"A Romance in Graphite"

This past April at Sheridan College saw the screening of the 4th Year films from a very talented group of students who would shortly be graduating from the BAA Animation program. I'd had this bunch just two years prior in my 2nd Year Character Design class, and now that they've graduated and moved on into their careers, I don't mind saying that I'm going to miss seeing all those crazy rascals. One of these students was Melissa Maduro, who always had a great knack for drawing very appealing cartoon designs with a lot of personality, and I always enjoyed seeing her work when I was grading assignments. Even though the gal seemed to have a peculiar fascination with comedic zombies.

After the screening on Sheridan's annual Industry Day, I felt that Mel's film, "A Romance in Graphite" was among the better ones and it got a very good reception from the studio reps in attendance that day. It was also admittedly one of my favourite films for its simple, yet charming story told with humour and elegance. As it happens, "A Romance in Graphite" was one of the films in competition this past week at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in the category of Most Promising Student Film, with a scholarship from Teletoon as the prize. Actually, there were a number of other Sheridan grads in the running, including Vlad Kooperman for his incredible film, "C Block". Regardless of who has won the scholarship (and I haven't yet heard the results) I believe that Sheridan had some very worthy contenders.

Mel had recently posted her film on her own blog and, though I can't embed it here, I'm going to provide this direct link to "A Romance in Graphite" so you can all see how charming it is. So here's to Melissa Maduro - Talented filmmaker, funny cartoonist, and a friend to zombies...

Sheridan College Animation Industry Day.

Yesterday was the annual Industry Day at Sheridan College in which representatives from various national and international animation studios gather to watch a screening of our grad students' animated films. Mark Mayerson has just written up a great overview of the event itself and, though I left the following comment on his site, I'm going to reprint it here on my blog too:

I'd have to concur that this was a particularly strong year in both the 4th Year personal films and the 3rd Year group films. I may be a bit blunt in my assessment, but I feel that last year's crop of 4th Year films included far too many Flash produced efforts with little more than moving graphics. Many of them were very good in terms of storytelling and filmmaking skills, but were frankly disappointing in terms of character animation.

This year was a pleasant surprise for me, as I feel that the majority of 4th Year students really aspired to more personality based, full character animation. Though there were some very impressive CG films, I'll admit I'm still biased in favour of hand drawn animation and I found much to like this year. The highlights for me were Andrew Ferguson's "The Street Magician" and Matt Kalinauskas' "Two by Two", both of which showed great flair for cartoony design; Melissa Maduro's "A Romance in Graphite" and Marion Coffey's "The Little Colour Thief", both showing simple elegance and charm in their appealing, fluid character animation; and of course, Vlad Kooperman's very impressive "C Block", which I know received a very positive reaction from everyone in the theatre. And these are just a few of the better ones, as there were many other notable films I enjoyed very much.

All in all, a very impressive and entertaining screening yesterday at Sheridan, and I think the graduating students should be very proud of their achievements. I look forward to seeing great work from them onscreen in the years to come and I'll always have fond memories of working with them in my class back in their 2nd Year.