Place the family round the dinner table, include the grown up kids and grandparents – nine guests in all plus dog – provide ample red wine, alcohol-free for the grandparents, place the digital voice recorder on the table and let things roll. Such is the technique of Tom Senior, final year student at the Farnham campus of the UK’s University of the Creative Arts (UCA), a fine institution boasting three Oscar winners amongst its illustrious alumni in Daniel Greaves, Michael Dudok de Wit and Suzie Templeton.

Before discussing the animation technique used let me say that the sheer naturalness of the dialogue is a delight. Meals in my home are not unlike this and, whereas accents the world over fluctuate, I recognise something of me in at least one of the characters. The tiny conflicts and moments of alcohol -(or is it just happiness) fuelled daftness strike a chord, the dialogue being full of the myriad irrelevances of real speech, occasional tensions, the peaks and troughs of real life. As the food goes down a treat, not to mention the red liquid, dad licks his spoon, then gets tired and, the central event of the piece other than simply eating, the taking of the family photograph cannot be put off any longer. So dad pulls himself together, sets the remote control and, hey presto, the family is preserved for posterity, all smiling for (or is it because of ) the camera.

Now to the technique. At first sight I thought Tom had rotoscoped the action. In fact the drawings are all digitally hand drawn, 2D computer images, the animator’s quick hands and eyes for detail tracing the essential action and character. Thus the food glides from plate to mouth, the youth stretches, the dishes accumulate by the sink, the table cloth devours the serving plate, the faces are satisfied and full. The backdrop is a sketchily dabbed stroke or two of predominantly yellow watercolour and sometimes the artist focuses on the mouth as a barest disembodied confusion of lines, gyrating busily as the food is devoured. It is all very sketchily done, lovely semblance of watercolour throughout, with that minimalist attention to form you just know is beautifully done. It matches the meandering quality of the dialogue to perfection.

To set the scene: a girl looks from a window onto a snowy vista, where she ventures to make a row of snow angels. That is until her doppelgänger buries her in the snow and returns to the house, which is populated by circus folk; a midget, a fire-eater, a contortionist and ‘her’ mother who wears a bandage over one eye. The girl is then sent upstairs call the other girls for breakfast, who turn out to be identical to her, and all dressed in gymnast outfits. Meanwhile outside a groundsman and his dog discover the original girl and begin to dig out the snow. The girls lead the doppelgänger down to breakfast, where her mother takes off her clothes to reveal the same gymnast outfit beneath. Then at the urging of the fire-eater, the midget attempts (and fails) to throw a strawberry into the mother’s mouth much to the glee of the onlookers. The doppelgänger runs to the window, through which we can see it is now Spring and the groundsman stands to reveal a white lilly on the spot where the original girl lay.

Summarized as above, Snow Angel appears to lack cohesion, but as the elegant animation plays out in its compelling, yet unfussy style, you find yourself drawn into the world; intrigued by it’s oddities yet happy for them to remain unexplained.

The last place I’d expect a film as off-kilter and Lynchian in its aesthetics as Snow Angel to originate would be as part of an online campaign for a multi-national, but the project’s genesis was from London based digital agency Dare as part of their Online Script Project for Sony VAIO. An initial scene was written by John Malkovich, which was then opened to the public for continuation and completion. Malkovich chose the winning scenes by Wayne Chisnall, Laura Tonini and Arianna Tropeato to complete the script. It then made its way to director Laurie J Proud and a team of animators and fx artists over at animation studio par excellence Sherbet (home to Tony Comely too!— JS). Proud was given a free hand to design the cast of characters and settings for the strange tale, but stuck pretty close to the original story; “I had a lot of visual freedom to design the characters and the whole look. However, I didn’t really change anything about the action as I felt it was my job to stick to the script.”

It seems almost redundant to point out great sound design in animation as that tends to be a given for any effective piece, but the work of Barney Quinton at You Are Hear is truly outstanding and a major part of what kept me in a constant state of unease throughout. I don’t know who’s idea it was to use slithering, ghostly voices coupled with intertitles for the dialogue, but it was an utter stroke of genius.

As well as watching Snow Angel here, you can head over to the competition site ( www.vaio-john.com) to take a look at the original collaborative script.

