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.

A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process (2005), 1:30 by Chel White (U.S.). Contact: Chel White Films [E] chelfilm@teleport.com [W] www.chelwhite.com

Kernseif (Curd Soap) (2005), 4:04 by Alexander Kiesl and Sebastian Stolle (Germany). Contact: Alexander Kiesl [E] kiesl@unexpected.de, [W] www.unexpected.de; Sebastian Stolle [E] stolle@unexpected.de [W] www.expected.de

I Turn My Face to the Forest Floor (2005), 4:40 by Thomas Hicks (U.K.). Contact: Thomas Hicks [E] tehicks_45@hotmail.com

Eels (Aal im Schädel) (2006), 17:40 by Martin Rahmlow (Germany). Contact: Martin Rahmlow [E] mrahmlow@yahoo.de [W] www.aal-im-schaedel.de

Nocturne (2005), 4:30 by Guillaume Delaunay (France). Contact: Annick Teninge, La Poudrière [E] poudriere.films@wanadoo.fr

Secrets of the creative life revealed in A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process. © Chel White.

A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process (In Less Than 60 Seconds)
Don't wanna write. Anything but that. Nap time, time for orange juice, have to return the videos, have to scrub the pan, have to DEADLINE DEADLINE DEADLINE DEADLINE DEADLINE. Type something, burst mode, vomit up some prose. Polish. Send. Wotta relief. Never again. New assignment... As public service testimonials akin to "Drugs. I stopped. You shouldn't start" or "I thought condoms just got in the way" have long attempted to wheedle young ones off the vices of dope and unsafe sex, now there's a similar preventative for the scribbling disease: A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process (In Less Than 60 Seconds), a hilarious express-train screed from the point of view of one badly blocked poet.

Animator Chel White returns to his cutout animation roots to illustrate the monologue, which as promised explodes in just 59 seconds. The narrator ticks off the items on his creativity checklist: cold sweat, lie on the floor, channel-surf and look for something to steal, drink a six-pack, nap. Wake up, do jumping jacks, eat cookies, read some Hemingway. Cry, fall down the stairs. Put on the writing underwear with Emily Dickinson emblazoned on the crotch. Write something, then throw it in a pit in the backyard. Eat sandwich, castigate self, go drive recklessly towards cliff, suddenly get great idea. Write idea on leg.

Painful Glimpse began as a vignette by poet Scott Poole, which made it to animator Chel White via email from a friend of a friend. White decided it would make a killer short, so he adapted it as a PSA for a local literary festival (this theatrical version is slightly longer). Painful Glimpse bursts at a lightning clip, with cutout images cascading across the screen alongside modified live action footage, text fragments and explosions. Still-frame the video and you can linger on White's usual eclectic source material, including leggy pin-up babes, cross-sections of the human brain and armless fingers doing calisthenics on a shag carpet.

White is a creative partner at Bent Image Labs in Portland, Oregon, where a dozen or so full-time employees and about 30 more "perma-lancers" produce ads and short films, including a well-received Christmas campaign for OfficeMax and some notorious and superbly disgusting anti-smoking PSAs. Many festivalgoers first got turned on to White's work in the early nineties with Photocopy Cha Cha, and, more recently, he's progressed from abstract collage-driven work to narrative-based stop motion with Magda. (Both Magda and A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process will be on the Animation Show Vol. 1 and 2 box set in January.)