Within the world of animation, most experimentation occurs within short format productions, whether they are high-budgeted commercials, low-budgeted independent shorts or something in between. The growing number of short film festivals around the world attest to the vitality of these works, but there are few other venues for exhibition of them or even written reviews. As a result, distribution tends to be difficult and irregular. On a regular basis, Animation World Magazine will highlight some of the most interesting with short, descriptive overviews.

If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view a clip from each film by simply clicking the image.

Workin’ Progress (2004), 4:20, directed by Gabriel Garcia, Benjamin Fligans, Geordie Vandendaele and Benjamin Flinois (France). Contact: Annabel Sebag, Premium Films, 130 Rue De Turenne 75003 Paris, France. [E] animation@premium-films.com.

The Mantis Parable (2005), 8:00, directed by Josh Staub (U.S.). Contact: Josh Staub, Jubilee Studios [E] josh@themantisparable.com [W] www.themantisparable.com.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (2005), 10:00, directed by Michael Sporn (U.S.). Contact: Michael Sporn, Michael Sporn Animation Inc., 35 Bedford Street Basement, New York City, NY 10014 [E] MSAnimation@aol.com [W] www.MichaelSpornAnimation.com.

Juan el Tintero (John the Inkerman) (2005), 37:14, directed by Edwing Solórzano (Colombia). Contact: Edwing Solórzano and Sergio Ceballos, ANIMATEAM, Calle 41 b sur, #43 A 83. Villas del Vallejuelo, casa M20, Envigado, Antioquia, Columbia. [T] (574) 332 31 03 [F] (574) 302 43 81 [E] animateam@epm.net.co [W] www.interactuar.com/animateam.

Ichthys (2005), 16:41, directed by Marek Skrobecki (Poland). Contact: Zbigniew Zmudzki — producer, SE-MA-FOR Film Production Ltd., 93-513 Lodz, Pabianicka 35, Poland. [T/F] +48 42 681 54 74 [E] semafor@pro.onet.pl [W] www.se-ma-for.com.

The working man is dancing about architecture in Workin’ Progress. © Supinfocom Valenciennes.

Workin’ Progress
Tessellation is the art of taking something that looks like a Meerschaum pipe or scarab beetle and laying it out flat so it perfectly interlocks with a million copies of itself. Dutchman M.C. Escher was fond of them, and he dabbled in tessellations of up to three dimensions, but as far as I know never jumped to four, never having completed an animated movie. There’s an upbeat tessellation in a cap and striped T-shirt at the heart of the bouncy animated short Workin’ Progress, a sort of 128 Faces of Eve to a swing beat high above the streets of New York City.

A sad-sack construction worker is out of a job and wandering the streets when an advertising bill blows into his face — there’s a building going up, and they need labor. Kicking his heels, he rushes to the construction site and clocks in, where a people-meter is tallying up crewmembers in powers of two all the way up to 128. He doesn’t seem to get the routine, though; he pumps the water, then sticks the bucket under the spigot; up in the girders he whisks the bucket up on a pulley, lets go of the rope, then rushes to where the bucket was and grabs empty air; he carefully totes a sheet of plate glass, but passes it off to no one, and it shatters.

Clearly things aren’t going his way, so conveniently the opening credits roll once again; he mopes down the street again, the bill blows in his face again, he clicks his heels again. This time, though, he dances more copies of himself into existence, and teams of four, eight, 16 converge on the construction site. He follows the exact same routine — and this time he and his clones mesh in perfect synchrony. By the time number one puts the bucket under the spigot, number two’s arrived to do the pumping; number one rushes about the high girders to grab the bucket that number two has conveniently raised; and number one is there to catch number two’s sheet of plate glass.

It wants to dance, this human assembly line, and eventually it does, spurred on by a high-stepping swing arrangement of “Over There” by the Glen Miller Orchestra. The crowd of Joes swells to 32, 64, 128, swirling in circles of jump-jive choreography and throwing down floor after floor of the skyscraper like a frame-a-day time lapse movie. But above 128 on the people-meter it simply says “Full,” and as even the music begins to double up and start to echo, a lone clone on the topmost girder drops a hammer a hundred floors onto the head of Mr. One Too Many, who immediately goes all Zeppo on the crew and wreaks havoc, pulling funny faces and blowing things up.

So who do you fire when you’re self-employed? Best to just hang the sense of it and dance right out that front door. It’s metaphysics, it’s labor economics, and it’s 4-D geometry, all set to a beat that stomps and shouts. This is more about choreography than acting chops, so although that single character design does have a pliant range of emotions in his face, it’s more fun just surrendering to the breathtaking grace of two men doing a do-si-do as they step effortlessly between spinning girders.

Directors Gabriel Garcia, Benjamin Fligans, Geordie Vandendaele and Benjamin Flinois have locked the music to their scenario with zipper-like efficiency. Like Budovsky’s video for Bathtime in Clerkenwell, this film owns its appropriated musical soundtrack so completely the tune will always take you back to these scenes. It’s yet another piece of bliss-out genius from the Supinfocom aggregate of industry professionals and students, which also spawned Overtime. Take heed, young animation companies — three or four cooks in the kitchen seems to be just about perfect.