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11th Animation Division Excellence Award

Ukkari Penelope

Animated TV series [Japan]

TAKAGI Jun (Director)

Outline

An animation based on a French picture book series which depicts the everyday life of a child with a kind look with tenderly hand drawn warm pictures. Employing 3DCG technique, short stories of five minutes per tale which recreate the world of the picture book as it is with both background and characters with the touch of hand drawing. Writing of the joyful every day of a koala girl Penelope who is full of curiosity.

Reason for Award

This animation is based on a series of French picture books that depict a child’s everyday life from a sympathetic point of view and with warm pictures that are tenderly hand drawn. The story of a little koala girl, Penelope, is told in a calm and gentle way; it is as though a mother is reading a book to her child. In the animation, both the background and characters are adapted to 3DCG, though the world of the picture book is perfectly recaptured, maintaining the original style of the illustrations; it is amazing to see them come alive through animation. It is surely a technique at the forefront of animated expression. Many 3DCG animations tend to look rather cold and stiff, but this one tackled that difficult problem with great effort and successfully overcame it; the skill of the production staff is worthy of special mention. They humbly present this high quality animation for children, which to me seems a very luxurious thing.