It can take months to get animation right. That is exactly how this labour of love from Ashley Williams was produced. Animation, at the heart, is a painstaking process, especially when using rotoscoping (a technique made most famous in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, giving it a third dimensional look). It could take months, or perhaps years, to get the cell right and the final product looking exactly how you want it to look. An animator’s work is never truly complete but with Disparu, it feels like all that hard work has paid off, if for just two minutes of animation goodness.
Winner of the 2012 Judges Award at Film Northants, Disparu is about a man living alone at the top of some French apartment blocks. As a news piece tells us that an artefact has been stolen, a weird mouthless man comes in to steal a weird box from him. What ensues is an action packed fight that will see one victorious.
With a monochrome feel and the edgy disjointed look, as though we were watching real life paper men come alive, Disparu is a great technical achievement, setting up a brilliant story that could launch into several Disparu short films, if Williams wanted to. Unearthing a very Matrix feel, the short packs a punch with the action hitting on point and a splurge of red. This movie gives us an exciting taste and the feel it hasn’t completely ended hangs over you. That being said, Williams presents an excellent little film that is striking, different and complex.
