This movie plays with forms and colors in a beautiful and brilliant way. It was directed by Anton Setola, an animator, illustrator and comic artist based in Ghent, Belgium. The music is by Frederik Segers. Since 2008 the film has been selected by more than 60 festivals worldwide and has won several awards.

More info and artwork at antonsetola.blogspot.com

Amazingly, this jolly advert was all animated in Photoshop. Produced at Three Legged Legs, CA, USA.

Check out the making-of at: threeleggedlegs.com

A film about the human drive to destroy things, from the relatively innocent act of bursting a balloon, through to the horror of war and the ecological disaster of polluting the planet. Xaver Xylophon is a student of visual communication at KHB Berlin.

Winner at Annecy 2011 for best graduation film, it shows a man investigating a cube. It alternates between pen on paper drawings and 3D cardboard models in a way that keeps the viewer guessing about what will happen next. It was directed by Léonard Cohen at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France.

This independent animation gained numerous festival awards in the 1980s.

“The Black Dog represents the same sort of advance in animation that The Marriage of Figaro was in opera”, wrote the animator Richard Taylor in his Guardian obituary to Alison De Vere (1927 – 2001).

He continued; “It is a fully entertaining cartoon film, beautifully designed and animated, but covering in its events and characters themes of self-discovery and experience of the deepest kind. There is, towards the end of the film, an image of the relationship between parent and child that is unbelievably moving. The film collected armfuls of awards internationally.”

Part 2

This was the first animated film by Richard Williams who wrote, produced, directed, animated and financed it. It is a half-hour philosophical argument without words. It won the BAFTA award in 1959 for Best Animated Film. Tristram Cary wrote the music.

The film features three men, who each only believe in one thing, one in Good, one in Truth, and one in Beauty. Taking their beliefs to the extreme they become monsters, in this highly stylized and offbeat early work by a contemporary animation legend. Very simply made but surprisingly thoughtful and serious in its subject matter, and certainly open to interpretation.

Note: This is a playlist with four parts.

This stunning film is the 2011 BAFTA award winner in the short animation category. Michael Please is a recent animation graduate from the Royal College of Art in London. The sets and some of the puppets appear to be created from white card. The video below shows some animation in progress.

Visit the Michael Please blog for more info.

Norman McLaren filmed actors with stop motion to create a story of conflict between next door neighbours. When Neighbours won an Oscar, McLaren was in Brazil and so was notified by telegram. Back came his simple reply: ‘What’s an Oscar?’ Read more in Animator Issue 19.

A muscular figure struggles to push a huge rock up a slope. The film received an Oscar nomination. This story is told without words. Marcell Jankovics is a Hungarian graphic artist, cartoon director, animator and author.

A classic tale of temptation is revealed in the form of a comic opera. In a room full of wind-up toys, our hero sets a chain of events into motion that ends up disturbing both his own, and the viewer’s, sense of reality. La Salla has won many awards and earned an Oscar-nomination.