I'm Fine, Thanks (2013)

This is quite a potent little feature that quite successfully illustrates just how some of the crossroads that we encounter as children can effect the adults we grow up into. Here, a young lad is first the victim of a bully and then he is rejected by his school crush before maturing, if that is the word, into an intolerant and violent young man. Were those early incidents the source of something inevitable or is his adult aggression still a matter of choice? Is his behaviour more a matter of self-defence, or self-destruction? What if he had continued in the role of the put-upon - would he have been happier or done better? There are plenty of questions packed into this big-headed animation and the constant fluidity within that great big head of shapes, colours - as if someone were mixing paint in his skull, gives us an impression of all the conflict going on as we emerge from our chrysalis of childhood a part-formed sum of our lives thus far. It also quite purposefully shows us of the impact of external influences, and I was quite surprised at just how thought-provoking this five minutes of colour was.