Women in Animation: Martine Chartrand

Martine Chartrand was born in Montreal in 1962. During her college days, she discovered animation while studing fine arts at Concordia University. After working in the television and film industry , she hooked up with the animation co-op "Ciné-clic". At Ciné-clic, Martine worked on animation projects while teaching workshops in creating backgrounds. She later joined the National Film Board of Canada working as a colour artist and collaborating on films. In the early '90's, Martine directed her first film "T.V. Tango". Also in 1990, Martine first saw "La vache" by Alexander Petrov, which inspired her to travel to Russia for four years as she studied paint-on-glass animation under the Russian master animator. From 1993 to 2000, Martine created her paint-on-glass masterwork "Black Soul", the story of an African-Canadian grandmother telling her grandson the history of the African people in North America. "Black Soul" went on to win twenty-two awards worldwide including Berlin's "Golden Bear" award and Indianapolis' "Crystal Heart" award.

Martine animates her films using a modification of Petrov's paint-on-glass style of animation. While Petrov uses a specific brand of bicycle grease that is very difficult to obtain in the west, Martine found an inexpensive, easy to obtain brand of industrial grease that, when mixed with paint, prevents the paint from hardening and doesn't change the color of the paint. The film is then animated, frame-by-painstaking-frame as she manipulates the paint, effectively destroying the contents of the previous frame to create the next frame.

Black Soul


Martine was part of my first experience at a workshop for the Toronto Animated Image Society. I didn't know what to expect so I went with the most humble attitude I could muster and a willingness to learn anything I could. To say that Martine made learning easy is an understatement of epic proportions. Martine is this little bundle of positive energy who spent Saturday night showing us her and Petrov's films and explaining the paint-on-glass technique. And on Sunday, she ran from workstation to workstation, watching what we'd produced thus far, showing us new techniques and providing encouragement as we struggled through a trial-by-fire with learning this new style of animation. By the time the workshop was over, and Martine was heading out for the train, none of us wanted to see her go back to Montreal. That weekend was my first experience with a TAIS/NFB workshop, but as I drove back to Michigan (invigorated from my experience and ready to animate), I knew it wouldn't be my last one.

During the workshop, I was paired up with this sweet young high-schooler who introduced herself as 'Chevron' (which she pronounced shee-vah-roh). During the next eight-plus hours of the workshop, we created this film by alternating back and forth under the light table where one of us would animate while the other would make thumbnail sketches for the next sequence, and vice-versa. The wave and flowers sequence became the inspiration for one of the films that I'm currently storyboarding.

And the Oscar goes to...

Well, this year I find myself scratching my head at the Oscars. I find it hard to criticize films that are nominated mainly because I've never produced anything "Oscar-worthy" and as such, have never been nominated for an Academy Award. So, setting aside issues of competent filmmaking (following the rules of film and the principles of animation), I'm stuck just speaking about the films that resonate with me, or more to the point, the films that I would have chosen.

"Up" won Best Animated Feature. Okay. I can see that, decent filmmaking and animation. Felt the story was a touch light, but it was very touching in some parts and exciting in others. A solid, if unspectacular film. Still liked "The Incredibles" better, but that's just me. "Princess and the Frog" was good, but not good enough to win in my opinion. I was really hoping that "Secret of Kells" or "Coraline" would win. Despite the story flaws in "Coraline" and the highly stylized art design in "Kells," I still felt that they were the strongest films in the selection this year. But as I didn't like "Fantastic Mr. Fox" at all, I took a little comfort that at least that one didn't win. It's just my opinion, but I thought it looked like a one semester project from a bunch of second year film students who said "hey, let's make an animated film." Wes Anderson has produced an Oscar nominated, feature-length, stop-motion film. I have not. So, take that assessment for whatever you think it is worth.

"Logorama." Huh. O-kay. Again, not my choice. Don't get me wrong, it was cute, but the story was meandering and, in the end, it was kind of pointless. I'm not a big fan of 'slice of life' films and quite frankly, the vulgarity put me off. "A Matter of Loaf and Death" was very competently produced, but I couldn't shake this feeling of 'been-there-done-that'. The excitement just wasn't there. Eh, I bought the DVD so Mr. Park should be happy. The two films I liked the most out of this year's bunch of Animated Short Films were "Granny O'Grimm" and "the Lady and the Reaper." Yes, a very simple story, but I thought that Granny was funny and I liked the art design in both the 2D and 3D sequences. "French Roast" was okay, but again, the story was just too simplistic and I felt that it was stretched out to fill a span of time that the story just didn't justify having. I liked the character design and thought the animation was solid, but not enough there to get my vote. Having seen all the nominated shorts, "Lady and the Reaper" was by far my favorite. Loved the character design, thought the story was clever, animation was solid. And I just got the most edge-of-your-seat laughs out of it. Antonio Banderas should be proud of his people, they made a really fun film that should've won (in my opinion).

Overall, though I think last year's entries were stronger films with a much greater diversity of story and artistic styles, but there were still some solid performers in this year's batch.

