A ring of black text on a transparent background, reading 'Monday Short'.

Carl Spencer & Neal Moignard's Les Autres (2014)

Les Autres is a sci-fi collage in every sense of the word.

title card for "Les Autres" by Carl Spencer and Neal Moignard. 

Collage background of a moon, a river, and trees. White, bold text on it reads:

LES AUTRES
Une realisation de CARL SPENCER et NEAL MOIGNARD

NOTE: This Monday short (Now Tuesday short) was originally posted on May 21, 2018. We are re-uploading Peter Hemminger's original Monday Shorts until further notice.

Happy Tuesday! Post-long-weekend, figured a long-weekend made animation suited best. It also shows the wondrous usage of our Oxberry Stand, of which we have a training certificate running this Fall (taught by me! Don't worry, I've been trained, and we're going to MAKE STUFF!) should you want to make your own multi-plane collage animation masterpieces!

- Theresa

Like every May long weekend, it's Quickdraw's Animation Lockdown, a four-day challenge where local animators spend sleepless nights and caffeinated days trying out new ideas and new techniques. Given how time-consuming animation often is, it's incredibly important to have a chance to blow off steam and get an idea out of your system—think of Titmouse's five-second day, and how essential it has become to their culture.

Some of my favourite shorts are exactly that kind of doodle. Patrick McHale's Fall Guy is a perfect noir pastiche, a silly stream-of-consciousness effort from the Over the Garden Wall animator. Insomnia from Islena Neira is from a five-day challenge, using an improvised piano piece as its inspiration for a bit of inceptioned creativity. But when I think of these sorts of films, the first one that comes to mind is always Les Autres, a collaborative short that came out of the 2014 Lockdown.

Les Autres is a sci-fi collage in every sense of the word. Created from cut-outs assembled into disorienting landscapes and jarringly jam-packed cities, it comes across as a fragment of speculative French fantasy, some strange lovechild of Fantastic Planet and La Jetée. Even the moral, a message of art overcoming all obstacles, feels closer to European utopianism than anything in the current political landscape. Considering it came together in a handful of days, it's a genre exercise with depth, one that rewards rewatching even just to take in the compositions, and is a perfect example of the kind of creativity that often comes from working within constraints.

syn. Two creatures from another dimension arrive on Planet Earth when a seam in reality tears open. Dazed and confused, they attack humans, who struggle to prove their friendship.

Produced as part of the the 48hr Animation Lockdown at Quickdraw Animation Society in Calgary, AB.

Dir. Carl Spencer and Neal Moignard

2014