An international jury has selected the winners of the View Conference’s View Awards honoring the best animated short film entries. The films were selected based on their use of various animation techniques as well as their story, uniqueness, technical proficiency, and more.
View Conference is an international event focused on animation, VFX, games, AI, AR, VR, XR, MR, virtual production, metaverse, storytelling, and immersive media. In addition to a lengthy program with renowned industry speakers, View also presents the View Awards for outstanding animated short films.
The 2024 award winners were selected by an 11-member international jury, which judged the shorts based on story, direction, technical proficiency, sound, and uniqueness. The nine winning entries used 3D CG, stop-motion, and 2D animation techniques.
The Grand Prize winner was “Įk’ǫǫ̀: Inkwo for When the Starving Return,” directed by Amanda Strong, who used multiple animation techniques to adapt a short story by First Nation descendant Richard Van Camp. In the saga, a young, enigmatic, genderfluid warrior faced with internal struggles and external threats must forge their identity while taking a stand to defend the remaining humans and animals on Earth. Jury members called the film beautiful from all points of view—technical, story, art, and animation. They noted how difficult it was to blend different colors and backgrounds as it moved from one type of animation to a different version of the story to a backstory, and pointed out that it was done masterfully.
“Director Amanda Strong’s Grand Prize-winning film, ‘Įk’ǫǫ̀: Inkwo for When the Starving Return,’ immersed us in a mesmerizing tale of courage, identity, and the enduring power of truth,” says Maria Elena Gutierrez, View conference director.
Two films were honored with Jury Awards: “Have I Swallowed Your Dreams” and “Jour de Ven.” In “Have I Swallowed Your Dreams,” Director Clara Chan tells a story of daughter looking back at the many sacrifices her immigrant mother made to give her the best life she could. The beautiful realization of the story, notably that of the daughter, translates to any mother and child. In “Jour de Vent,” a team of six students at ENSI wanted to tell a universal and personal story, and did so by representing each student’s own tale through characters in a park, where wind appears and people fly away. Jurors called the film “pure poetry.”
Three award-winning student films showed the range of stories animation can tell. As Gutierrez pointed out, for “Sortie de Route,” students used 3D tools to tell a painterly story of a woman, her dog, and a frog. The director of “Le Charade” crafted a lonely mime with stop-motion tools, and 3D tools also helped students tell a darkly humorous story of a drunk and his sheep in “Le Cantique des Moutons” (“The Song of the Sheep”).
The entire list of award winners include:
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