The Missing Key

 Well, "The Missing Key" has been released in to the wild, and is making its way in the festival circuit.
It's all a bit exciting to see it up on the big screen, as well as being a little strange to watch three years of work (just in my case) compressed in to half an hour!

Taking about seven years in total to complete, the film has been a monumental undertaking by Jonathan Nix (the Director) and the gang at Cartwheel Partners. From the hand-painted backgrounds, to the wonderful original score, and everyting in between, The Missing Key is a remarkable piece of work.

As an animator, working on on a project of this scope with real pencil on real paper (woohoo!) has been an absolute blast... oh, and I should mention, a very steep learning curve. Having been trained largely in 3D production, I found myself thrust back in time (so to speak) to animate, as a friend of mine put it, "the hard way."

 Whilst I am as excited as the next animationist by current, and developing digital work-flows, there is something about the hand-drawn approach I find quite visceral and playful. Not to mention lunatic... I mean really! Who decided that drawing a film one frame at a time would be good idea?! And who would have thought it would be so much fun?

It is great to come out the other end of this production and, like others (and others) who have seen it, love the film, and be even more excited by animation.

Image coutesty of Cartwheel Partners.