2021 Season
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Discover the creations that make up the Annecy Festival’s visual identity and gives the tone to this 2021 edition!
The official poster, GOBELINS l’école de l’image lead-ins and the partners’ trailers, all the creations that promise a multi-coloured season!
An explosive colourful paint-party poster!
After last year’s completely online 2020 edition, the Annecy Festival wanted to call on Jean-Charles Mbotti Malolo’s talents again to enjoy the same explosion of colour and energy that he released for the 2020 poster.
"I am immensely honoured to work on the poster again for the 2021 edition.
I would really have loved to collaborate a second time with Simon Roussin, like last year, but he was already committed to a personal project.
I felt the need to do this poster on paper, maybe to push myself to return to a more traditional art form on a daily basis, but also because screens have taken up even more place in our lives since the current health crisis began. The theme is similar to 2020, so I kept to our guideline, the pantsula, a traditional South African dance that symbolises the modern view I have of Africa.
I wanted to link this with a unique character: an older woman, independent, free and joyous, who is enjoying the sun’s rays reflecting on the lake. Last year’s Festival was online, let’s hope we can all join the pantsula dancers on the Annecy pontoons this June 2021!"
Jean-Charles Mbotti Malolo primary passion is drawing, even if dance has always played a role in his mode of expression. He is a regular at the Festival and his short film The Sense of Touch made a notable passage at Annecy, as well as his latest film Make It Soul, which he presented in 2018 and was nominated for the 2020 César for Best Short Animation Film.
This year, he joins the jury of the Contrechamp Feature Films, and you can meet him at a Signing Session of the official poster.
"Le Monde d’après" ("The World Afterwards") by the students from the GOBELINS
This year, the GOBELINS, l’école de l’image’s second-year students are offering us joyful animated lead-ins to be diffused before each Annecy Festival screening.
"The World Afterwards" is the chosen theme celebrated by five original creations brimming with fantasy, joy and conviviality. They invite us to turn the page and move towards the future with optimism.
Set to the music created by the students from the Conservatoire municipal Paul Dukas, Paris XIIe, these short films will be unveiled to the festivalgoers throughout the week.
The GOBELINS, l'école de l'image students also wanted to celebrate the Festival’s 60th anniversary by hiding the number 60 in each trailer.
Keep a look out!
The 12 Principles of Animation by Titmouse
The 12 principles of animation, established in 1941, have now become widely adopted as the theoretical foundation for all artists working in the animation industry. Though you may be familiar with these guiding principles, a few talented animators at Titmouse put together an instructional video to help contextualize these techniques.
The first method explored is Anticipation. Anticipation prepares the viewer for the main action. If you were to jump, for example, the anticipatory action is the bending of the knees. This helps the action look much more natural. Next is the Squash and Stretch, which provides the illusion of elasticity, gravity, mass, and flexibility. Upon impact with the ground, the figure smooshes and stretches, the distortion providing a life-like quality.
Subsequent methods of retaining the illusion of realism in animation are Follow Throughs, the Overshoot and Scuttle, and Trace-backing. The former two principles see the character throwing their body into action. In the video, when the arm and the buttocks stop moving, the forward momentum causes different parts of the body to stop at different rates. Thus, the hand sort of goes limp and retracts and the butt essentially becomes its own autonomous organism, jiggling independently of the rest of the body.
The Traceback is the act of tracing multiple versions of the same drawing to provide the illusion of movement. Seen here, a figure appears to walk into an infinite terra-cotta abyss. Then, of course, there is Hitting the Stump, which imitates the very real and often ignored phenomenon of cork-screwing. Mag Womblin’ conceptualizes the reality of manically gallivanting through the laser void, morphing slowly but surely into a lecherous bunny. For this effect to really land, read Mac McMac’s Theory of Womble.
Catch and Release ensures that your character centipedes in accordance with human movement. And Don’t Doing Bad Draw is crucial for making your subject feel shame.
The Seven Arms of Shandoo, the Hawaiian Shirt, Slippin’ the Chicken, and The Walter Dismey will all help with gribble prippems, and if you’re not implementing Don’t Moon the Werewolf, then you may as well light a million dollars on fire, because you’re not putting your animation degree to use. This is a Dooooo, This is What My Dad Looks Like, and Lord of Shapes are incredibly effective in giving your animation that snarg quality. And of course, last but never least – The Paper Airplane. If you want your animation to speak to the audience on an emotional level, then don’t hesitate to contort your character into a gorgeous paper airplane with bulging eyes and strong, muscular biceps, because there is literally nothing more resonant to the human condition.
Titmouse is an independent, award-winning cartoon clone factory committed to sizzling your brain and melting your eyeballs. Founded by the husband-wife duo, Chris and Shannon Prynoski, Titmouse has offices in LA, NY, Vancouver, and everywhere that books are sold.