Siggraph

France is making its presence known at the Siggraph Computer Animation Festival this year, with no fewer than 18 entries in competition for the Audience Prize, as well as seven entries up for the Student Prize, the Jury Award, and Best of Show. Supinfocom, a computer graphics university with campuses in Valenciennes and Arles, has some of the strongest entries, while others are from the The Gobelins School of Image in Paris.

Bolides, Oktapodi, and Blind Spot show quite a bit of influence from mainstream American styles of computer animation in that both are shorts that follow characters on a comedic journey. Bolides is the more adventurous of the two, following two octogenarians on a wild wheelchair race through the old folks home that defies the laws of gravity, physics, and a whole lot of other limitations that pass for our reality. Besides showing a flair for quickly paced gags and surrealistic flights of fancy, the short has a pretty dark sense of humor.

Oktapodi is another chase film, this one about one octopus’ fight for love, as it pursues another octopus down a street on its way to the chopping block. A strong laugh at the end helps any short go out on a high note, and both of these qualify in that category. At first, Blind Spot looks like it’s going to be another kid-friendly short like Oktapodi, but its funny take on a two unfortunate murders in a convenience store puts it in a darker category.

The two best of the French entries were also two of the best of the festival. 893 is all about texture. As two tattooed men face off in a traditional Japanese washitsu, their tattoos come alive and leap off their bodies to become extensions of themselves. As they go through fabric, smoke, and water, the images change and eventually give power back to the men. This Supinfocom entry has the experimental flavor of any good student film, and is justly nominated for that award.

Mauvais Role is up for the Jury Award and the Student Prize for its hilarious Monsters, Inc.-style premise that outgareously scary monsters have lives too. In a world where videogames are filmed in realtime with greenscreens and real demons while human players push the controls on their TV sets, one demon has had enough. His trip to the Casting Game Center lampoons all kinds of classic videogames and the short’s basic idea is good enough to spawn a feature film. Watch the short here