Rob Munday

Nominated for a ‘Best Animated Short’ Oscar at the 2012 Academy Awards, Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby’s tale of an Englishman sent to Canada to become a man, is a film of deadpan humour and an eye-catching aesthetic. As Wild Life’s fish-out-of-water protagonist struggles to adapt to the harsh conditions of the New World and refuses to leave his old life behind, this unusual film develops into a story about ‘the pangs of homesickness and the folly of living dangerously out of context’.

Creating the distinct visual style of the film by printing out images onto paper, hand-painting over-the-top of them and then scanning them back into the computer, there’s a rich watercolor aesthetic to the film, that’s hard not to admire. “We experimented a lot trying various things, hybrid techniques, a bit of hand drawing, a bit of computer drawing”, Tilby explains to Dan Sarto in a conversation over on Animation World Network. “In the end we felt dissatisfied with it mainly because we needed to capture the textures of the landscape and we found that computer painting just didn’t quite have it, at least at that time….It was very, very laborious, but the painting is fun and satisfying. We like the randomness that comes with it and the textures. It was worth it”.

The painterly quality of the images and the period setting to the narrative gives the film a certain nostalgic charm, but the humour and narrative structure let you know this is a contemporary film – one determined to try something a little different (both in style and story) and stand-out from the crowd. If the names Forbis and Tilby look familiar, you’ve probably seen them before in the short film arena as their previous project together, When the Day Breaks won over 40 prizes on the festival circuit