Grandma’s Hero

Grandma’s Hero is a short film created by a team of artists at The Animation Workshop about a young knight trying to become a hero whose efforts are sabotaged by his sweet grandmother. Two main characters, a fantasy world staging, a focus on humor and an external conflict are the main elements of this fun short.

Grandma’s Hero features ambitious environments and aesthetic work, presenting a great variety and number of characters and creatures. The Animation Workshop’s production system, which usually functions with groups of 7+ students (in this case they’re 11+), helps produce films of remarkable scope. Plenty of very wide shots are used to describe the environment, along with pans and tilts. Camera moves are also used during action sequences. Visual rhythm is high, with great attention dedicated to sound and music to accentuate it and mark contrasts and changes of pace.

Among other narrative devices the short makes good use of psychological/subjective narration (the hero’s imagined events represented in his eyes at 1m57) and a nice frontal shot of the hero walking towards the camera (3m07) with ellipses to transmit passage of time and the character’s increasing frustration.

Featuring great stylized character designs, quality animation and plenty of gags, the film’s playfulness is also worth noting – it likely mirrors the production process the authors went through.