Nims Winter Story

On my previous blog I spoke about the incredible website Goober Productions, well this time I chose to blog about one of the movies featured on the site by Sweedish animator Ola Bergner.

The movie is narrated in sweedish but had enlgish subtitles, the title of the story is Nims Winter Story and is about a Pixie named Nim who lives among the forrest. The setting of the movie takes place in the winter and for the most part seems to be at night.

To begin the storyline, an animator speaks about the forrest, a few passages on the loneliness and those who inhabit it. There is a camera pan in which the forrest and hills are shown, all the while the "camera" is zooming closer and closer to trees. Eventually a small creature pops out of its home while avoiding snowballs from other small creatures. It whipes off the sine to its house and this is where you learn the name Nim.

Nim packs up all of its stuff (I am not sure which sex this pixie is, it isn't easy to tell) and begins a walk through the woods with its sled, lantern and a small bag. On Nims was to whatever location, it passes by a sleeping creature, one that doesn't look like anything one would find in the "real" world. Anyways, Nim's destination seems to be a barn where a horse is in its stall. Nim feeds the horse and then reparis a part of the stall (*one thing I must mention is that Nim couldn't be more than a few inches tall). Nim then falls alseep, dreams of camels and is awoken when it hears a girl saying she wants to give her food to the pixies. The father of the girl says to give it to the dog because pixies do not exist. The girl then puts the food onto the ground where she believes the pixies will find it and goes inside to eat dinner.

The movie ends with Nim smelling the food. I would suppose this movie is about believing and that is simply was a fantasy of its creator. However, this is just my speculation of why the film was created.

Moving into the more technical side of this movie, Nims Winter Story seems to be close to a 3D environment. I know this movie was made in flash because its creator claims so. Shadows and gradients are put into every element of the movie, which gives the illusion of a three dimensional environment.

The color pallet is mostly dark pastel like tones, even the pixies outfit, although green, is in a darker tone. Much of the movie elements are also given a siny look, it seems as though the moon in the video is shining on the trees and into the forrest onto the floor and all of its creatures including Nim.

I love how this animator put this movie together, it takes a long time to load but it is worth it. There is constant movement, down to the little snow flakes that never stop falling even at the end of the movie when the option of watching it over again appears.

The characters that you see while watching are not human like and when there are humans, you only seem the girls feet and part of her lower legs. So this makes me thing, this animator doesn't know how to draw humans very well either.

So to end this blog, I strongly recomend one taking the time to watch this small flash movie. It is highly creative, very interesting, and the music which goes along with it it amazing.