Stop Motion Pro was the basis of the software used during the shoot and was designed specifically for previewing and grabbing digital frames. The HD files were compiled using Nikon Capture as RAW digital files, and Adobe Photoshop was used to resize all frames to 16:9 format and batch digitize the initial base color grade. Autodesk Combustion was used to create masks or mattes to rotoscope out the support rigging attached to the characters. Avid was used to create an offline edit, and Adobe After Effects was used for initial compositing of all components, with Flame used for more complicated effects, as well as final color grading and effect filtering.

It's a staggering amount of work that goes into a seven-minute film, and Hunwick's entire crew put in many, many long hours over the course of the production to create this tale of a small, hardworking dog that just couldn't get enough attention from his master -- but received no shortage of attention from his creators.

The Necktie (Le noeud cravate) continues the NFB's long history of high quality animation. © 2008 National Film Board of Canada.

The Necktie (Le noeud cravate)
The National Film Board of Canada has a long history of funding high quality animation, and The Necktie (La noeud cravate) is among their very best recent efforts. Director Jean-François Lévesque tells the tale of Valentin, a world-weary employee in a non-descript office job, as he watches his life slip away year by year.

On Valentin's 25th birthday, he receives two gifts from his mother: a necktie and an accordion. Donning the necktie, he is hired by a local monolithic corporation and is promptly assigned a menial, depressing job, which drains his life away, bit by bit, as he makes minor progress toward his eventual retirement. As each year passes, he is permitted to ascend one floor, and before he's realized it, Valentin is 40 and has nothing much to show for it. Overcome by curiosity, he rides the elevator to the 65th floor to find out what he's been working toward, only to discover the terrible truth about his career path. Faced with this horror, he embraces the artistic path once again, dusting off his accordion and seeking happiness off the beaten path.

The film uses a variety of techniques. Valentin himself is a puppet shot in stop-motion inside miniature sets. His co-workers were created with traditional 2D animation drawings on paper, which are integrated into the shots with After Effects and manipulated to appear as 2D cardboard cutouts interacting with Valentin. The stop-motion was shot using a digital Nikon still camera with a video assist system using Frame Thief software. Compositing and additional effects were achieved through the use of a greenscreen and after effects.

As with Mutt, Lévesque's film was very labor intensive and required long, long hours on behalf of a small, dedicated crew. Stop-motion animation is not a venture that should be entered lightly. Lévesque spent three years, full-time, on the film, which took five years overall. In the middle of the production, a character was dropped from the film, and it took an additional four months of work to alter the rest of the short and compensate for the change in direction. Fortunately, the work shows, and La noeud cravate is a timeless and masterful piece of animation that will be treasured by animation fans for years to come.

Six directors combined forces to make the fun and fast-moving Oktapodi. © Gobelins, l'ecole de l'image.

Oktapodi
Rounding out this month's "FFF" is a short that isn't (directly) about how terrible work is, although you can interpret it as supporting the worldview that life is all about suffering and eternal struggle. Something about spending months or years at a time working very long hours on a project that a viewer can dismiss entirely with the turn of the channel or the click of a mouse lends itself to the creation of stories that question why people bother to even get out of bed in the morning.

Oktapodi is, however, a really fun story, despite the "eternal suffering" motif. Two octopuses are wooing each other in the confines of a small aquarium when the female is forcibly removed by a deliveryman who plans to take her to the nearest sushi restaurant for dinner. Blinded by rage and motivated by true love, the remaining octopus escapes the tank and pursues the delivery truck, determined to rescue his sweetheart. A calamitous chase ensues, and after much chaos, the lovers are reunited... briefly, and the film ends as the second chase begins.

It's a very fast-paced, very fun film. Directors Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi produced the film for French studio Gobelins, l'école de l'image, which amounts to nearly one director per tentacle on each octopus. They faced many challenges in the production of the film, including how to make an octopus into an expressive character, since it has no visible mouth, and must emote using only its eyes and body language.

The animators used Maya 7.5 for the 3D aspects of the film. In addition, they used Realflow for the water simulations, and mental ray for the subsurface scattering of the characters, and also for the final-gather global illumination of the exterior background scenes. Photoshop was used for creating textures; After Effects for compositing; Premiere for editing of the animatic; Flash for the animatic sequences, the 2D effects and animation; and Pro Tools was used for the sound effects.

Oktapodi took a lot of work and a lot of animators, but it provided some of the best flying octopus jokes ever committed to film, so I'll forgive it for not spending enough time focusing on the deliveryman and how miserable his job is. With six directors, there's a pretty good chance one of them will tackle that in a sequel.

Andrew Farago is the gallery manager and curator of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum and the creator of the weekly online comic serial The Chronicles of William Bazillion.