I Am Sparticature!

I got this cool video link via the National Caricaturists Network‘s message board forum. This short film won the BAFTA for animated short and was an Oscar nominee a year later. It’s a great homage to the flavor of old school Hollywood movies, but “The Big Story” is that it features an incredible caricature of Kirk Douglas… three great caricatures of him, in fact, at different ages:

I don’t know how long the embedded link will work for this, so in case it’s busted click HERE for a direct YouTube page of the video. The reason I wonder about the validity of the embed link is that for some bizarre reason the original poster of the video refuses to allow you to embed it for playing anywhere but on their YouTube page. I don’t know what that accomplishes, other than limit the exposure of the video. If the creators didn’t want it shared and seen around the internet, why post it on YouTube at all? I almost deleted this entire post and went with a different topic, and I am sure a lot of people won’t bother to feature the video on their blogs as a result. Then I found another link to it thanks to Joe Bluhm‘s blog.

This is an extremely well done animated short. It’s only about a minute and a half long, but the animated caricature of Douglas is worth the extra step. If you watch the credits, you’ll notice the voices of Kirk Douglas were done by the brilliant Frank Gorshin, who old Batman fans will know as “The Riddler” from the 1960’s TV show. Gorshin was a fantastic impressionist.

Here’s an animatic of the film, also via the NCN forum.