Child's Play

摘要

"Birthday Boy" is a timeless story set in a specific place and time-Korea in 1951. As the young protagonist of this nine-minute CG movie meanders home through a nearly empty town, we observe the bombed-out buildings and the ravaged landscape of a country at war. But we also see the delight on little Manuk's face as he finds a screw in the empty fuselage of a plane, or watches a stream of tanks roll by on the back of a transport train. The camera spends a lot of time on that face, which is at one moment keenly concentrating, at another seemingly devoid of thought. It's the face of any child at play. But Manuk's simple diversions take place against the backdrop of a war that will soon affect him much more than it already has. "Birthday Boy," which was named Best Animated Short in the Computer Animation Festival at SIGGRAPH 2004, is the first 3D CG film from animator Sejong Park, a recent graduate of the Australian Film Television and Radio School, where he completed the project. (The film, incidentally, is also the first from the school to have earned the prestigious award at SIGGRAPH.)