Aaron Simpson of Cold Hard Flash did a presentation at Flash Forward Boston this year called “One Man Bands.”

Aaron presented demonstrations and a behind the scenes look at the work of five independent Flash Animators, and interviewed all of us about our work. The participants were the ultra-talented Anton Bogaty, Max Lang, Ian Culbard, Joel Trussell, and Ol’ Chris Harding.

Here is Chris Harding’s contribution to that little presentation, which Aaron has posted over at CHF.

Chris Harding did a long-ish interview with a local Kansas City arts and entertainment publication called PRESENT Magazine.

It’s kind of long, because Chris Harding does not know how to be concise. It’s also much more serious and pretentious sounding than was intended, but the interviewer asked pretty good questions. So, go… read… skim… enjoy… Chris Harding’s very bad attempts at answering questions about independent animated shorts.

LINK HERE

Learn Self Defense is now available as part of the Shorts! Volume 4 DVD collection, which is published by the Colorado Film Foundation. It contains 3 hours of award winning independent shorts, both live-action and animation.

Each film is accompanied by 2 ridiculous, superfluous commentary tracks. Learn Self Defense has a story commentary about the ideas behind the film, and a technical commentary discussing how the film was physically made, removing all mystery and wonder from the process. Both also include introductions by Chris Harding’s mom, which are really the highlights of each track.

You can order the DVD straight from the Film Festival Collection website, or you can also order it at amazon.com.

Here’s a weird thing. At the South Axholme Community School in South Yorkshire, they have a project on Satire In Animation. Somehow, Make Mine Shoebox is one of the films being studied. (link to the project here)

Some of the questions in the exercise are probably impossible to answer, because they are inside jokes, intended for an audience of people who work at the company. Others are really good questions.

Here’s the best quote from the exercise:
“Why is it that a company would pay for this satirical animation– what is in it for them?” Indeed.

Anyway, it’s flattering to see it being studied. You kids keep up the good work!