Just Can't Trust A Drunk Ninja
Calgary, 2011
1:55
Dir: Greg Doble
Digital stills, hand drawings
Animated Comedy
Young Audiences Program
Who among those of us who regularly take public transit hasn’t got at least one or two amusingly horrific stories involving inebriated or otherwise unpredictable fellow passengers? That’s what makes boarding the bus or taking the LRT so exciting: anything really can happen when you ride the Rocket or hop the Blue Line. Greg Doble takes this urban nightmare to an amusingly absurd extreme with Just Can’t Trust a Drunk Ninja. His rather delicately limbed figures accentuate that certain sense of vulnerability we feel in situations where questionable strangers share a seat beside us in closed quarters. Doble’s choice of a blue-grey palette also recalls the dingy, discomforting and vaguely unsatisfying colour schemes of institutional spaces. But I think my favourite thing about this short, bizarre vignette is the fact that most of its sound effects are made by a human voice growling, whooshing or making other assorted noises in order to mimick the gears of a bus grinding or a ninja kunai whipping through the air. It’s a touch that gives the characters - and the creator - of this otherwise silent short a subtle voice.
GREG DOBLE
Greg Doble, a new media artist based in Calgary, is currently a fourth year student at the Alberta College of Art and Design in the Media Arts and Digital Technologies Program. Favouring illustration, animation and photography in his work, he likes to focus on the mundane as well as on interesting interactions between people, and he often elaborates on everyday experiences in fantastic ways. Doble describes his work as narrative-based and characterizes his style as light-hearted with a carefree sentimentality.
