It's
so familiar... the insanity near a deadline when the creative
juices have just refused to flow. Anyone who's lived through
the creative crisis at the end of any group project will
easily identify with the humour in "The Deadline",
which takes that crisis as its theme. The short is funny,
and produces a laugh of recognition.
But more than that, although it is CG Animation, it's still
Aardman, and faithful to the Aardman look and feel...and
humour. One of my favourite parts is the Busy Bee song at
the end... just one listen, and it's stuck in my head all
day.
Nice that a series of these little shorts are airing on
TV, but too bad for the rest of us that they're only airing
in the UK. Oh well, maybe on DVD one day. (Anyone listening?)
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"'The
Deadline' was made for an Aardman retrospective in New
York and was designed to show how the company's stop motion
heritage was not lost in the newly developed CG department.
Like many of Aardman's early films it is predominantly
a lip-sync piece. It features highly stylised characters
with rich textures and snappy animation.
Based
closely on personal experience, it focuses on three animators
struggling to make a film while a deadline rapidly approaches.
The creators, Stefan Marjoram, Dan Lane and Wee Brian,
animated a character each, used their own voices and even
wrote and performed the theme tune.
On seeing the short Nickelodeon UK comissioned ten further
episodes (the latest five are showing now). Whereas the
original film focused on three animators struggling to
make a film while a deadline rapidly approached the new
series features them in a studio struggling to present
a TV show.
Alias Wavefronts Maya software was used for the animation
and it was composited in Adobe After Effects."
