Remembered this film the other day while chatting with brother Greg. Sort of a hippy Aussie film about Dot who gets lost in the bush and discovers that animals can speak too! She connects with a kindly kangaroo who’s lost her joey. This is parts one and two – there are more on YouTube. It mixes live action and 2D animation. The weirdest thing about this film was that the sounds of the bush really stuck in my head, and years later when I found myself visiting the Atherton Table Lands in Queensland Australia I realised that I recognised the sounds of the bush from Dot and the Kangaroo.
Part One – Dot gets lost
Part Two – Dot meets the kangaroo
Also the Bunyip Dance – the scary Aborigine style bit
While trawling YouTube yesterday I came upon this tiny bit of animation. I love it. It’s so well done with the camera shake and the quality of the imps that you instantly believe in them. There’s something about the way they’re acted that reminds me of the Dark Crystal and other Henson classics.
Higher quality version and a clip from another short film Kelpie can be found on the Bustykelp website
Created by Paul Shuttleworth at Handle and Spout Productions, Harry and Toto is a series for Cbeebies based on Aesop’s fable about the Tortoise and the Hare. Sing-a-long now at the Cbeebies website
Like many other small boys I had an inexplicable fixation with steam trains. Combine this with the wonderful imaginative talents of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and you get Ivor the Engine. It’s beautiful, folksy, wistful, nostalgic for an era of community, and with dragons too (as any good Welsh story should have.)
Here’s a great 1958 Disney production about the North American folk hero Paul Bunyan. We recorded this on VHS when I was a kid in the late 70s / early 80s and watched it on what must have been a daily basis.
This is my first indulgence so far on this blog… I’m putting up a film done by myself and brother Greg. It’s a short version of the Odyssey. We condensed Odysseus’ twenty year voyage and imprisonment from leaving Troy to returning to Ithaca into 15 seconds. This was shortlisted in the nokiashorts film competition a couple of years ago but lost out to some mawkish life-affirming nonsense.
Based in Bristol (UK) are the Arts and Media Team at Community at Heart. Every year they put on the Barton Hill Animation Festival as part of a regeneration project. The team works with the local community to provide a wide range of creative activities such as art classes, festivals and events.
In 2007 they created some animations with the children who attended the festival.
The Tortoise and the Hare
And an interesting re-telling of the Ugly Duckling story with a twist in its tail.
I’m very fond of those European and Russian folk tales that are both moral but dark too. Things like the Grimm Fairy Tales and those featured in Jim Henson’s Storyteller series.
One series of animations which stood out for me as a teenager was Shakespeare – The Animated Tales which were shortened versions of the classic plays told with earthy, scratchy animations and slightly unsettling puppetry. I loved these off-kilter productions for their honest rawness and their lack of fluff. One of the artists who contributed was Nikolai Serebryakov. Although his tales for the Shakespeare series were cel, below is an earlier work from 1968 which uses puppets.
Ball of Wool is tale of fortune, status envy and greed. Or it’s a tale about an old lady and a cute dog. It depends how you look at it.
Posted by bangazee 
Posted by bangazee 
Posted by bangazee 
