Watch Andrew Chesworth’s ‘The Brave Locomotive,’ “A Love Letter To The Andrews Sisters And 1940s Animation”
Andrew Chesworth’s musical nostalgia trip The Brave Locomotive is now free to stream online.
Cartoon Brew spoke with Chesworth about the film after it earned Oscar qualification by winning the best animation award at LA Shorts International Film Festival. The filmmaker described his passion project as “a love letter to the Andrews Sisters and 1940s animation.”
The Brave Locomotive is an Old West tale about a fearless train that comes face-to-face, literally, with a future that may not have room for it. Chesworth began developing the idea in 2008 and recorded the film’s original music with Tom Hambleton in 2009 before shelving the project for several years while he progressed his studio animation career. When the pandemic forced Chesworth to spend more time at home, he got back to work on The Brave Locomotive.
To make the short, Chesworth deftly utilized modern tools such as Photoshop, TVPaint, After Effects, and Maya to create a film that looks as sharp as any independent work produced today, but one that is infused with the spirit and energy of mid-20th-century animated films.
Chesworth always intended the film to be driven by its score, so the music and reels were developed simultaneously. “That’s been my favorite way to work as a filmmaker in animation,” he told us. “It yields a result unlike any other.”
A former Disney and Netflix animator, Chesworth (Frozen, Moana, Klaus) was nominated – alongside Bobby Pontillas – for the best animated short Oscar in 2019 with their film One Small Step.
