Inspirational Movies

Back on Halloween, the Spline Doctors each posted the 10 most influential animated films that inspired each of them to become animators. This is a great idea. While the Spline Doctors are mostly 2D animation geeks (there's one stop motion film among them, and a couple of CG films), my influnences are far more varied than your garden-variety Disney or Warner Brothers feature film (a lot of the films they mentioned are the standard faire one studies in character animation school).

I'd like to share my top 10 here:

1. The Wrong Trousers by Nick Park- Stop Motion at it's finest, and a stellar story to boot. C'mon, you can't beat a Penguin who disguises himself as a chicken and goes out robbing museums, can you?
2. Creature Comforts by Nick Park- I was totally awestricken the first time I saw this wonderful short film. I already had a desire to do animation when I saw this, but this made me sit up and say "Woah! I want to do THAT!"
3. Balance - I first saw this academy award-winning short film at the 1989 Spike and Mike's Animation Festival. This beautifully simple short by Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein tells a simple morality tale and has Twilight Zone overtones.
4. Telltale Heart by UPA
5. Dimensions of Dialog by Jan Svankmajer
6. The Sandman by Paul Berry
7. 101 Dalmations
8. Bully for Bugs by Chuck Jones
9. One Froggy Evening by Chuck Jones
10. Dragon's Lair by Don Bluth

Aside from the straight-up Animated movies, I was heavily influenced by the animation in effects films. Films such as The Empire Strikes Back (AT-AT walkers!!), the Harryhausen Films, and of course, anything with wrestling stop-motion apes and dinosaurs (King Kong, Gwangi).