by Rob Kohr

I hardly had a chance to see the Oscars this year, though I was fortunate enough to catch the animation portion of the awards. Over all it can be seen as a major upset.

The biggest of these would have to be “The Danish Poet” winning for Best Animated Short. The lone traditional film of the bunch created by Torill Kove, was about a young poet, named Kasper, who in search of inspiration, travels to Norway to meet the celebrated writer, Sigrid Undset. The film, though it includes some 3DCG was mostly a 2d stylization and pulls from a lot of Eastern European influences. Torill Kove, among others, thanked the National Film Board of Canada and her many funders from Norway.

“The Danish Poet” beat out many heavy weights including a PIXAR short “Lifted” by Gary Rydstrom, who interestingly enough is more of a sound editor than a director, in-fact he has been nominated 14 times, though mostly for areas relating to sound. Roger Allers and Don Hahn’s “The Little Match Girl” was also produced by Disney. Although this film looks like its today its actually toon shaded 3D. “Maestro” another CG film was created by Geza M. Toth, from Hungry. Finally we have another Scrat installment with “No Time for Nuts” from Blue Sky’s Chris Renaud and Michael Thurmeier.

On the feature animation side, “Happy Feet” by George Miller from Animal Logic, took Best Animated Feature in a major upset over John Lasseter and PIXAR’s “Cars”. The third film “Monster House” by Gil Kenan and Produced by Sony Imageworks made news earlier in the year concerning its use of MO-CAP. Like “The Polar Express”, “Monster House” used a system where actors motions are captured than translated onto the CG characters. There has been a lot of debate on how successful this system is as well as debate on whether or not it is still animation.