Love Tricycle: Special Edition

I once had a theory you could personify anything given the time and the creativity. Here writer/director Andrew Goode does justice to that theory in the personification of three bicycles trapped in a love triangle… (hence the film’s title).

Although clocking in at just over 13 minutes, Love Tricycle manages to tell a good short story whilst building a singular and well-described universe in which its characters dwell. We open the film meeting Beau, a bike who teaches at Rimside High School. As the school holidays begin, lonely Beau spies the lovely Bec through the closing school gates and they meet again by chance in the local mall the following day. They begin a brief flirtation that is interrupted by the intrusion of Harley, a mean-spirited mountain bike who did Bec wrong. It now falls to Beau to defend her and the two must fight for the fair lady.

This all happens, as noted, in less than 14 minutes and while that may not appear much to the average DVD consumer, it can be a lifetime to an animator. The residents of Rimside have been exquisitely rendered to create an easily viewed and enjoyed CG animation film better in many ways than some of the bigger mainstream theatrical releases in the same field. The only real trouble I had watching this is with the obtuse nature of some character movements. Not that they’re difficult, but I found myself trying to compare the movement of a character to the human equivalent and found myself unable to do so. And that’s not to say this is the fault of the film either – in a world inhabited by bicycles, it’s more than likely characters would have their own mannerisms that would be far different from those of us humans. However, in a G-rated vehicle such as this where characters are so personified, it was a minor foible. Whenever I rarely encountered those slight difficulties, it just meant I needed to watch the film again. And this is surprisingly easy. Many animated films suffer the children’s angle – that is, kids can watch them end on end forever and love them, but adult supervisors may wish to give themselves a sleeper hold to avoid seeing them again. Not the case here, and in fact I enjoyed the film much more the second and third times around, finding more subtlety in the world of Rimside to marvel at and find carefully hidden in the background.

Love Tricycle is riding the wave of great Aussie short animations that are making a big name for themselves overseas. Harvie Krumpet is of course now a name synonymous with Australian short animation after beating the big guys out of the Oscar back in March, and Love Tricycle is scooping awards all of its own. Since July of 2003, it has won major prizes all over the world from Sweden to the USA to right back here at home.

With this sort of quality film being made in Australia and exported to the world, it won’t be long before the Aussie animation market will have the rest of the world sitting up and paying attention. Love Tricycle is a worthy ‘spokesfilm’ for Australian animation and the treatment it has been given on DVD is equal to the exacting quality of the film itself.

This is a superlative transfer of the original cinema aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with anamorphic wheelies. Being wholly digital there’s not a film artefact in sight and colours look bright and even. Picture quality is razor sharp and even the backgrounds are crisp and alive, though they are mildly (and deliberately) out of focus occasionally. As to flesh tones, well… there aren’t any as this is a world inhabited solely by bicycles, but blacks are true and the shadow detail is excellent - as is the case with most animation these days.

Here we have a delicious Dolby Digital 5.1 surround setup that works the surrounds nicely, particularly in the busy mall and park scenes. The subwoofer adds a subtle bass to the music and effects though doesn’t really make itself overly apparent in this fairly light soundscape. We also have a nice choice of music only or effects only tracks, though due to their simplicity, they are delivered in Dolby stereo only.

Ross McLennan’s musical score is sweetly charming and whimsical and suits the nature of the film, though you might find the same riff every time you head back to the main menu a bit annoying if left on too long or returned to too frequently. Otherwise the sound delivery here is as sweet as the visuals.

Well, I’m sure a 13-minute DVD film bereft of extras would thrill any consumer, but herein is included practically the history of the film in a monster swag of extras that go a long way to buoying up the value of the disc.

Our first extra comes in the excellent multi-angle sequence that covers almost the entire film in four versions. First we are given a text introduction that describes the various meanings of terms for those folks not entirely up with animation jargon. Our headings are Storyboard, Layout, Animation and Final Render and each gets an informative page before we head into the screens. We can chop or change between four screens or opt for what I thought the best version, the four-way split screen. An excellent dissection of animation for anyone interested by the process.

Then comes a gallery with numerous sub-headings that I ended up losing count of after around the first 200 images or so. Then I saw the sleeve stating there are actually 874 and that would seem pretty accurate. These are obviously quite comprehensive and feature everything from the brilliant concept art through to final character designs and even the publicity created for the film (I can’t say I’ve ever seen another DVD that has its own cover and picture disc in the gallery! Not to mention the sleeve for the ‘video’, whatever one of those is). Thumbnails enlarge to utilise the entire screen, which is very welcome. So few use the whole screen.

A trailer trundles in next and this runs in unenhanced 1.85:1 for 31 seconds in MPEG two channel sound (which sounds fine).

Production notes follow and here we get 18 pages that take us through the whole story from the original idea to funding, designing and the creation of the film. This is very comprehensive and quite interesting and again goes into depth for folks who are interested in filmmaking or animation in particular. Very thorough but there’s one missed opportunity here; Goode’s original animation tests of his experiments animating bicycles are described, but not included! This would have been very interesting to check out, particularly as they are apparently doing the Tango.

Finally there are five two-page biographies on each of the major filmmakers.

So there’s plenty of value added to the disc there, generously buoying up the 13-minute presentation of the film.

Love Tricycle is a brilliantly envisioned film with some very subtle humour and is an incredible example of what the miracles of computer animation can do today. Kids and adults alike will enjoy this as the simplicity of the story is easily followed and there are numerous bike-related gags floating about for second or third (or fourth) viewing.

Australian animation is finally getting the recognition it has deserved for a very long time and Love Tricycle is right up there with the best we have to offer. Awesome stuff.