Cowboyland is a funny, animated Wild West short about a sheriff whose horse has broken down. Who will uphold justice now? Via Short of the Week:
Originally given the brief of ‘animal dressage’ for a school project at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Stumpf decided to turn this theme somewhat on its head by creating what he describes as an “anti-dressage” about a drunken cowboy unable to realize the steed he’s trying to ride is actually a child’s wooden horse. “Since I had little time to prepare, so many things were improvised and I handled them step by step”, he reveals. “Most of the ideas were based on my notebook, full of drunken cowboys, naked women, bandits, and hens”.
With digital 2D animation his usual method of animation, Stumpf decided to challenge himself with Cowboyland and create his drunken cowboy narrative by animating with pencil on paper. With production taking 6-months – 4 months animating, 1 month coloring and scanning and 1 month of post-production – the director admits the process wasn’t without its problems. “After the first version of the film was finished, I was not happy with it”, he says. “It was too long and unclear. So I made some changes, I cut of lot of animation off and reanimated some things”.