Its not fair to categorize and set formulaes, but i couldnt help but notice a few parallels in few of the very succesful animations i have seen recently and i have devised two broad categories into which i can categorize two forms of short story telling techniques (particularly animation)

1. The kind of story where the hero/protagonist is seen to be tackling a common mans everyday problem, such as the search for true love, overcoming loneliness, search for uniqueness; etc etc…In stories such as this, once the director has been successfull in telling ppl what the problem is, its assumed that the protagonist will either

+overcome his problem

I must admit that i have been very influenced my Jonathans Nix’s wonderful animation ‘Hello’ - a truly wonderful story, great character design, beautiful ambience and amazing craft ( is a great example of this category – CONGRATS JONATHAN for a fabulous piece of art), simmilarly Jenille Kilners A-List or Hamish Kochi’s Fog Eyes deal with the same issues in a simmilar pattern.

+fail misreably and will thus take him back to square one. Whats waits to be seen is how its done !

‘Reds Dream’ by Pixar tackles the same issue of self-worthiness and at the end of the film leaves us where we had started off but in the middle cooks up a rather humorous and witty set of actions. The same goes for ‘Knick Knack’ by Pixar ( beautifully set up and very very very cleverly resolved )

‘The Cat Came Back’ by Cordell Barker definitely has to be one of the BESTEST animation i have ever seen and it falls into this category but gives you also rounds up the animation with a beautful ending.

‘The big snit’ , ‘The Toll Collector’ from the Jiri Trinke Studio

2. The second category is where the protagonist or the hero is seen executing a series of unexpected and unexplainable set of actions, and its towards the conclusion of the film these actions are justified and a message is sent across. Examples from the top of my head would be Wolfgang Laurenstein’s absolutely marvelous and brilliantly crafted ‘ Balance ‘ ( Academy Award winner ).

Somehow though, i really cant quite figure out what category i would put Ignazio Ferreras’s How to cope with death (beautful images on this animation-absolutely stunning.

maybe this formulae thing is not true… but it was just a thought….