Renderrabbits – animated short film

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

An animated portrait of Calgary's One Yellow Rabbit Performance Ensemble.

Featuring:
- Denise Clarke
- Andy Curtis
- Blake Brooker
- Richard McDowell
- Michael Green

Initial animation produced during a residency at Calgary's Arts Commons Lightbox Studio.

First draft of this animation, with no soundtrack, played as an installation during the High Performance Rodeo in 2016.

After receiving production support from the National Film Board's Filmmaker Assistance Program, I worked with musician Kenna Burima to turn the animations into a proper film, with a soundtrack. This process completed in fall 2020, with the final film completed December 2020. (It took a while!)

TYLER'S NOTES:

This was a weird project. It had a lot of different incarnations: first as a residency, then as an installation, then finally as the film above. What started as a little experiment morphed into a deep archive search and memorial project. I was learning a lot about the art of animation while creating this piece, focusing more on 1:1 rotoscopy and some small embellishments. There was a lot of extra bits from the OYR archives I half-finished animating, but life got in the way, other projects and work called... then years went by. I applied for some production support from the NFB to work with my friend Kenna Burima to craft a beautiful soundtrack to go along with the final, non-narrative cut of the film.

I'm proud of the piece, though I think I've improved somewhat as an animator since I began this project in 2016. Many thanks to the OYR ensemble and staff for letting me film them, draw their faces, and dig through their archives.