The Black Dog's Progress

This is an ingenious animation in which the entire story is told through a series of flipbooks that appear on the screen one by one, and are looped almost continuously for a few minutes until the viewer has had enough time to digest every one and absorb their cumulative effect.

The story is of a dog thrown out onto the street by its owner, into an uninviting, unfriendly neighbourhood. The animation is relatively primitive, scratchy, and due to the fact several things are happening on screen at once, a little small. This is something that would benefit from being shown on a big screen. It also makes things quite hard to follow, as everything is moving all at once. It’s a big ask for the audience, and I think it is something that depends upon personal taste as to whether or not the experiment works.

Personally, I found the effect busy and alienating. Although I appreciated the cleverness on display and the time it took to construct such a project, it’s just too overwhelming and a technique that considerably lessens any emotional impact of the story.