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.

Copenhagen Cycles (2006), 6:35, by Eric Dyer (U.S.). Contact: Eric Dyer [T] 410.235.2922 [E] dyer@umbc.edu [W] www.ericdyer.com

Slide (2005), 3:54, by Sharon Katz (Canada). Contact: Sharon Katz [T] 613.235.7197 [E] katz@ncf.ca [W] www.sharonkatz.net

Down the Road (2007), 15:57, by Rune Christensen (Denmark). Contact: JA Film [T] +45.70.260.270 [E] mail@jafilm, dk [W] www.jafilm.dk, downtheroad.dk

The Toll (2006), 7:00, by J. Zachary Pike (U.S.). Contact: Hatchling Studios, P.O. Box 1094, Portsmouth, NH 03857 [T] 603.436.0056 [F] 603.436.0061 [E] info@hatchling.com [W] www.hatchling.com, www.thetollmovie.com

Who I Am and What I Want (2005), 7:30, by Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley (U.K.). Contact: Slinky Pictures [T] +44. (0) 20.7247.6444 9F0 +44 (0) 20.7247.0164 [F] info@slinkypics.com [W] www.slinkypics.com

Turn your wheels at Copenhagen Cycles. © Eric Dyer.

Copenhagen Cycles
In the world of moving pictures, there are three basic components you're going to find in any delivery system, from Zoetrope to MiniDV player: the action being depicted, the on/off gate that gives you the action in discrete flashes, and a flywheel. It seems like 100,000 years have elapsed between the first Zoetrope and the Sony HDW-F900, and, in terms of the man-hours necessary to invent all the intermediary technologies, that's not far wrong, but animation still has discrete frames of action every second, and VCRs still have flywheels and a Super 8 projector has a gate. Baltimore-raised animator Eric Dyer is taking some of the gadgets we're so proud of in the industrial age, from that nutty internal combustion engine to the miraculous handheld digicam to that myth engine Photoshop, and is mashing it all up to create modified Zoetropes.

Dyer was in Copenhagen on a Fulbright award when he started making the awesome and scintillating animated short, Copenhagen Cycles. Naming the short was a no-brainer, as the Zoetropes on view in the film are not only cyclical animation loops, but also reality footage that Dyer shot from his bicycle while commuting back and forth across the city. In making new content for this sadly neglected 19^th-century animation medium, Dyer provides wheel, action and on/off gate using common materials that are in fact perfect for making Zoetropes though the manufacturers never guessed it. Dyer's wheel, that friendly wide dial holding down the action on every Zoetrope, is a disc whose speed is motorized and adjustable.

The action is a series of cutouts captured from Dyer's home movies, manhandled in After Effects and Photoshop and printed and cut-and-pasted on a stiff backing. And best of all, the on/off gate is a video camera with a fast shutter: a portable slit-making machine that can stutter the action perfectly even while zooming, twisting and pedestaling. Dyer calls his creative hack a "Cinetrope."

In the six-and-a-half-minute mood piece, a bicyclist moves in and out of view as scenery passes before and behind him -- there are other bicyclists, pedestrians, dogs on walkies, swans in a river, brightly-colored facades of buildings, blue sky, rushing cobblestones, teams of horses. Every piece of the mise en scene is spinning in its own nested orbit, and the cutouts can stretch up into space or hand down from a wheel turned upside-down. The effect is beautiful and dizzying.

Dyer's designs are spectacular, and he promises that everything you're seeing on-screen is as it happened in the studio. Beyond some cross-fades there's no digital compositing, no multiple layers created in post. The wild rush was all there on the tabletop - except of course only the camera saw it, it being the only creature in the room with eyes calibrated to defeat the blur.

With no plot to recount beyond a fantastic retelling of Eric's daily commute, and nat sound mixed with the minimalist Phrygian Gates by John Adams for a soundtrack, Copenhagen Cycles doesn't aspire to be anything beyond a dynamic mood piece. As a fellow cyclist, though, I actually see bravery in this -- not because he put himself in great danger by filming while cycling, but because he made the piece at all. Like Dyer, I'm an urban bicyclist, and the night I wrote this, like every weeknight, I biked the same seven miles home from work that I biked the previous day and will bike again many times in the future. The artist's worst enemy isn't being broke or being less than great, it's being bored; and that Dyer could continue to see beauty in the very, very familiar -- even if his subject was as bewitching as the suburbs of Copenhagen -- is no minor achievement.