Take a look at any online message board for the animation/design communities and you'll see that when it comes to other people's work, those in the field can be its harshest critics. Thus, when Vancouver and Boston-based creative studio Global Mechanic was given the nod to create the open for September's Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), the team knew it would have to create something special, or risk the slings and arrows of the assembled creative cognoscenti.

"We figured we were making something that was going to be seen at least 20 times, probably more," says Global Mechanic creative director Bruce Alcock. "And animators tend to be really critical and detail-obsessed. So we thought we should design something that was open but had some kind of organizational principal."

As a result, Alcock, executive producer Matthew Charde and senior producer Tina Ouellette opted to create the work as a virtual studio, enlisting an international posse of in-house and freelance animators - "either directors on our roster or people that we've had long relationships with" - to contribute. Utilizing a variation of the Exquisite Corpse concept, where contributors riff on each other's work in a sort of chain letter effect, Alcock created a visual framework based on semaphore flags, where each shape would be filled in by one of the dozen-strong contingent.

"Semaphores use nice clear divisions of diagonals, triangles, circles and rectangles, so it was a clear way to organize it," says Alcock. "We numbered each of the divisions per frame and then handed out the numbers to each animator. They'd get a rough form with just shapes moving around and then could make the animation to fill their shape."

Each animator was given relatively free rein to create their work in whichever style they preferred, with the end result being a madcap mélange of styles including stop-motion, 2D, 3D and cel work.

As for any sort of thematic direction? "We gave everyone the direction that it should involve a duck," offers Alcock. "That could involve somebody 'ducking' to avoid something, or there actually could be a duck, or maybe a character would have a bag with a duck inside it that you'd never see. The major direction we gave was to push yourself to do something cool."

Given the response to the open both at the festival and subsequently, it looks like the mission was accomplished. But not without the odd hiccup.

"One [animator] disappeared for a week and a half," laughs Alcock. "It turned out he'd fallen in love and wasn't doing any work."

Global Mechanic> www.globalmechanic.com

Ottawa International Animation Festival http://ottawa.awn.com