Sharing a great read for anyone interested in emotional storytelling through animation, especially without dialogue.
Cartoon Brew spoke with director J.P. Vine as part of their Oscar Shortlist Interviews series, inviting filmmakers behind this year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted animated shorts to share their favorite shot from their films and why it matters to them.
Vine’s CG short Cardboard follows a single father struggling to hold things together for his two young piglets after a major life disruption. What makes the piece especially powerful is its restraint. There’s no dialogue. The emotional weight lives entirely in performance, composition, lighting, and edit.
Vine highlights a quiet moment where Dad looks at a photo of his wife as light washes across his face. While the kids transform their new surroundings into a sci-fi adventure using nothing but imagination, this shot becomes the emotional center of the film, letting the edit breathe and giving the audience space to sit with Dad’s grief before his attention is pulled back to his children.
It’s a beautiful reminder that in animation, spectacle and kinetic energy can coexist with stillness, and sometimes the simplest shot carries the most meaning.
Read the full article here:
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/awards/oscar-shortlist-interviews-j-p-vine-c...
For the animators here, how do you approach moments of stillness and emotional restraint in your work? Do you have a favorite example of this in your own work or in an animation that you love?
Thanks for sharing the article, Ashley Renee Smith. Movies without dialogue are some of the most moving and gripping films I've seen. I'd like to write one.