In a funny opening sequence one sees, in full colour, the beast devouring the beauty, only to track upwards to the girl reading her comic and picking her nose. The sisters of the title are seen through their photo albums, their life revealed in an initially warm and joyous series of escapades as Bella steals the toilet tissue, their parents greet them at the peel of the school bell and the pair grow to womanhood amidst flowers. The mature women laugh riotously over the snapshots of their younger selves, red wine served in copious amounts. The mood changes abruptly with the arrival of the long haired young man on an excursion with the pair. His attention is diverted from one to the other, leaving one sister in raptures, the other seething on the long drive home.

The mood swings are reflected in a variety of styles incorporated in the one movie, the different forms somehow harmoniously, and always ingeniously, grouped in a movie of rare depth. Borge moves through shades of grey for the past, judicious use of colour elsewhere, whilst metaphor is used for the men as bees fly from their hives to the pubescent girls, very shapely now in mini skirts; or watch the girl circle the moon when the bee has landed! The animation is effortlessly drawn because, first and foremost, Borge is a consummate artist able to catch the moment—the two old ladies rolling around in glee, or clutching a sister’s arm as memories cause pain. There is also a dramatic scene towards the end that is riveting though the conclusion is not to be spoiled here. In under 8 minutes Borge moves from laughter to tears to… well, watch this warm  movie yourself. The YouTube link was posted by Anne-Mieke, Borge’s daughter.

Borge is a warm human being. He has just sent me a DVD of his work and, on discovering my secret past, swaps theatrical stories. He has lived in the Netherlands for many years though he was born in Denmark. He enjoys communicating with fans, of whom I am pleased to be included.

Check Please captures the true cynical depth of the holiday without concern for the date. After all, dysfunction is for everyone at anytime. Poor Julie seems unaware of that as she takes part in the painful ritual of meeting the boyfriend’s parents. But things seem not to be painful at all. Doug is being affectionate and humorous, in that too-broad-for-reality way most grown children adopt around their folks. His parents are his equal in fake pleasantness. With superb food, it’s hard to see how it could go better. Then the check comes.

The situation is a familiar one, which is exactly what I want in a five minute comedy where there is no time to create new worlds. We’ve all been there, both in that first family meeting, and in the argument over who pays the check. Check Please finds the absurdity in the situation, and amplifies it fifty fold, giving it that dark edge that lifts it above the quick-joke-routine fray. Monty Python became masters of this brand of humor closing in on forty years ago with sketches like “The Dirty Fork.” This too is sketch comedy, just quite a few notches up from your standard SNL gag.

Director and co-writer Larry Ziegelman learned his craft in advertising, where his commercials have won numerous awards. The move from one-minute advertising productions to five-minute short films is a sidestep, with all the skills from one transferring naturally to the other. Check Please isn’t a “directorially” tricky piece. There’s one table, five actors, and not much movement. But Zieglman makes it look good, and uses the camera to give just enough variety to what is essential a static event. It’s made a splash on the festival circuit and won the state of Illinois’s film contest.

The ten minute movie opens as a lone swimmer makes his way to an island in the “wide blue sea where people hide away”. Caroline uses a rich blue emulsion here though the next frames are engraved onto black as we meet the two reclusive sisters, Marie and Viola Ge. Seated in darkness, to the background sound of a ticking clock, family cat and Viola’s typewriter, the pair converse. Marie is clearly the dominant one. The entry of the stranger fresh from the sea throws the women into panic. Viola’s talent for writing compensates for a facial disfigurement, though the meeting with her greatest fan changes the dynamics of the home. The elder sister has hidden Viola from the outside world and fights to continue her role as protector. Harsh words are spoken, the fragile harmony of the island broken.

Using the visual themes of light and dark, this richly allegorical tale has dialogue written by Grant Heisler that resonates with symbol and inference. The gradual unraveling of the women’s situation is paralleled by the light forcing its way into their previously dark world, in a classic animation that is both compelling drama and work of art.

It commences with a giant stork-like, metal bird, beautifully crafted—there can be no other word for all the prop and puppet design here—sweeping down over a wooden carcass of a ship, the struts and frame boat and the skeletal system of a giant animal. The ship is floating on strips of wood, like complex pedals of a vast cathedral organ, the gently undulating lathes forming the sea. We become aware of a bespectacled figure immersed in the innards, studiously working on the cogs and wheels of his wooden clock. When the bell rings it is with the resonance of the giant metal bowls in the heights of Notre Dame. There is no Quasimodo figure however, just an old man hard at work, the passage of time and the disease revealed in his transparent, emaciating figure. The soundtrack is the bells and ticking of the clock.

