James Molle's quick movie combines the animation of the 90s with the pursuit of happiness
In James Molle's animation Black Sheep Boy, audiences are treated to a retro video game aesthetic and a question of life, death, and happiness all in one 8-bit package. The film accompanies a boy on an adventure towards happiness through an alien world inhabited by anthropomorphic creatures, and is replete with old game tropes and clanking sound effects.
The short film is the animator's graduation film from the Paris-based visual communication institution Gobelins. L’École de L’Imageand Molle says The project was inspired by some things he was enjoying at the time. This included early computer graphics and the Wizard of Oz, which makes the appearance of a mystical character named Wise Lion all the more logical.
All screenshots of Black Sheep Boy by James Molle
“The look of the film is based heavily on primitive graphics from the 90s. The animation style is actually pretty classic as I don't think anything moves in a crazy original way, ”says Molle.
“The nature of the alias pixel look makes it look like a sprite animation from a video game. I think the idea was to do the animation quickly and find an aesthetic that would allow a story to be told that way. "
In five chapters with an ambiguous ending, Molle created the whole thing in TVpaint. “I drew running cycles and poses in TVpaint and only animated one scene after the other, constantly walking back and forth. Since I was working on it on my own, I never really locked anything in an animation from the start, as most people usually do to manage animation projects, ”he says of his process.
“It allowed me to constantly move away from ideas and try to change things every step of the way. But the downside is that I definitely have tunnel vision at points that make it. And since everything about the movie is air, it can be like trying to build on quicksand. "
Without that production pipeline, it meant the looks of some scenes kept evolving, which brought its challenges. "I would try to make a scene and then just throw it away because it didn't feel right," explains Molle. “I just used the deadline the school gave me and thought whatever I could Then the film would have to be delivered, so the film has changed in a rather radical way by a few weeks before the deadline. "
The style of animation is closely related to Molle's illustration practice, which also seems to be inspired by pixel-like internet art. “When I work in illustration and only draw for myself, I try to find new graphic ideas. I think it's like research, ”he says. "And hopefully I can incorporate some of the things I find in the illustration into my animations."
For his next project he would like to experiment a little more. “I like to draw more traditional types of animation with elaborate movements, but these are very time consuming,” he says. While it's easy for Black Sheep Boy to keep Molle simple and see his approach as a functional way of telling the story, despite the seemingly basic techniques, he manages to create a compelling Choose Your Own Adventure type of story.
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