Monday, February 28, 2011

The Lost Thing based on a book by Shaun Tan

This post originally went up in September 2010 and was re-posted in January 2011. In January the news was that "The Lost Thing" has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Well it won.

The achievement deserves a re-posting of this article among the other things like a gold statuette.

Artworks is a good place to point one's ears. Today they talked about Shaun Tan. He is an illustrator and story teller.

Shaun Tan, like Tim Minchin (who voices the film) and author Tim Winton, are from Perth, Western Australia. So am I. So my ears get particularly crinkled when the limestone dust and salt is stirred in my soul. Shaun now lives in Melbourne.

The Artworks program reminded me of an email that I had from Michelle earlier in the year with reports of Australian animation success at the 2010 Annecy Festival. Animators will note that Michelle talks about Passion Pictures in the UK on her blog. They develop the Gorrilaz music video clips. They also co-produced "The Lost Thing" with Screen Australia.

There is an interesting post and link to a video interview on the Ozanimate site about Shaun and the success at Annecy.

Which brings us back to Shaun Tan and the film "The Lost Thing" animated by Leo Baker



I'll hand it over to you to research some more. Second years may find it interesting how Shaun presents himself online with the design of his web site. How many EAPS did you count in that animation trailer?

5 comments:

Frank said...

I count 15 EAPS in just over a minute. How many did you get?

Tim D. said...

Shaun Tan is one of my favourite childrens book illustrators, so that's really cool to see one of his books has been turned into an animation.

Frank said...

It will be great to listen to Shaun's lecture at QUT on 13/10.

Anonymous said...

Their Oscar win is such exciting news!!!!When you check out the competition, listed on Shaun Tan's news part of his site (where he congratulates his fellow nominees before he knows he's won) it really was an amazing win given the calibre of the other works. Go check them out everyone and google the other contenders. You'll recognise some of them. Amazing.
I also just realised that Shaun Tan worked as a concept artist on Horton Hears a Who, and Wall-E!
Leo Baker's animation is impressive and expressive....I'm impressed by the idiosyncratic dreamlike movements of Shaun Tan's eccentric characters brought to life.....
I'm inspired that these guys are Aussies....and they both seem to go the extra mile with communicating with their audiences.....it's a great marriage between art and technical proficiency...and a lot of whimsy and heart....great that Shaun Tan plans to make The Arrival into an animation too!!!!!!Thanks Frank this is a great post to dip into and explore!

Johnny said...

I got 12 EAPS,