Visually, this stop-motion movie is stunning even in the reduced quality available. Building the set and puppets took one year alone. The studio set is remarkable—artfully lit, providing ample scope for the camera to pan around. We see the clock-maker from different angles—his face sculptured from wood cast in the warm glow from his lantern; or we look down from above and marvel at the symmetry of the boat beneath.

Veteran actor Barry Otto narrates the story of Dik’s relationship with his father with such sincerity I believed, until I read the credits, that it was the director himself speaking. It is a complex work involving guilt over the death of his younger brother, John, who died at the age of five, 14 years before Dik was born. The consequent sadness in the family was one from which Dik felt excluded. Unlike the sudden death of a road accident the slowness of cancer allowed the son to say goodbye and “hello”. When his father dies his ashes are buried with those of his long dead son. In a moving passage of commentary the difference in quantity of the ashes between the two, boy and man, achieves both reconciliation and a release.

Dik was courteous in replying to questions from one of my students, Adam Fadra, in an extended interview for my school website last year and provides ample detail about the production. For example, the “hero bird” was assembled from brass, aluminium and bits of one of his father’s clocks whilst the process involved Dik constructing a thousand moving parts and making 22,000 images.

I see a lot of animated movies. Dad’s Clock stands out for a number of reasons, its candour being one. I have never seen a set of this complexity, a work of art in itself. The supreme craftsmanship allows Dik to form striking tableaux: the skeleton figure peering into his telescope out to the stars on top of the symmetrical alignment of timber, figure and ship viewed in front of the backdrop of the cosmos. When the old man descends for a final time into the machine and the mechanism closes around him it is an obvious metaphor but an effective one.

Dik’s personal and dignified tribute deserves greater recognition than it has received other than the director’s Australian home. His design and architecture company Studio 505 is situated in Melbourne.

Living “a miserable existence on a remote and austere strip of coast”, the two old spinsters are eager to find company, with the complicity of the sea. Possibly male—handsome—grateful? Though they’d hardly win the heart of any living man, The Pearce Sisters won Best Short Animation at the 2008 BAFTA Awards.

Director Luis Cook has been at Aardman Animations since 1994, but this is his first (second, if you count the title sequence for the London Film Festival) non-commercial work. At a time when beauty often seems less exploratory, and more of a formula, it’s refreshing to see a film dive into the aesthetics of ugliness. With every detail in every scene transporting us into this parallel universe born from Luis Cook’s mind—a world both austere and humorous at the same time. As my friend Mike appropriately asked, “If the sisters had only gotten a bikini wax… would things have turned out different?”

One can only guess.

Viewed as allegory or truth the consequent sense of grief and a longing for the return of the father is so intense that one attaches an individual interpretation or significance to the movie, be it a lost father, child or love. In the creator’s own words it is about “longing” that never diminishes despite the passage of time, defeating all logic.

The landscape of the Netherlands with its wide skies and tall poplar trees is the backdrop to the movie. The sky and landscape is a delicate colour wash of brown, grey, sepia, sometimes hints of green or blue. The drawing is pencil and charcoal, the drawings scanned and colour added digitally. Remarkably in a film that deals in emotion, there is no facial detail whatsoever. Often the figures are drawn in silhouette. This can be remarkably effective in conveying mood: the old woman toiling up the hill, the flapping arms of the child, the teenager gliding down the slope on her bike, which in another later scene will simply not stand upright. Always the brushwork is spare, perhaps a stroke that transforms into a slender girl or a smudge for the squared old woman. Each shot is exquisite: the long shadows of trees or bicycle; seascape and sky, vast and empty. The seasons change with a rustle of leaves or the girl struggling up the hill against a wind that bends trees. The music by Norman Roger is sympathetic to the theme, essentially a lilting tune but arranged with tone and depth.

This astonishingly accomplished and poetic movie fulfils in every sense. Michael Dudok de Wit was born in 1953 and educated in Holland. In 1978, he graduated from the West Surrey College of Art in England. His films include Tom Sweep (1992), The Monk and the Fish (1994) and The Aroma of Tea (2006). You might also have seen the rather classy commercial for United Airlines, A Life. Given his draftsman-like qualities, Michael is much in demand as an illustrator for books. My Christmas present from my family, and well recommended, was Best of British Animation Awards Vol.4 that includes Michael’s Oscar winning short.