Best animated shorts

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Garden Party is one of eight stunning examples of top animated shorts

Animated shorts are a booming category of animated 3D films, with a wealth of inspiring videos appearing regularly. DreamWorks' head of international outreach and international talent consultant, Shelley Page, is so passionate about animation that she founded Eye Candy to showcase the genre.

"The origin of the Eye Candy Show was a series of regular screenings of the latest animation shorts, graduation films and TV commercials, collected during my travels around the world to present to my colleagues at DreamWorks Animation," says Page.

"At first these were only shown at our studios in the USA but later, as the studio expanded to more distant locations, I also took these screenings to our animators in Bangalore, India and, more recently, Shanghai. 

"Some years ago, I was invited to make a special Eye Candy presentation at the FMX festival in Germany [now an annual part of this event] and since then I have presented my favourite films of each year to festival audiences and schools around the world."

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Page talks about the story of the making of each film before screening it, particularly when addressing student groups, as she admits she is is "always curious about the process behind the creation of these amazing works." 

About to set off for the latest series of graduation juries and screenings in the UK, Europe and further afield, Page says she is "excited about the great new films I know I will discover for my next Eye Candy selection!"

From student projects to films voiced by Oscar-nominated actors, Page reveals eight of her favourite shorts. She also finds out how they were made, and shares advice for budding animators. So let's see her first choice.

01. Sur Sa Trace

• Director: Axel De Lafforest

This charming student film, inspired by Robin Joseph's A Seagull on Mud illustration, was a challenge for then student film-maker Axel De Lafforest, and took six months to put together. "I had created another short film before, but this was my first film in 3D so it was technically very difficult," he says. "I had to create everything for this film, the hardest part was managing my time," he recalls. 

De Lafforest used 3ds Max to create the 3D characters and 2D background and is refreshingly modest about the film, despite it being one of Page's picks. "I don't think the animation is very good in my film… There's nothing technically impressive about it," he says. However, De Lafforest is proud of his work, "I'm very glad my film was shown in festivals like Très Court, Tournez Court and soon the Filmets Badalona Film Festival."

Now working at Mikros Animation, he still sees the student project Sur Sa Trace as one of his most satisfying to work on as a director "because I was alone to make the decisions, and it was very clear in my head". His advice for budding 3D filmmakers? "Be daring, then work and work again."

02. Some Thing

• Director: Elena Walf
• Comp Lead: Matthias Bäuerle

Some Thing's director, Elena Walf, wrote and animated the film, and although she didn't have much experience of making short films, her illustration background helped her with the design.

Originally, Walf conceived Some Thing – about a mountain with a strange object – as a fairy tale-like children's book. "I guess that's why the compositions resemble the style of children's books. It was very important for me that everything looks kind of hand-drawn," she says.

Matthias Bäuerle, who worked as comp lead on the film, was determined to help Walf achieve her vision. "It was very important to understand the level of detail Elena wanted to achieve. She was very specific about when and how a texture should move... 

"We used TVPaint as our backbone for animation and the colouring process. Then we exported the colour mattes and all the outline layers and used Nuke as our weapon for applying and animating the textures and final compositing."

Bäuerle also offers some tips on making your way in the industry. "Listen carefully to the stories that are growing inside your head. Keep experimenting and check out lots of different tools."

03. Citipati

• Director: Andreas Felix

Citipati, a tale about life and death from a prehistoric perspective, won the award for outstanding visual effects in a student project at the VES Awards 2016.

Director Andreas Felix considers the film's most impressive technical achievement to be the secondary details added into the rig of the main character, on top of the base skeleton. "This was built using CAT, a crude muscular system that was attached based on a custom-developed setup using bones and springs. As a result, not only did it facilitate geometric deformations on the character's surface, but also produced jiggling tissue in real time, and the ease of access allowed for any oddities to be fixed on a per shot basis," he explains.

The creature's tail movement was animated procedurally using a set of noise controllers and springs. "This saved a lot of time in animation as well, which was crucial, as the schedule dictated having all shots animated at a rate of 20-25 seconds per week," explains Felix.

Felix points to Phoenix FD plugin and 3ds Max's Particle Flow when asked about his most useful tools. "As the film contains over 300 FX simulations, about 85 per cent were evenly split between fluid simulations and rigid body dynamics. Especially for doing a lot of secondary events and details, Phoenix FD proved to be easy to set up and recycle to create a large body of sims in a short amount of time… 

"The procedural toolset of Particle Flow allowed for easily creating small events like dynamic gravel and debris and to add detailed interactions with ease, which in turn could be fed into Phoenix FD to add more control and detail to the simulations."

Felix is not one to shy away from unconventional solutions. "If you can offer a different solution out of the box, you may surprise your superiors and colleagues for good. It's never wrong to be a little bit rebellious, at the right time, of course," he says.

Next page: 5 more great animated shorts

04. Asteria

• Directors: Alexandre Arpentinier, Mathieu Blanchys, Lola Grand, Tristan Lamarca, Thomas Lemaille, Jean-Charles Lusseau

This short film set in space has won over hearts and minds, not just with the quality of animation, but with its sense of humour, something that was of great relief to one its directors, Alexandre Arpentinier. "One of the hardest tasks was to give a good rhythm to the film, find a good end stop, and make good gags. It's hard to know if all the jokes will make the spectators laugh when you work for several months on it and hear it dozens of times a day," he says.

