by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
I’ve always had a soft spot for animation. More years than not, at least a couple of animated features find their way onto my top 10 list. So, I’m setting out to shine a light on some films that may have passed you by. The idea with Animation Celebration is to take a look at some underseen gems — so no Toy Story or Frozen here.
Let’s get started.
When I left you last month, I declared that our look at underseen Oscar nominees had come to an end for the time being, as March’s column would release after the ceremony had concluded.
I did not expect to have one of this year’s short nominees blow me away, and thus make me a liar. However, given the fact that even with the Oscar bump they get from being among the nominees, the shorts still remain largely underseen, I don’t feel quite so bad in going back on my word. Particularly when I’m not even here to crow about the winner.
Don’t get me wrong, having now seen The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (thanks, Ted Lasso), I can confirm that it is charming. However, what Ice Merchants does is on an entirely different level.
The story follows a father and son who parachute down from their home in the cliffs to sell their ice to the community below. With the exceptions of his two producers and sound man Ed Trosseau, this 14-minute short is almost exclusively the credited work of João Gonzalez, whose only other credits are two animated shorts that combined reach 10 minutes in length. His credit on the International Critics’ Week site calls his particular style “authorial animation,” a term (based on a quick Google) that appears synonymous with the indie short circuit, but one lacking an actual findable definition. It does seem self-explanatory, though.
As part of a making-of video on his YouTube channel, Gonzalez explained the painstaking process he went through in creating the reality that his short takes place in. Despite the fact that the location is one he’s creating out of whole cloth, he utilized 3D modeling as “an improvised way of doing location scouting,” though that the modeling isn’t used in the final phase of animation. This insight shows how much planning is done before the work begins, and that translates to the final product. You can really feel the effort and thought that is put into this world.
With a world that feels lived in as a foundation, it helps to strengthen the immediate connection we’re able to have (and need to have in a story this short) with our father-son duo. No words are spoken, nor really are any expressions discernible, but everything you need to know and feel is portrayed through the animation. Much like the first 10 minutes of Up, using largely visuals, it takes you on an emotional rollercoaster. The fact that you immediately get a sense of place and who the characters are speaks wonders about the benefits of Gonzalez’s creative process.
A classically-trained pianist, Gonzalez also created the score (assisted by an orchestrator and other musicians for those instruments he was less familiar with) for the film in concert with starting the drawing. This, he says, helps set the film’s tone and that during this phase, “the sonority of the soundtrack will influence the visuals, and then the visuals will influence the music.” Such a revelation makes sense in hindsight with how well the sound and visuals work together, and it shows how the short being the work of one creative mind and vision works in its favor. Having watched the film twice before discovering the making-of video, the fact that Gonzalez starts with determining the feel of the film and the emotions he wants to convey BEFORE hammering out the story details makes sense with the depth he’s able to convey in such a short runtime.
Speaking more broadly about the animation work, I love the way he uses perspective and motion blur to “shoot” things during the diving scenes. The animation style itself is like something I’ve never seen before. I’ve become accustomed to the watercolor-style animation used in a lot of indie animated storytelling, but this looks like marker and was not a technique I’d seen before. Aside from the overall style itself, the use of color and lighting is striking. The palette used really helps make the animation pop.
This is truly god-tier animation in short form. While I certainly have a multitude of favorites when it comes to feature-length animated films, I was not expecting anything to challenge Piper’s crown when it comes to shorts. Despite being wildly different in animation style, there are a lot of similarities in how the story is told, conveying emotions without really needing words. It makes this short even more impressive when you consider it’s largely the work of one man, and the other is a proving ground for one of the world’s foremost animation studios.
With interest in some of the nominees sure to cool as we get further and further away from the Oscar ceremony, I find myself hoping that Ice Merchants isn’t frozen out of the public consciousness without a major studio behind it to market it in your face. While I’m not sure what avenues exist for international readers, it’s available stateside on The New Yorker’s YouTube page, and is well worth the minimal time investment.
I’m excited to continue to geek out on some great animated work you may not have had a chance to catch. Next month, we’ll get back into some lengthier projects.
You can read more from Jake Bourgeois, and follow him on Twitter and Letterboxd