Animate Chapman Competition Launches
LONDON, UK & NEW YORK, NY — In celebration of the new feature film A Liar’s Autobiography — The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman, world premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, a global online animation competition titled “Animate Chapman” launched to find enthusiastic animators to bring Chapman and Monty Python’s sketches back to life. Open to students, amateurs and professional animators alike, the filmmakers, Trinity, Brainstorm, and EPIX sponsored the contest with Adobe.
For the contest, eight audio clips have been chosen that span Chapman’s career, chosen for their diversity and absurdness, providing a launch point for animators to visualize Graham’s world in their own style and technique, using Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium software. Hand drawn, CGI, typographic, collage, stop-motion; the animation possibilities are endless. Entrants must upload their final animation via the official A Liar’s Autobiography Facebook page and share it with their friends.
Ten winners will be chosen by the filmmakers and judging panel, one of which will be chosen by Facebook voters as the audience choice. All winners will receive a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium software and will be showcased on PythonLine and the Monty Python YouTube channel, and considered as an extra on the film’s official DVD, pending appropriate copyright clearance. Final submissions must be received by October 22.
Graham Chapman, probably best remembered as “the dead one from Monty Python,” writes and stars in the animated movie of his own life story, A Liar’s Autobiography. He was born, he went to Cambridge and met John Cleese, he smoked a pipe, he became a doctor, he became a Python, he decided he was gay (well, 70/30, according to a survey he did on himself), he got drunk a lot, he stopped being drunk, he made some films, he had some sex (actually, a lot), and moved to Los Angeles. Finally, he was whisked up into space by aliens (although that might have been in a film).
Featuring recordings of Chapman that he made of his book in 1982 and matched with recorded sound from present, the film reunites members of the Monty Python troupe and brings Chapman back to life in a tour de force of animation through 17 different animation styles from 14 different animators.
Incredible, yes. Surreal, certainly. True? Who knows? At his memorial service, John Cleese called Chapman “a freeloading bastard.” Now, as the film re-unites Chapman with Cleese, Jones, Palin, and Gilliam for the first time in 23 years, he is set to earn a new title — the most prolific corpse since Elvis.
Following the Toronto International Film Festival, A Liar’s Autobiography — The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman will premiere on EPIX and in select U.S. theaters in 3D on Friday, November 2, 2012, and theatrically in the U.K. in November and Canada. Brainstorm Media is the U.S. theatrical distributor of the film. Trinity is handling U.K. distribution and Entertainment One is handling Canadian distribution.
The talented animation teams and diverse styles involved in A Liar’s Autobiography are from the following animation studios: A for Animation, ArthurCox, Beakus, Cake, Made Visual Studio, Mr & Mrs, Not To Scale, Peepshow, Sherbet, Steven Lall, Superfad, Treat Studios, Trunk and Tundra.
