Summer Travelling

1945
Sound
2m

Delayed trains, crowded carriages, and standing room only: Blitz spirit makes a parent's nightmare commute a walk in the park

Picture the worst commute you can imagine - delayed trains, a sweltering crowded carriage and no spare seats. Add in a couple of kids, luggage, buckets and spades and five years of sacrifice, hardship and nightly bombings... Are we nearly there yet? It's asking a lot for a cartoon to bolster the Blitz spirit enough to withstand such travails, but in retrospect this public information short is a jolly affair.

World War II propaganda trailer asking travellers to have patience and make concessions when travelling on trains. Film mostly consists of rostrum animation of still cartooned images with some very short pieces of true animation.

Animation Goes to Work

For those with an official message to get across, animation is the perfect messenger

Animation has an almost magical ability to charm and captivate. And those same qualities also make it a strikingly effective communication tool. It grabs attention, speaks to all ages, and can distil complex messages into simple and appealing visual metaphors. For government or other august bodies, cartoon antics have often been the perfect jam to sweeten the pill of official communications, whether to explain sweeping change or impart health and safety messages. And for the inventive animator, even the most utilitarian brief is no barrier to the most outlandish of treatments.