Come here my tender nibble

Big Bunny is a large, pink bunny who lives in a forest just outside of Crusty Pines. He has 3 friends, who are small fat children he would like to eat.

Big Bunny is first discovered by the children after, Muffin, Lulu’s dog runs into the forest. “Do not run tasty children” says Big Bunny in his monotonous voice. He later tells them he has seen “no fluffy crunchy dogs”, but secretly puts Muffin into a bag.

Lulu and Sam are the naïve and stupider of the three, whereas Suzy has a little more sense about her. The three children visit Big Bunny regularly, each time he tells them all a short and usually slightly disturbing or pointless story.

The best story told (in my opinion), is in the Easter episode, Big Bunny tells the children his own version of the death of Jesus, but he replaces Jesus with a blue bird. It dies, but 3 days later it rises from the dead. All is the same, apart from the bird craves, instead of berries, flesh from the living (little girl’s eyeballs) and is a different shade of blue.

I enjoy Big Bunny’s obvious lying and his toneless voice, he is also quite pedantic and references everything to eating and food. Each animation ends with Big Bunny telling the children to eat food - egg yolks, ham burgers or lamb.

Amy Winfrey created this short series of animations in 2001. Peter Merryman is the voice of Big Bunny, and Amy Winfrey is the voices of the children. Big Bunny has been featured in the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the World Animation Celebration (where once upon a time Hanna Barbera - creators of the Flintstones, won one of three Lifetime Achievement Awards).

Amy Winfrey has also created other animations, Making Fiends and Muffin Films. Initially I discovered Muffin Films (12 short animations about different muffin tales) and then followed a link to Big Bunny. I have recommended Big Bunny to a lot of people, but only got a positive response from people with a darker sense of humour. I would then recommend Muffin Films to them, Muffin Films is not as dark but a lot more random. I have only watched a few of Making Fiends, this is the darkest of the 3 animations created by Amy Winfrey.

It has been animations like this which have encouraged me to create my own. Sadly I have not developed the skills to use Flash yet, but I will get there! Currently I am experimenting with stop frame animation. I can still incorporate similar styles and characteristics as Amy Winfrey has.

If I were to recreate Big Bunny myself, I would probably try and spend more time with the background drawings and add some music maybe, which would not interfer with the voices. I would quite like to recreate Big Bunny using plasticine in my personal project thought. Having said this, I now know what a slow process animation is, and it can get very tedious and annoying, so I can sympathise with Amy Winfrey's faults. Overall thought, I think Big Bunny is great!