Sigh. I'm glad I'm not betting money on which films win and which ones lose...

Women in Animation: Lynn Smith

I first met Lynn Smith last year (2009) at a workshop presented by the Toronto Animated Image Society and the National Film Board of Canada. Lynn's career as an animator started in 1968 when she lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1975, Lynn moved to Montreal to work for the National Film Board of Canada and became, in her terms, a 'resident alien' of Canada. Lynn is currently on the part-time faculty at Concordia University in Montreal teaching animation and cinema.

Lynn was at the workshop to teach us her own brand of paint-on-glass animation. Unlike Petrov's method, which used bicycle grease to prevent the paint from drying, Lynn uses a small amount of glycerine. Lynn also adds a collage element to her films by cutting out objects in magazines (or creating her own) and duplicating them using a color copier. She then laminates the objects (like eyes, mouths, etc) and animates them under the camera frame-by-frame along with the paint and ink.

The following is one of the films she produced for the National Film Board of Canada. It's called "the Sound Collector" and was created in 1982.

This next film is callled "This is Your Museum Speaking" which Lynn created in 1979. It's about a night watchman and his dog who discover the link between the past and the present as he travels through the museum.

During the workshop, Lynn and I had a wonderful time discussing our respective animation backgrounds. As I am a forensic animator and both Lynn's father and mine worked in the legal arena, we had a fair amount of shared history.

Of course, while Lynn and I were chatting, Jon was at the workstation and creating the following animation:

Goldwork Master Class

Back in 2008, I had the opportunity to work on a joint project between Thistle-Threads, Plimoth Plantation, the Bard Graduate Center for the Decorative Arts, and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Long story short, Plimoth Plantation and Thistle-Threads recreated a 17th Century women's jacket that relied heavily on gold and silk embroidery and going on display shortly at Winterthur. Said jacket was part of a museum display presented at the BGC and used dozens of museum pieces from the MET. My part of the project was to animated a pair of goldwork stitches: the ladder stitch and the zig-zag stitch.

Okay, fast forward. Late in 2009, Dr. Tricia Wilson-Nguyen of Thistle-Threads approached me to animate an additional twenty-six stitches for an Online University that she is offering on her website. The following video is one that Dr. Wilson-Nguyen and I put together to promote this 18-month Master Class on the art of gold and silk embroidery. During this video, you'll see not only parts of the stitches I animated for the BGC/MET project, but also the stitches that Dr. Wilson-Nguyen reconstructed from historical examples and stitched into a sampler that students will be recreating during the course of this class.

Inspiration: Alice

In January, I posted a music video created by Pogo who used nothing but sound and video clips from Pixar's Academy Award nominated film "Up." Here's one of his earlier works: a techno/etherial-sounding piece using clips from Disney's "Alice in Wonderland." Enjoy. :)

Get Animated!

Back in 2005, I was blessed with an opportunity to teach a ten-week course on animation at the East Lansing Recreational Center. After the class was over, I was charged up and ready to start a program called "Get Animated" where I would teach several courses on different styles of animation to adults and children. I had drawn up the course plans, had talked to the ELRA event director and was looking for equipment so I could expand the styles of animation taught (as well as increase the number of people that I could teach). Then, life got in the way. It started out when I got t-boned by a girl who ran a stop sign in my neighborhood, followed by a year's worth of physical therapy, and several unexpected & expensive home repairs. It was a rough couple of years. As what I wanted to do was sidelined by what I had to do.

Over the past four years, I've wanted to get back to teaching but haven't been able to pull it all together with a comprehensive program for children and adults. Enter: ASIFA/Central. I've had the opportunity to meet many professors in the area, like Deanna Morse, Jim Middleton, Gary Schwartz, and Ellen Besen who have provided me with a wealth of ideas, instructions and advice regarding the art of teaching animation.

So, this weekend, I was doing a little surfing on the net and got a boost from the National Film Board of Canada. Turns out that the NFB had a traveling program last year called Get Animated (http://films.nfb.ca/get-animated/) where they held animation screenings, master classes and workshops. Well, I decided that it's time for me to put up or shut up.

As Cartoon Network's traveling show has the getanimated.com domain, I've registered my domain as: getanimated.info. I've dusted off my lesson plans & notes to jump-start my proposal to the ELRA, have been given the opportunity to teach a one-day paint-on-glass workshop for ASIFA/Central, am attending a pixillation workshop in Toronto, got a lead on a working 16mm projector, and a source for blank filmstock (direct-on-film animation). Things are starting to move back into position. So, hopefully, by the Fall 2010, I'll be teaching animation again!

Inspiration: Simon's Cat - Snow Business

Since it's snowing outside, here's the latest animation from British animator Simon Tofeld. He's just posted "Snow Business" (containing both part 1 and the just completed part 2). One of the things that I love about Simon's animation process is that he animates each film in Flash, however he uses a wacom tablet--so he's essentially creating these films using a traditional hand-drawn frame-by-frame style, just in a vector-based animation program.