Sixty40

Sixty40’s inaugural Proto Ninja Award launched as part of the UTS: Sydney International Animation Festival has climaxed with aplomb, announcing Guy Verge Wallace as winner for his animated film “Underdog: Dangerforce”. More than 21 entries of consistently high quality and far exceeding expectations were received from across Australia including SA, QLD, NSW and TAS.

Guy’s film is amazing, a stop motion epic filled with energy and touches of genius. He shows a ton of promise and represents everything we want the Proto Ninja Award to stand for: boldness, inventiveness and fearlessness.

Entrants were required to create a new work of between 40 and 60 seconds length, which followed the theme “Underdog”. What made the submissions unique was that every film had a strong personal expression: personal visions rather than imitations.

The entries showed a big range of styles and approaches to the theme. By making all the movies have the title “Underdog” but with their own tagline we received a great range of interpretations. This also applied to the music. With a selection of three very different tracks to use, it was great to see how each track impacted the different films.

Style-wise we saw the full range: stop motion, hand drawn 2D animation and 3D animation. The submissions definitely showed an impressive level of mastery of both creative and production techniques for filmmakers just starting out. It was inspiring and rewarding to see such a simple brief come back from so many directions.

Visit the site to see the film and the top 10 finalists. www.sixty40.com/protoninja