Each year my faith that the future of hand-drawn animation is in good hands is renewed by the graduating class of Gobelins, l’école de l’image (Goeblins School of Communications) in Paris, from which five teams of students create short (one minute) animations used to introduce the five days of events at the Annecy International Festival of Animation.
This year is no exception.
In the gallery interface on the Gobelins website that shows thumbnails of the animations, click on each for links to the animation itself. Though the descriptions are in French, the animations are wordless. (If you need more info, try Google Translate.)
In the interface above the thumbnails there are three drop-down menus. Use the one on the right to choose the date for previous years’ sets of Annecy animations. Browse through the gallery for more gems (Timesink Warning).
(Images above, names of animations: The Retake, Copernicus, Seesaw, The Fancy Family, SAWA — Please see credits on the site for the teams of creators.)