Etoile

"Etoil" is a 3D computer animation (With photos being used for most of their backgrounds) that follows the title character who lives with her family and her dog Rex in Morocco, Casablanca. During that time, Jewish girls from around the neighbourhood are kidnapped, when the opportunity to leave Morocco arises, Etoil and her family decides to take it.

So, what can I say about the story... Despite the seemingly cheerful music that plays and fairly cute style used for this animation, I know something sad was going to happen (Like most of the animations shown in this festival...). And once I figured out that the dog was going to be an important part of the story... for the rest of the film, I was just dying inside, knowing what would happen, and when it did...

'

Though I suppose it could be worse, it could be like "The Black Dog's Progress" (Created by the same guy who did "The Obvious Child")...

While the backgrounds are most probably stop motion (And sometimes 3D props are added in), I just find the mixture to be a little odd, the 3D characters don't blend in all that well with the backgrounds used. But it isn't really that bad, it was just something I found myself noticing as I watched, some interactions just aren't that believable, it really didn't look like the character was placing her foot down onto the step when she did. 

Still, it was a good attempt (This is coming from someone that only started learning about 3D animation), the character models looked alright I suppose, with the dog easily being my favourite (NOT because I'm bias, but his design looked the least awkward too compared to the humans), the main character's design could have been a little better.

It was interesting however to see others trying to mix  these different techniques together, and I can see that it is a lot more challenging than it looks, not many have been incredibly successful when it comes to executing it, but really, this was pretty good aside from a few flaws here and there.