The Real Canadian Showcase at the Ottawa International Animation Festival consisted of 12 different Canadian animated shorts. Each short provided its own unique aspect to the beauty of animation. The shorts consisted of classic 2D animation, silhouettes, puppets, claymation, stop motion, live action shots, and abstract animation styles.
Some of the films, such as Crossing Victoria and Breakfast were made simply to illustrate the creativity and beauty of animation. Their films had little to no narrative and consisted of abstract characteristics. Breakfast’s animation was done with stencils and overlap of black and white with some filled in objects.
Impromptu, directed by Bruce Alcock, was animated through silhouettes and was done very effectively. It consisted of a simple narrative — a man having a dinner party and his wife bringing a friend he is not entirely fond of — while using its sound creatively to accent its simple, yet creative, animation style. Its humour also left the audience close to tears.
Yellow Sticky-Notes and Super Duper Super Hero were both creative and simple animated shorts which further showed the glory of animation. Yellow Sticky-Notes consists of basic sketches being flashed through a sticky-note pad displaying people’s different to-do lists for the days. Super Duper Super Hero presents itself with a white background with the only filled-in drawings being the two characters presented on stage. It is a delightful short carried out with an intriguing style and enjoyable quips.
The best short film that was featured in the Canadian Showcase was Foxed!. A young girl who has been kidnapped by foxes is being forced to dig for them. She discovers that her mother has forgotten her due to her body being replaced by a fox in disguise. James Stewart and Nev Bezzaire create a sinister world through stop-motion animation which will change the way you view the four-legged ginger dogs that roam our forests. The music is creative and eery, adding to the tone of the movie. Despite the film only running for four minutes it has all the qualities of an accomplished feature length film.
The Real Canadian Showcase consisted of multiple other interesting films which all aimed to show the fantastic art-form that is animation. Most of the short films consisted of basic animation styles but they were executed with profound style that they were more memorable then the few short films that used more complex forms of animation such as puppets and CGI. Canada has presented itself with excellent short animated films, all of which contributed something note-worthy different to the festival.
