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Cartoon Brew looks at some of the likely contenders in the Oscar race for this year's best animated short film.

Daisy Jacobs' "The Bigger Picture," a graduation film from Britain's National Film and Television School, won the top prize at the 12th annual Fantoche animation festival, which wrapped up last Sunday in Baden, Switzerland.

Great-looking teaser for a Aubade, an animated film by Maura Carraro (previously).

Interstitial animation for Italian TV by Mauro Carraro. Great seagull design!

Matatoro takes on “the hermetic world of bullfighting and its public, here reinvented and reinterpreted.” The short was made at Supinfocom Arles last year by Mauro Carraro, Raphaël Calamote, and Jérémy Pasquet. The music was composed by Pierre Manchot.

The film is ambitious stylistically: its nonphotorealistic rendering style mimics ink and watercolor to good effect, and the stylized animation and layouts emphasize the theatrical nature of bullfighting. There’s never any doubt that the film was made in CG—the smooth perfection of the camera gives it away—but the filmmakers’ application of the watercolor technique allows for some of the most exciting color I’ve seen in any recent CG short.

The imagery in Matatoro is thoughtful and thoughtprovoking. The filmmakers draw visual metaphors between bullfighting and flamenco dancing, carousel rides, and the circus, but in the end, the film asks viewers to reconsider whether it resembles any of those other less violent pastimes.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: France, Jérémy Pasquet, Mauro Carraro, Raphaël Calamote, Supinfocom

MATATORO (by Matatoro Team)

Directed by Mauro Carraro, Raphaël Calamote, Jérémy Pasquet

HD animation on Vimeo is maybe the best reason to get a 27” iMac. This looks gorgeous in fullscreen HD — the vivid colours, the textures.

Check out the character turnarounds, too. It’s interesting to note that this is indeed, 3D animation. But the low frame rate and watercolour and pastel textures give the illusion of painstakingly rendered drawings.