Download a Quicktime clip from The Blue Shoe by Peter Reynolds. © FableVision. 1.2 MB

A Story is Born
A single blue shoe sets out on a journey to find her soul mate. Along the way she encounters a green boot who shows her great kindness. But the green boot is not blue, or a shoe and could not possibly be her soul mate...or could it?

So begins this metaphorical fable about the quest for true love by the relatively new FableVision, a two-year-old animation studio based in Watertown, Massachusetts. The seven-minute short was a recent winner at the 1998 World Animation Celebration, placing second for "2-D Computer Generated Animation by an Independent," and has just been selected for the official Annecy `98 competition program.

The story was conceived on a stack of napkins by Peter Reynolds, partner and creative director of FableVision, as a diversion for his daughter from (to her taste) a very boring adult conversation one night at dinner. She fell in love with the little blue shoe and asked her father to complete the half-finished story. (Later, Reynolds finished it on another stack of napkins on a plane.)

After parting ways with the green boot after a "very nice farewell," the blue shoe meets a blue sneaker. "Smooth and blue" - not to mention a shoe! But the sneaker, full of egotistical bravado, proceeds to talk her ear off well into the night. Weary and disappointed, the blue shoe seeks refuge in a nearby house on a hill. As fate would have it, she has happened upon the home of the green boot. He makes her a cup of tea and puts her up for the night. Still not satisfied, the blue shoe leaves early the next morning. Hungry to go, fixated on the fact that her soul mate is out there, she feels compelled to continue on her journey despite the boot's great kindness and a terrible storm. Besides her soul mate will certainly be blue, and if not, at least a shoe. Won't he?

Organic in a Digital Age
It is the film's gentle simplicity that makes it most striking. Drawn in deft, black lines with semi-transparent washes of color, the drawings seem to float on the screen as the camera tracks over the landscape. The backgrounds of brown recycled paper show through the washes and give the film it's visual warmth and unexpected look.

Once Reynolds had completed the story on napkins, he re-drew it in a $2.00 recycled paper journal for his daughter's birthday. He wanted to recreate the warmth and intimacy of the journal in the animated version, scanning recycled paper into the computer for the backgrounds. "We wanted to bring organic materials into the digital world where everything is so clean. It's nice to be a little un-careful and get a fiber and paper feel."

The animation was then drawn directly into the computer using the new multi-plane TicTacToon Animation system developed by Montreal-based ToonBoom Technologies. TicTacToon is unique in that it enables animators to create cel-style, paperless animation using multi-plane space in a computer environment. Using vector-based graphics, the system allows one to pan and zoom without pixilation.

The animation in The Blue Shoe is pared down to only the barest of essentials, much of it created only by elegant camera moves. This economic style is reminiscent of Reynolds' SquiggleVision days, a technique he helped to pioneer during his 13 years as creative director at Tom Snyder Productions, and featured in their shows Dr. Katz (on Comedy Central) and Science Court (currently on ABC's "One Saturday Morning").