20 Comments

Enjoyed reading this. On my way to watch the film. I love the ideas of creating statements to govern their making of the film. As an artist working on my own short film. I'm sure to copy that idea.

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Thank you! Glad you liked the piece. We were pretty intrigued ourselves by the creative process behind this one and were hoping that other artists could pick up a few ideas from it, so this is wonderful to hear. Hope you enjoy the short as well!

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What a delight. Some of the music during the storm scene, and the lashing motion of the tree, reminded me a bit of the disney cartoon “the old mill.”

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Glad you enjoyed! And love this comparison -- you might be dead on with that, in fact. A Da was hugely inspired by Disney from a young age and saw a lot of its films. He liked to tell people that he was "the same age as Donald Duck" (born 1934).

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That poor mouse at the end! 😔

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That moment where they slide into the margins... that was pretty huge! I was surprised it didn't happen again but I guess I'm pretty pleased it was just played for one, impactful moment. so cool!

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It's an amazing gag! We love that part -- it comes out of nowhere.

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The author of text on Marina Voskanyants is journalist Sergei Kapkov. Pavel Shvedov only reposted it.

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Thank you for the correction! We're not very adept at Telegram and hadn't noticed this. It's been fixed.

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I watched both "Three Monks" and "The Doll" (hard to believe it's as old as I am!), and "Monks" makes "Doll" look positively *busy* by comparison; even though "Doll" is pretty simple in terms of Western animation.

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For sure -- it's such a minimal film. The Shanghai artists were already aware of Zagreb stuff to a degree, from what we've read, but their take on modern/limited animation here was even more stripped back. It's a stark contrast with some of the other Chinese animation from this era, like Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, which can be so visually extravagant.

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"Nezha Conquers the Dragon King"

Oh! I've seen that! And, yeah; "extravagant" is an excellent description.

BTW: OT, but have you ever reviewed the 1947 Russian animated movie "The Humpbacked Horse"?

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It's come up in the newsletter (there was an issue a few months ago that discussed its influence in Japan a bit), but we haven't done a full article about it! Definitely one we want to cover at length eventually.

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Link, please? I'd like to read that. Thanks in advance!

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It came out as a paid issue, but we'll remove the paywall temporarily so you can check it out! Link: https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/moscow-to-tokyo-tokyo-to-moscow

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Thank you very much! A lot of super-interesting info in there! I didn't even know about the Miyazaki or Tezuka connections. (Yes, I'm a huge Animation/Anime fan, but that doesn't mean that there aren't large gaps in my cultural and historical knowledge of them.)

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Thank you so much.........

Chop Wood , Carry Water

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Glad you enjoyed it! Three Monks is absolutely one of our all-time favorites.

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And thanx for including all the links which I will pass on

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