We are talking everything from lo-fi German shadow cut-outs to a virtuoso Japanese animation that puts Disney to shame. We will start with the latter which is probably one of the more well known of our suggestions…

Spirited Away - Hayao Miyazaki

The Oscar Winning Animation from the amazing Studio Ghibli follows 10 year old Chihiro who stumbles into a world full of Gods, witches and creatures of all shapes and sizes. A must see for kids of all ages!

Watership Down - Martin Rosen

Based on the book by Richard Adams. This personal favourite is a British classic. Spooked by a vision of death and destruction a group of rabbits flee across the English countryside to establish a new and safer warren. Dealing with themes of violence, death and the afterlife this is truly memorable.

Jo-Jo in the Stars - Marc Craste

A heart wrenching tale of two unlikely lovers: Jo Jo, a silver-plated trapeze artist and the nameless hero who worships her.
Winner of the 2004 Bafta for Best Animated Short Film. Poetic, tragic, beautiful.

Fantastic Planet - René Laloux

Fantastic Planet (La Planète sauvage) is a Surreal Sci-fi fantasy based on the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. Set in a far distant world where giants rule and tiny humans are domesticated. One human however is not satisfied. fantastically strange animation with a great psychedelic soundtrack.

Alice - Jan Svankmajer

A dark and surreal retelling of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland by Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer. Mixing a live actor (Alice) with a large variety of stop-motion animated creatures made from socks, stuffed rabbits, false teeth and meat.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed - Lotte Reiniger

Hailed as the first full-length animated film in the history of cinema, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is made entirely with back-lit paper cut-outs arranged in multiple layers to produce a dreamlike three-dimensional effect. It might seem a little dated but it’s simply magical.

The Merry Circus - Jiri Trnka (Found on The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka)

The master of stop frame animation lets loose his virtuosity with this animation made with paper cut outs. The weight and physicality of the circus performers feel almost tangible as they leap and bound. Stunning.

Le Roi et l’oiseau (The King and the Mockingbid) - Paul Grimault

Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen. The quality of the animation and wealth of imagination in the script makes it an enduring work of art that will totally capture a child’s imagination.

Doggy Poo - Kate Yoon

Included for the sheer comedy value alone your kids will delight at this lovingly animated short featuring anthropomorphic dog poo. Pixar and Disney clearly haven’t pushed the boundaries of taste.

Think we’ve missed a blindingly obvious classic? Then drop us a comment in the box below. Enjoy!

We would like to share our experience of casting, location scouting, finding crew, the shoot, legal issues, editing, sound mixing, colouring and so on and so on… in the hope that you may glean something useful from our ramblings or at least enjoy the spectacle of our endeavours.

The film we will be following is titled The Profit and Loss of Phlebas, a supernatural fable inspired by a number of old Slavic and Japanese myths which often tell of a visitation of death personified as woman dressed in white.

Our story centres on an ageing fisherman called Phlebas who whilst out fishing discovers the body of a young girl floating in the sea. He hauls her from the water onto his boat and is stunned to find her alive. Unknown to Phlebas this girl is death personified. Who has come to speed his passing.

As our production progresses the challenges of shooting on a low budget, out to sea with a child actor is sure to throw up its fair share of issues, frustrations and inspired work-arounds. We hope you enjoy following our production, meeting the cast and crew and seeing the story unfold. As always we would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on our progress.

Coming Soon… Part 1. Breaking Down the Script

As much as a primary colour palette and block-like human bodies can show an honest reality, these animated shorts do. Layered with humour and cynicism, Orchard’s short film work expose an ambivalent and often relatable outlook. “Welcome to Glaringly” criticises the media and its hypocritical readership, but Orchard offsets his opinions with a punchline, cushioning what could be a harsh indictment. “It’s just a messy, junky world,” Charlie Kaufman writes. Sure, and poking fun at it might be the only sane depiction.

Q & A with Mr. Orchard

Laura: Relating to Love Sport - are you a sports fan? Did the series come out of a real -life enjoyment of sports? Is it a criticism of the hyped up adverts and the glorification of people like David Beckham that surround the sports industry?

