Romance comes to strangers on a train in Passing Moments. © 2002 Don Phillips, Jr.

Passing Moments
From Ringling School of Art and Design comes Passing Moments, a senior thesis by director Don Phillips. Set in the 1930s, the film employs Art Deco design around male and female characters who meet suddenly on a train and are mutually attracted though there are barriers that stand between them. The film is a short study in character animation, influenced by the work of the PDI and Pixar studios, with no dialogue. Story details are suggested through subtle movement and facial expression, as well as images representing the internal thoughts of the male character. Unfortunately, these thoughts occupy so much of his time that he misses the opportunity to express his feelings to the woman of his dreams.

Phillips employed a range of applications in creating his film, including Alias|Wavefront Maya 4.0, Deep Paint 3D and Nothing Real Shake 2.4. Although the characters and most of the environments were 3D, Photoshop was used to create some 2D elements that were composited into the film.

The director came to the work with a range of professional experience, including an internship at LucasArts Entertainment, where he worked on character animation for a video game. He also interned at Animink, Inc., where he created traditional animation and did cleanup for commercials. Passing Moments has been well received, winning a Student Academy Award and appearing within SIGGRAPH’s Electronic Theater, both in 2002.

Orange follows a sailor's experiences in a small town. © 2002 Kinofilm.

Orange
Orange tells the somewhat loosely structured story of a man who goes through a series of actions within a small town. The man, a sailor, appears to be attracted to a woman who sells oranges there. When he comes into port he buys fruit from her and she gazes wistfully at him, seemingly intoxicated by the lingering smoke of his cigarette. While he is in port, he engages in a chess game with a man there. Though he loses at first, on his next attempt he literally ‘takes home the bank,’ which appears to result in his winning the young woman’s love as well. During these adventures, he is followed by a small mouse.

The visual style of the piece and the music work together to complement the storytelling, which is lively and unpredictable. Told without dialogue, the film is interesting to watch, in part because one never quite knows where the story is going. The director has created funny asides that are worked into the background or cut into the story as quick cutaways. For example, there is a huge fish that quickly snaps up things as they fall into the water and a beached whale that onlookers try to push back into the water.

Unfortunately, there are also elements which are less compelling to watch, which is unfortunate. In order to build his chess board, the sailor ventures to Africa and comes across some tribal members who lead him on a trek to hunt a rhinoceros for its tusk. I find this material, which is somewhat stereotypical and involves poaching, to be a major distraction in an otherwise well-made film. On the other hand, the action that the tribal members undertake in guiding him through the terrain is well developed; one by one, they succumb to dangers along the way in a sequence that is well-timed and humorous.

Ushakov worked for the Pilot and Nils studios in Moscow before moving to America and beginning work for Kinofilm in Los Angeles. Orange was created as a personal project at the studio, with funding from Kinofilm. It was made using cel animation and 35mm film.

Maureen Furniss, Ph.D. is founding editor of Animation Journal and author of Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics (1998). She teaches in the Department of Film and Digital Media at Savannah College of Art and Design, in Georgia, and is currently writing a book related to animation production.