When Gints Zilbalodis accepted his Oscar for best animated feature earlier this month, he knew exactly who he wanted to include in this thanks: his cats and dogs.
Flow is a gorgeous, thrilling little movie about a cat and his friends travelling through a flooded apocalyptic landscape. Its Academy Award was a huge win for a film with a production budget of €3.5 million that was made by 40 people, working in small teams in France, Belgium and the director’s native Latvia, using Blender, a free graphics tool.
The Wild Robot, the DreamWorks animation that it beat, cost €78 million to make. Pixar’s Inside Out 2, another of its rivals, cost $200 million. Both spent many millions more on their Oscar campaigns – and involved the work of hundreds of actors, animators, directors, producers, writers, storyboard artists and editors.
Zilbalodis is now a national hero. The Oscar has been put on display at the Latvian National Museum of Art, alongside its European Film Award and its Golden Globe. People have been waiting more than an hour to see it, according to the director.
“I’m still in the middle of it all,” says Zilbalodis. “It’s one of the biggest Latvian films of all time. That’s amazing. I haven’t had time to process that. But I’m very inspired to keep going and make more films. I want to stay independent and make small stories. I’m not interested in making some big commercial scenario.”
The son of a sculptor and a painter, Zilbalodis was at secondary school in Riga when, inspired by his own pet, he decided to make a short, hand-drawn animation about a cat that overcomes its fear of water. That simple premise was the starting point for the epic world-building of Flow.
Pitched somewhere between the Disney film The Incredible Journey and Noah’s Ark, Zilbalodis’s second feature, following the acclaimed Away, chronicles the incredible journey of a classic scaredy-cat. When the river overflows and tides rise, the dark-grey kitty finds unlikely company in a little boat populated by a cheery Labrador, a sleepy capybara, a hoarding lemur and a towering secretary bird.
“The short I made about my cat was about fear of water,” the film-maker says. “It was a long time ago. He’s not here any more. And Flow is not the same story. This is about the fear of others. I thought I could use the water to express the feelings the cat has.
“When the cat is afraid the water is scary and aggressive. The water is calm when the cat learns to trust others. Basically, it’s the story of the cat learning how to work with others and a dog becoming more independent. The dog starts out being very trustful but has to learn how to think for himself.”
Don’t expect Zootropolis.
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Animation’s use of anthropomorphised animals dates back to the early 20th century, almost at the start of the form, influenced by the talking-trickster foxes and clever corvids of folklore and children’s stories.
The pioneering Winsor McCay introduced the coquettish, dancing Gertie the dinosaur as long ago as 1914. Mickey Mouse first appeared in 1928, in Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie. In the two decades that followed, his studio and Warner Bros popularised talking animals with characters such as Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck and Goofy.
But they all behave largely like people. With a nod to the more realistic animal behaviour in such Studio Ghibli classics as Princess Mononoke, the animal cast of Flow neither sing, wisecrack, caper nor wear pantless suits. Instead they miaow, bark and scamper through the submerged ruins of a lost civilisation.
The film’s sound designer, Gurwal Coïc-Gallas, uses real sounds for the animals, save for the capybara – that role goes to a baby camel. The sound of a tiger is also an improbable stand-in for that of a whale.
“We wanted them to behave like animals,” Zilbalodis says. “So a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog. We used references for everything. I have had some dogs. I think I understand them quite well. We did study and develop cat videos on YouTube. We tried to ground them. There’s no motion capture. You have to really study them.
“Animators have a lot of input into performance. They have to think like actors. It’s hard to animate animals. With humans you only have two legs. But I think a story can be a lot more emotional and engaging from the animal’s point of view. I also knew there would be no dialogue. We’ve seen stories like this from a human point of view. But we’ve never seen something like this from an animal perspective.”
Unable to find suitable animation training in his native Latvia, Zilbalodis taught himself across a remarkable range of disciplines. Away, which he wrote, directed, animated, edited and scored, brought him to international prominence. The film – another dialogue-free adventure, in which a boy and his motorbike are pursued by a monster across a surreal landscape – received universal acclaim.
Zilbalodis created that film over four years in his bedroom with no budget. Flow was a culture shock.
“I was quite anxious about all the responsibility,” he says. “I made Away by myself because I didn’t have any other way to do it. I didn’t have resources or experience. And I wanted to learn how to animate and how to do the sound and the music and editing. So I did. It was just me.”
On Flow, “it was hard being responsible for other people, because, alone, I could waste my time and resources. Working with a big team was almost like learning a new skill. I had to direct people. Before, I didn’t need to articulate my thoughts. When I’m working alone, I can spend the whole day working on a scene and not worry about other things. I like thinking about details.
“But, in this case, every five minutes someone asked me about this scene or that scene or music or marketing. This was also a much bigger film with very complicated scenes of water and animals. The production took longer. I made Away in 3½years and close to five for Flow. I learned so much. I think the next time it will be a lot easier to be part of a team.”
Since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced the award for best animated feature, in 2001, Pixar has scored the most wins, with 11. Disney has converted four out of 13 nominations. DreamWorks and Studio Ghibli have two statuettes apiece. Sony and Netflix have won one each.
Only a few independent productions – including four from the Kilkenny company Cartoon Saloon – have been shortlisted for an Oscar. Flow is the first indie to win.
It’s a watershed moment for a blossoming sector. Unavoidable funding and distribution roadblocks remain – and intensive, painstaking labour takes a toll – but studios such as Cartoon Saloon, with The Breadwinner, and GKids, which distributed Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, have proved that independent animation can compete with Hollywood.
Crowdfunding, online platforms and graphics software such as Blender, Toon Boom and TVPaint have lowered the barriers to entry. Blender was, Zilbalodis says, crucial to finding Flow’s simultaneously painterly and video-game aesthetic.
“It’s a great tool,” he says. “I think it’s at least just as good or better than any tools out there. It’s really cool that we can make these feature films with free software. Anyone who is watching this film can go home and try it out.
“I know there already are kids making really amazing stuff. You can use whatever you have. For some people, drawing might be easier. But for me, it’s easier to think in terms of three dimensions and create these environments in 3D. Even though you might think it’s very technical and complicated, it’s not.”
Computer-generated animation is now not just for boffins.
“I don’t really understand all the complicated stuff; I just know the basics,” he says. “And it allows me to be very spontaneous and to discover things, because I can go into the world in 3D just like working on a live-action film or a documentary.”
Flow is in cinemas from Friday, March 21st; Away is re-released on St Patrick’s Day