Grant: I’m a big sports fan. I’ve wasted untold hours in front of the box gormlessly digesting late night screenings of darts or snooker, curling, crown Green Bowling, sumo, hockey, anything on Trans World Sport. That’s my favourite.
I don’t just suck it up with my eyes; I’ve been known to participate too. “Park Foot Ball” was based on a lifetime of knocking a ball around a muddy green strip. There’s nothing overtly satirical or pointed about the Love Sport films. I do genuinely love sport, but I can also see why other people dislike it. There’s something inherently silly about all sports, and you don’t have to exaggerate them that much to make them laughable. With Love Sport though it’s all done, I like to think, in quite an affectionate way.

Laura: Why do you prefer to work in animation as opposed to using actors, sets etc? How does this change the director experience?

Grant: I suppose it’s down to the fact I’m not naturally confident. I do think you need that if you’ve got to coerce so many people to work with you. You do still work with people in animation but it seems to be in a quieter way.
With live action you have to project yourself and your ideas, but when you start off in animation, at least when I first got into animation at a student level, you have that option of keeping your ideas very much to yourself and to not come out of that shell until you have some kind of finished piece. I think that private, solitary way of working is inherent in most animators; you have to be fairly comfortable with your own company if you’re to sit and work on any project that requires you to draw, model, move something time and again with only the smallest of differences.

Laura: “Welcome to Glaringly” shows a fairly clear distaste for surveillance, yet you cloak what could have been a straightforward criticism with humour. Is this manner the way you prefer to construct your films or do you believe humour is a more effective way of engaging an audience?

Grant: With “Welcome to Glaringly” I was definitely making something satirical, but it wasn’t an attack on our Big Brother society, which I don’t actually have much of a problem with. It was more aimed at our habit of assuming guilt based on suppositious media reports. At the time of making the film the Pete Townsend and Jonathan King cases were in the press, and whether ultimately they were guilty or not, they were tarred and feathered before any official case was brought against them. There is a definite section of the media that tickle the balls of a story to an exploding point, whether there’s balls there to tickle or not.

Whether using humour to highlight these points is the most effective way of dealing with these subjects, I don’t know. Probably not, but it is a good shorthand way of raising issue with something. Only problem with that is that it’s prone to misinterpretation.

Laura: Could you talk about the difference between making your own shorts and making commercials? How often are you able to introduce your own creative personality into a commercial?

Grant: An advertising agency will get you in because there’s something about your existing work that they like, and they’ll want you to inject that personality into their brief. Ultimately it’s a co-production between me, the agency and the client, and to think of it solely as a personal project, I’ve learnt, is where the pain lies. Collaboration between those parties is where you find you do work that you might never do on your own, and it’s a good thing.
Stepping out of that and indulging yourself in purely personal work is a beautiful thing too, and you do have to re-stock the creative gene-pool now and again with some new ideas.

Laura: Your Love Sport series and “Welcome to Glaringly” both have a similar look to them. Are you going to continue with this computer animation feel? What else do you have planned for your own personal work in the future?

Grant: Yeah, I never meant for those films to have quite that computer ‘retro’ feel to them. With both projects I was looking for the purest, cleanest way of communicating those ideas. I could have used circles instead but I do like a straight edge. I’m a big fan of a straight edge. I’m currently working on a film using water colours, a lot of it is being done on the computer to get to the point when I can start slapping on the paint so it’s a good marriage of the old and the new. It’s being done in between commercial work so I’m thinking either I don’t earn and make the film by next year, or eat and finish it by the time of the London Olympics. Decisions decisions, eh?

In an effort to spread our wings and discover more of the fabulous films out there, (A dog barks) blog is including the Toronto film scene in its coverage. We’re also hoping to include the Brazilian film scene in the near future, with our sights set on Sao Paulo. You can look forward to coverage of the Hotdocs Festival from April 17 - 27 in Toronto as well as the ongoing Node London Media Art Festival in London that runs till April 30.

So, if you’re a film fan with some writing chops to boot, please contact Laura at lauratrethewey@adogbarks.co.uk with story ideas. We’re interested in London and Toronto stories, as well as writers who’ve worked directly in any aspect of film making. Intelligent and witty discourse on techie issues, new projects and ongoing issues in the indie film world is the aim.

Let’s get cracking!