The Snowman and The Snowdog

Tonight I have watched The Snowman and The Snowdog, the new sequel to The Snowman (1982). It followed the same generic simple style so would appeal straight to its original viewer ship. The film is set in the same house as before and uses the same snowman as the main character, there was also an inter-textual reference to the old film with the boy discovering a photo of the young boy from before with the snowman. Like the previous animation there is no speech throughout, just a piece of music and then one song. Yet again even the use of sound is the same as the previous animation which means your attention is fully focused on the narrative unfolding through the illustrations. Apparently there were concerns that the simple hand drawn style would be lost on the young high-tech audiences of today who are used to computer generated content.

The poster which advertised the program is completely in keeping with the original style with the same illustrations used too. I find it interesting how even The Snowman and The Snowdog has its own hashtag to connect it with the social network twitter. Seeing as my animation is based around social networks I find that this poster highlights the fact that social networking is now associated with pretty much anything. The Snowman and The Snowdog is a children's program, granted many adults will connect with it due to its prequel but it is primarily a children's story, is the hashtag targetting its older audience or are children that young involved too?

DailyMail Article: Raymond Briggs talking about The Snowman

Originally Raymond Briggs was completely against the idea of creating a sequel to The Snowman. 'I thought it was just cashing in on the success of the original, and that's why I was always so against it' Raymond Brigges. This shows how he produced his work without the constraints of economic gain, he did it for the love of the story and for the love of the painting. I believe this is reflected in his work, when someone produces something purely because it is something they are passionate about it tends to be reflective in the quality which has in turn led to success.

DailyMail: 'Animation draws one of Channel 4's biggest audiences of the year'

The article above from the next day shows that The Snowman and The Snowdog received a massive reception with 5.8 million sitting down to watch the half hour long animation. This shows that even though technology and animation techniques have been developed greatly since the first film, audiences are still satisfied with a simple, back to basics animation.

The film kept to the traditional ways of creating an animation, drawing it all by hand, which meant it took them a year to complete. The process required 77 artists, using 200,000 pieces of paper and 5,000 pencils. They worked at 12 frames per second, with each second taking 30 hours. These facts help highlight to me just how much time and effort I will be putting into my own animation over the next few months. Once May and the final deadline arrives it will all be worth it.