Student projects can often fall victim to unforeseen problems, but the Asteria team avoided this with careful planning and teamwork. "We didn't make any big mistakes during the production because we always did tests before we started in the different tasks," says Arpentinier, who adds that the team worked together to stay organised and on track.  

The team used a variety of tools to create Asteria, including Maya for modelling, rigging and animation; ZBrush and Mari for sculpting and texturing; Arnold for rendering; Nuke and Houdini for compositing and effects, Premiere for editing, and occasionally Photoshop for testing or small alterations. 

But Arpentinier doesn't think that one tool is more important than another. "There isn't a single software or tool that has helped us a lot during the production, but we think it's the combination of all the software that allowed us get good quality in every field," he explains.

05. La Parfumerie de Monsieur Pompone

• Directors: Camille Ferrari, Axel De Lafforest, Florian Ratte, Yoann Demettre, Tanguy Weylan

This ambitious short from co-directors Axel de Lafforest, Florian Ratte, Yoann Demettre, Camille Ferrari and Tanguy Weyland follows the story of a perfume manufacturer in Paris and is influenced by the works of Roald Dahl.

"We all had a different role to play in the creation of the movie," says Camille Ferrari. "I was in charge of most of the storyboard, texturing and editing.  We all directed it, but Axel was at the heart of the project, so he had to write the basis for the story. Tanguy was our technical director, Yoann our lead modelling and Florian our lead animation."

The team used 3ds Max mainly for the 3D, Mari for the texturing, Nuke for the compositing, and Avid for the editing. Nuke was also vital to realise the team's vision. "We wanted the 3D to look like 2D," says Ferrari. "Our main goal was to have a very graphic render with a lot of patterns on the textures."

With the film winning awards at both the Panam Anim and the Beijing International Film Festival, it's no surprise that all of the former student directors are now gainfully employed in the industry.

As far as wider animation goes, Ferrari has some thoughts on the future, "I think 3D animation is the future of animation. 2D is very nice but it needs more money and more time for production. I don't think we could have done a six or seven minute 2D animation film in one year. But I do sometimes work in 2D. Making a 3D movie doesn't mean giving up 2D animation."

06. Poles Apart

• Director: Paloma Baeza
• Dfx team: Gillian Simpson, Shivani Shah, Ollie Brummell

Director Paloma Baeza started out as an actress before moving into writing and directing. Never one to shy away from a challenge, creating Poles Apart – which stars Helena Bonham Carter and Joseph May – was a new kind of experience for her. 

"I wrote, directed and partly animated. Animating is the hardest for me as I am very new to it... the biggest transition was learning about animation in the technical sense – animatics, the actual hands-on animating, as well as time-scales and the precision involved," she explains.

As with any new medium, mistakes happen. "Early in the shoot we animated a long shot with focus pulls and puppet rigs, but I foolishly didn't get clean background the separate focus pulls. This made good rig removal and compositing very difficult. In the end, we had to re-shoot this sequence, but we didn't make that mistake again!" says Baeza.

While Baeza prefers to focus on stop-motion, using Dragonframe, the digital FX experts on Poles Apart – Gillian Simpson, Shivani Shah and Ollie Brummell –
were deep in other methods. 

"The CG icebergs were achieved using photogrammetry of the props made by our production designer, which allowed us to replicate an identical 3D asset that reduced time in modelling and sculpting, but also enabled us to create a range of diffuse and light baked textures for the motion control shot in particular," explains Baeza.

07. Garden Party

• Directors: Victor Cair, Théophile Dufresne, Vincent Bayoux, Florian Babikian, Gabriel Graperron, Lucas Navarro

Garden Party's photo-real animation of amphibians has been showcased in many festivals, and earned a Grand Jury Prize at Nashville Film Festival, as well as Page's Eye Candy – Film of the Year 2017.

The team used a wide range of software in production, but they also had to craft a hefty piece of hardware. "In order to obtain the realistic look we wanted, we had to build a 3D scanner in our garage, based on photogrammetry, to scan 3D assets. It was a huge challenge for us," says one of the six directors, Victor Caire. "We used the software RealityCapture to scan the objects, then all the scans were brought into ZBrush for remeshing," he adds. 

The team also developed a script in ZBrush to export colour, normal and displacement maps from the scans before moving into Maya, where the maps could then be plugged in automatically.

Caire thinks that the fast pace of the industry means that new artists have to stay focused. "The most important thing is to have good composition and storytelling. It's not always about the software you use, think more about the result. There's always a way to do it."

08. Gokurōsama

• Directors: Clémentine Frère, Romain Salvini, Aurore Gal, Yukiko Meignien, Anna Mertz, Robin Migliorelli

Gokurōsama is a Studio Ghibli-inspired short film that follows the story of an old woman and her assistant just before a mall opens. "We really enjoy the contemplative quality you can find in many Japanese animation films like those of Studio Ghibli," says one of the directors, Clémentine Frère.

"However, stylistically we wanted to stay away from being too anime-like... it was mostly a job of giving the environment that abundant feel (of a mall) while still keeping the characters silhouettes stand out using colour blocking."

The project used 3ds Max (V-Ray) for modelling, lighting and rendering; Maya for rigging and animation and Mari to paint the textures on the characters. Working in Mari was particularly useful.

"I think Mari was probably the most vital software to production because we were able to quickly and easily update the textures of each character, even during the rigging process," says Romain Salvini.

Salvini believes that an inquisitive mind is vital for success. "You must be curious about new software and ways to make things. And keep watching movies, reading, looking for nice pictures, because these things can become an idea or reference for a project."

This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 224. Buy it here!

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