Each year in June, the beautiful town of Annecy in the Rhone-Alpes region of eastern France temporarily becomes the animation hub of the world, as it plays host to the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market.
Annecy is the number one international competitive animation festival. Animators, and animation students, from around the world come to put on a display of their best work.
So each year animation students from the remarkable Paris based Gobelins school of art and animation gather in small teams and create short animations devoted to the upcoming festival; as I reported in my post on last year’s entries from Gobelins animation students.
Like their predecessors, this year’s entries are also wonderfully clever and marvelously realized. The films are short (90 seconds or so) and are largely wordless, so language is not a barrier to enjoyment. The only requirement seems to be that the films are in essence a short introduction to the festival, so the students are free to let their imaginations run wild.
Here is the main Animation page on the Gobelins site, which lists both this year’s entries and those from 2006. (Google Translate version here.)
The 2007 entries are (images at left, top to bottom):
Le grande Arche by Jean-Michel Boesch, Quentin Baillieux, Manuel Tanon-Tchi and Sébastien Vovau;
Keep Walking by Carlo Vogele, Antonin Herveet, Sophia Chevrier, Cécile Francoia and Leah Ordonia;
Anima facta est by Lucie Arnissolle, Maël Gourmelen, Léah F. Ordonia, Célia Riviere and Setpen Vuillemin;
Chronos 1.0 by Wassim Boutales, Yann Boyer, Vincent Mahe and Bruno Mangyoku;
Nano by Stéphane Vlavonou, Sébastien Rouxel, Stéphane Chung, Nicolas Rubio and Nima Azarba; and
Emile et les fabuleux petits monsieurs by Jean-Nicolas Arnoux, Tom Haugomat, Charles-André Lefebvre, and Louis Tardivier.
Though I liked all of the entries, my favorite is Chronos 1.0, a short time travel adventure with a wonderful concept.
My timely reminder for the Gobelins Annecy shorts, as usual, is Michael Hirsh’s Articles and Texticles blog, which has both an initial post and an update on this year’s entries.
