Joyful Anarchy Rewarded!

New graduate Josh Sehnert 14 FAV has won the grand prize in Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival with his film Mr. Piggy Dies in 25 Dimensions (see below). It’s as over-the-top as the “cartoons intended for human consumption” he features on Farkey, his Vimeo site.

In explaining why Sehnert’s unusually long film (16-minutes pushes the limit for this format) stands out, Cartoon Brew notes that it’s:

…an increasingly manic 25-chapter saga of a pig, Mr. Piggy, who dies. If you ever wanted a definition – or a parody – of the New Aesthetic art movement, this is the film you’d show. Sehnert understands that animation and technology are inseparable nowadays, and he makes you aware of the technology behind his images every single step of the way.

The film represents what every student film should aspire to: joyful anarchy that revels in the fact that as a student, you can do anything. You can try everything. Doesn’t matter if it works or fails. Surely, every idea in Mr. Piggy Dies doesn’t succeed. That’s hardly the point. Sehnert experiments. 

“As a character, I wanted Mr. Piggy to be a sympathetic narcissist,” Sehnert explains. “Given the title and repetition of his death as a constant joke, the inevitability of his demise mixed with his misguided optimism set up the perfect atmosphere for Mr. Piggy’s comedic tragedy to constantly reinvent itself.”

To hear more from Sehnert about how and why he developed Mr. Piggy Dies, check out the full story on Cartoon Brew.