Little Wolf

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A short animated film by An Vrombaut / produced at the Royal College of Art in 1992

From scribbles to film

It all started with a drawing of my dog. Whenever I had a spare moment, I made a few scribbles:

wolf sketches

Long-eared dogs, howling at the moon. Stars.
A bouncing sheep.A wolf tower…

I had lots of ideas, but I didn't have a story... Then one day, I laid all the drawings out in front of me. I re-arranged the pieces of paper, crumpled some up, then made more sketches… and slowly a story started to emerge: A tale of a little wolf who wants to play with the moon. The moon plays a trick on the little wolf, carrying him high up into the night sky. The other wolves try to help him down, but are distracted by a rather cheeky sheep. All ends well when the sun rises at dawn...

Eventually, I organised all the sketches into a story-board, adding notes about camera moves, timings and sound effects. Now I was ready to start animating. 'Little Wolf' is 5 1/2 minutes long, which meant that I had to do more than 3500 drawings! And each drawing had to be traced onto acetate, coloured in and filmed. It took 18 months to do. When all 3500 drawings had been filmed, the film was developed and I started editing the scenes together. Creating the sound effects was great fun. I used all sorts of objects to make quirky sounds, including a baby's toy to make the cogwheel sound of the moon coming down at the end of the film. I also dragged some friends into the sound studio to make the 'BOING BAAA!' sound of the sheep.

The sound track of 'Little Wolf' was composed by Rowland Lee. We've been working together ever since! He composed the music for my second short film 'When I grow up I want to be a Tiger!' and also for the '64 Zoo Lane' TV series.

Now all 'Little Wolf' needed was an audience. And it soon got one… It was shown on TV and travelled to many film festivals. Because it's a film without dialogue, it didn't need subtitling and was enjoyed by children and adults all over the world, from Japan to Uruguay.

AWARDS
1993 Annecy International Animation Festival 'Best First Film'
1993 Annecy International Animation Festival 'French Ministry of Agriculture Prize'
1993 Mari Kutnna Award from the BFI
1993 Cinanima Espinho Portugal, 'Best Children's Film'
1993 Chicago Film Festival 'Silver Hugo'
1994 Stuttgart Trickfilmfestival 'Mercedes Benz Prize'
1994 Ottawa International Animation Festival 'Best Student Film'
1994 Hiroshima International Animation Festival 'Best First Film'
1997 Mediawave International Festival of Visual Art (Hungary) 'Audience Prize'
Also prizes at children's film festivals in Chicago and Uruguay,
at BAF (Bradford Animation Festival) and Cartoon d'Or Nomination

LITTLE WOLF is available on DVD from the following sources:
Starting Stories, a film and literacy resource from bfi education
British Animation Classics Vol.2 from the British Animation Awards
Mo & Frieses Tiergeschichten German DVD which features both 'Little Wolf'
and my 2nd short film 'When I grow up I want to be a Tiger!'

Find out more about my 2nd short film,
When I grow up I want to be a Tiger