Most of us have been entertained by many animated cartoons, but it’s indeed rare to see animation that both entertains and inspires. Well, the animated short film, Wolf Dog Tales, succeeds in doing so.
This film had its world premiere in June 2012 as part of the Official Selection at the prestigious Annecy International Animated Film Festival, and focuses on ancient stories of what animals teach us about respecting life and the earth.
This near 7-minute short is the first animated film of writer/director/producer Bernadine Santistevan. Bernadine was inspired to make this film after the passing of her Dachshund companion of almost 21 years, Paco Sosa.
Each story in Wolf Dog Tales is something that Paco taught Bernadine while they were together, and that she later discovered had direct links to Native American beliefs of animal wisdoms.
Wolf Dog Tales has won many coveted awards, including Best Animated Film at Comic Con International, 2012 in San Diego—one of the U.S. entertainment industry’s most important yearly events with over 130,000 attendees–and Excellence in Writing, 2012 from the international animation organization, ASIFA East.
Speaking to Animationxpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala about Wolf Dog Tales, Bernadine, shared, “I was quite clear on the story that I wanted to tell, but I had no idea what type of animation would work best to tell my story—especially given I had come out of the live-action world and had never worked with animation. I also had no concept of how much time and work goes into making an animated film.”
Wolf Dog Tales is animated by Igor, an Emmy award-winning animator/designer classically trained at The Zagreb Film School of animation. The design and animation were inspired by Navajo sand paintings–an ancient religious art form—and original animation techniques called “Faux Sand Painting Animation. Igor used a variety of innovative approaches, including stop motion sand animation, sand painting animation and wind erosion animation.
Bernadine added, “Igor was the person who suggested we use sand, and this took me back to my roots in New Mexico, where my family has been living among the Pueblo and Navajo Indians for hundreds of years. Things seemed to be organically falling into place, especially given the stories are based on ancient stories from my culture—Spanish—as well as the Native American cultures of New Mexico.”
In the case of stop motion sand animation, animated wolves were created by stamping impressions onto a background sand surface. For sand painting animation, an animated sand painting illusion was created by composting video recordings of several layers of multicolored sand and creating windows for the sand textures. In some cases one frame of the film required as many as 800 layers/windows. Lastly, for wind erosion animation, an animated wind erosion effect was created using as a reference a video recording of an actual sand painting being blown away by a blast of compressed gas. You can find in-depth on these techniques on the film’s website www.WolfDogTales.com.
Highlighting more on the challenges faced working on Wolf Dog Tales, Bernadine stated, “The most difficult challenge was developing techniques that worked for the film. I realize that for most folks, the animation in Wolf Dog Tales may look quite simple, but actually the techniques used were quite complex. There was a lot of experimenting that went into the film—lots of hits and misses. In the end, this 6 minute and 40 second film required about a year of intense work just on the animation portion. It was a process of discovery that was difficult, but truly magical. Once we completed the animation, I brought on the rest of the team to complete the live-action transitions, the sound design, the music and the visual FX and color grading, which took a total of about another 2 months of work.”
Igor used Toon Boom Pro Animation Software for this film.
Other artists contributing their talents to Wolf Dog Tales include Robert Mirabal, a 2 time Grammy award-winning Native American music artist who lives a traditional life on the sacred Taos Mountain, playing original music for the film; Larry Fessenden, an iconic award-winning filmmaker based in New York City who has also worked as a character actor for directors such as Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch, performing the voice over role of the Wolf Dog; and Begonia Colomar, a VFX and color grading artist coming out of Dreamworks and Electronic Arts (credit list includes Minority Report, Shrek and 28 Days Later.)
Wolf Dog Tales is currently playing in film festivals around the world, including in India, where the World Kids International Foundation has also requested use of the film as a teaching tool in classrooms in Mumbai and Delhi. At present, Bernadine is completing a live-action film titled “Wolf Dog”, which is currently in post-production. She is also working on a children’s book series, an animated TV series, a graphic novel and a toy–all inspired by Wolf Dog Tales.
Commenting on the USP of Wolf Dog Tales, Bernadine, said, “The biggest message that I hope to convey in Wolf Dog Tales is summarized in a few lines from one of the stories in my film. It goes like this: One day an ancient one took his grandson out for a walk, when suddenly, out of no where, they came across two wolves in a fight to the death…the fight between the good wolf and the bad wolf—the same fight that goes on inside all of us. The one that wins is the one that you feed.”
She concluded: “My sense is that if you watch Wolf Dog Tales, in the worst case you’ll be entertained. Though my guess is that there’s at least one story in my film that will touch your heart and inspire you in some way. ”