I just got back to Brooklyn from the 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival, after ten hours in the car with Alan Foreman, Stieg Retlin, Jessica Plummer and Grigor Eftimov. Good folks.

I was on a panel about pitching to executives, as part of Dave Levy’s tour with his great new book. Richard O’Connor wrote up a bit about it on his blog. I heard that the festival might post some of the panels as podcasts, so I’ll let you know if that happens.

Here are some of my favorite selections (the ones that are viewable online!) from Ottawa:

A few months back, I posted a great film called “Please Say Something” by David OReilly. One of the best films I’ve seen in years. Since I saw him at Annecy, he’s finished up a lovely video for U2.

Jim Blashfield, a judge at this year’s festival, had a retrospective of his work, including a screening of his 1989 video for Michael Jackson’s “Leave Me Alone”. It’s inspiring to see what kind of work is possible using only analog compositing. According to Blashfield, very bit is shot on camera. He said that one artist was responsible solely for cutting out Michael’s hair, using a jeweler’s loupe and an x-acto. Click here for a great demonstration of cut-out animation techniques!

“Peripetics”, by Jamie Raap & Henrik Mauler, is a very interesting experimental 3D animation. It’s nice to see something that looks slick without looking impersonal.

“Magic Cube and Pin-Pong” by Ray Lei, is an odd one. It’s weird enough to see an independent animation coming from China, even if this wasn’t a weird film. Which it is.

This commercial, made by New York’s First Avenue Machine, was a joy to watch.

Stieg Retlin’s “Dirty Rom Dance” is fun, catchy, and inventive.

Have two minutes to spare? Watch “Hazed”, a Canadian student animation from Sheridan College, created by Matt Hammill.

There’s also a one-minute excerpt of Angela Steffen’s “Leibensader” here. I was surprised to find out that she hasn’t seen Native American art from the Pacific Northwest, as the animation really reminds me of the woodcarving on their totem poles.

There are many films I’ve got to leave out for now, such as Cordell Barker’s “Runaway”, Don McWilliams’s “Aloud Bagatelle”, Michael Langan’s “Dhalia” or Kaspar Jancis’s “Krokodyll”. I’d love to post them, but they’re not available online right now.