5DM034, 5AD008: research and development: Shaun Tan

On the 18th March's 3D Production session, we were shown an animation short called 'The Lost Thing' created by Shaun Tan aswell as the documentary that shows how the creator developed and produced this short.
Here are the links to the documentary, the short film's website and the actual animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9NCUydoJFk
http://www.thelostthing.com/
https://vimeo.com/63003515 

As the animation is an adaptation of his own written illustration novel, the 3D animation presented matches the aspects of his original concept art and ideas for the setting and characters. And what I reed in the reviews about the art style and then compared it to the art that the reviewers say, I do agree that the presentation looks primarily based on surrealism, particularly from artists max ernst and salvador dali as for the most part the characters are the ones that look and feel unrealistic.

From the story and title aspect, the visuals of how they present the characters clearly state that the humans are actually 'the lost thing' rather than the creatures. For one thing, they all have the same geometrical shape and personality, so in retrospect if you look like them, you'd be lost int he crowd. And from the personality traits, they are lost in idealism of not being curious to new things as they would rather lock it away and are lost in the old ways of thinking. All this makes them too obvious to be individuals. This is the same for the setting as it was bland and boring with no clear understanding of the city's way of life other than their ways of locking things away that seem out of place but brings something new to the world.
This was clearly shown from the main character's perspective of being curious as he was the one who found the main creature aswell as his hobby of collecting different type of coins. But by the end of the story when he finds the home the creature is looking for, he starts to forget and gets to start doing the same old routine as everyone else and not even help another creature who is out of place in this lost world.
For the creatures, their individual look and design flow shows they aren't lost as they would express their own personalities from their characters. This is the same for their utopia as the landmark makes the viewers have a sensation of happiness and it doesn't make the characters feel lost at all.

From the 3D module, this is a useful inspiration for modelling and how to tell a complex meaning and story from this approach. In the Essay module, the art style is useful information and for research in my topic of Experimental film making and what approach this short film took to make this Oscar winning animation short, particularly the artist or art movement Shaun tan generated his visual ideas and inspiration from.