulations, everyone.