This year my mind was enhanced by all the great videos I got to watch. It’s amazing the kind of visual awesome that is created and shown just because someone felt like it just had to be made. It’s real and amazing and the love shows through in the quality of the content. Not only was the quality of visual story telling beautiful, but the subjects themselves were extremely inspiring.
This was my first year working with Redux and running the animation channel has been a fantastic voyage. I’ve been truly amazed by the level of talent out there in the animation community. I’ve laughed, cried, cheered and been genuinely surprised. Animators are a special breed who work in an extremely difficult field that requires patience, diligence and copious hours of work. The result is a catalogue of amazing films that are as special as the people who created them. I am impressed with the range of materials used for the films. The most obvious is 3D computer animation. We are all familiar with this from popular films at the movie theater. But I have watched films made of cut paper, sand, clay, watercolor, photographs, photocopies, pages of books, nuts, bolts, bits of wire and more and more. The materials aren’t as important as the story and these animators tell a great tale. I still go back and watch films I found months ago. For the ‘Best Of’ I selected a few of the moments I remember most. These weren’t necessarily the most popular videos but each one stood out in my mind. I hope you will take a moment to enjoy them for yourself!
Over the next couple weeks Redux curators will be sharing their favorite five posts from 2011. I’m going to get us started with some of my favorite short films I’ve posted in my Cinematheque channel this year.
When I first began to peruse my channel to pick my top five I came to the realization that a) I’ve watched at least over 1,000 short films this year and b) out of those I have way more than five favorite shorts. Thus I tried to pick the most diverse selection that showcased the variety of the talents I witnessed online today. Here they are in no particular order.
