Shane Acker was influenced by puppetry and stop-motion animation masters Jan Svankmeyer, The Brothers Quay and the Lauenstein Brothers and the old English poem Beowulf for his film 9. © Shane Acker.

9
With his eye for strong composition, Shane Acker has created a gritty, tactile reality for his animated adventure 9. In this ravaged world, primitive, potato-sack, rag dolls are hunted by a mechanical beast that steals their souls. Using non-verbal narrative, the film relies heavily on pantomime and staging to tell the story of 9, the rag doll, who must confront the monster.

Acker took his inspiration from many sources — puppetry and the work of stop-motion animation masters Jan Svankmeyer, The Brothers Quay and the Lauenstein Brothers, the fantasy artwork of Zdzislaw Beksinski, photographs of European cities destroyed in World War II and the old English poem Beowulf. He brought these influences to the world of CGI, using Maya and Photoshop to realize his vision. Sound and music were critical elements in building a believable fantasy world. For Acker, “Sound creates space.” The animation was created first with the sound being inspired by the visuals. Dave Steinwedel designed the sound with music from Earganic. It took 4 1/2 years to bring the film to fruition.

Shane Acker received dual masters degrees in architecture and animation from UCLA. He joined Weta Digital to animate on the third film in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy: The Return of the King. His first film, The Hangnail, screened internationally in more than 60 film and animation festivals, toured with the Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted Animation Festival, and has aired on the Sci Fi channel. He freelances as a 3D artist, director and independent filmmaker in Los Angeles.

The Meaning of Life
It’s surprising how poignant stick-figure, pencil-sketched characters can become in the hands of an artist, but that’s a large part of the magic of Don Hertzfeldt’s animated short, The Meaning of Life — an exploration of time, life, death and Tchaikovsky. Another pleasure is the hand-made craftsmanship displayed in the film.

Hertzfeldt admits, “I don’t use computers for anything.” For The Meaning of Life, Hertzfeldt single-handedly animated tens of thousands of pen, paper and paint drawings. His inspiration came from an attraction to comedy and the desire to do something different. In order to keep his interest over the long four-year production, Hertzfeldt never worked from a preconceived scenario, instead, he allowed scenes to evolve organically as part of the creative process as the film took shape.

The entire film was photographed traditionally to 35mm with all the effects work meticulously created in-camera through traditional multiple-exposures, optical compositing, backlighting and inventive trick photography techniques. The crowd scenes during the intense first three minutes of the film took two years to complete and included vocal performances by some 60 actors playing more than 150 characters. Many complex sequences required several months of work just to produce a few seconds of screen time. Eventually 45 minutes of film was shot for the film’s 12-minute running time.

At the age of 15, Hertzfeldt self-taught himself animation, which he prefers to live-action because animation allows him complete control. His previous film, Rejected (2001) was nominated for an Academy Award. His other animated films — Billy’s Balloon, Lily and Jim, Genre and Ah, L’Amour — have received more than 100 awards since 1995 and have been seen in thousands of film festivals and venues around the world. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara Department of Film Studies, Hertzfeldt now teaches at his alma mater.