There's a beauty in the simple moments of childhood that
are deceptively difficult to capture. With "Little
Red Plane", Joey Jones and Wira Winata have captured
that simple beauty and used it as a background to a story
full of heart.
After the film's successful run in the international festival
circuit, the crew started up their own studio, Shadedbox
Animations, where they're hard at work on their
next animated short when they're not buried under orders
for more of the lovely animation they've been creating for
a variety of big name clients.
As for Little Red Plane, it has found distribution as a
children's book. Due in 2004, the book features stills from
the movie and a companion DVD of the film including some
director commentary.
Meanwhile, the Little Red Plane website
is nicely designed and full of screenshots from the film
as well as preproduction art and a hauntingly beautiful
trailer.
CLICK
TO VISIT THE LITTLE RED PLANE WEBSITE
"When
we originally conceived of the film, we were inspired by
the French short Red Balloon, which tells a story without
the use of any dialogue or narration. We wanted to tell
this story solely with visual storytelling. This was the
most difficult part, a part from the numerous technical
hurdles we had to leap. When we started, we knew very little
about the tremendous stamina it takes to make a short animation.
In addition, we designed an extremely ambitious story with
fluid oceans, rivers, leaves, smoke, clouds, explosions,
wind, dust, etc. -all the stuff we had to take a few steps
back to learn.
I
was personally inspired when I saw Pixar's Geri's Game.
At the time, I was an architect trying to figure out if
producing animated computer walk throughs was for me. After
seeing this short, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest
of my life. When I went back to school, I met up with Wira
Winata (co-director) and the team that eventually worked
on LRP. Wira, Mike Frantum (technical director), and myself
pulled together 11 people from around the school, but the
film was never done for a specific class or curriculum.
We started LRP to learn what it actually takes as a team
to produce a short animation. Not only did we learn how
to use Maya, but how to deal with team dynamics, management,
and budgets. Before we even finished the film, the three
original members with Jason Du (lead artist) decided to
continue working together and start a studio named Shadedbox.
Since then we joined forces with Kazu Kibuishi who is a
talented comic artist and are now working on another short
together."
--Joey
Jones, December, 2003
"We used colour theory to carry certain ideas. We used
red to represent the father's spirit. The red toy plane,
red corsair that the father piloted, red cardinal insignia
on the corsair which is represented again by the red cardinal
that brings the son into the journey.
Mood
and feel during the course of the film changes a lot. We
used a lot of warm colors in the beginning and almost monochromatic.
As the boy journeys deeper into the woods, the color starts
to get more vibrant to represent his journey into the imagination.
Deeper in the story, we use color with weather to convey
the different arc of the story. The color palette turns
cold and grey during the battle scene, and turns back to
the warm clear sky towards the end.
We knew since the beginning that we were not interested
in creating realism. We tried to stylize the colors and
the lighting as much as possible but still maintain the
believability of the world. In a similar way, we tried to
stylize the designs of the planes and everything else as
much as possible while maintaining the true spirit of the
original planes while capturing the essence of this little
boy's world."
--Wira
Winata, December, 2003
