How To Cope With Death

Death comes to the door, like God's chauffeur, and waits discreetly in the hall. As he drives you through a tunnel of white puppy freshness to the Other Side, a feeling of euphoria fills the spaces that life has left. Not a tear, not a backward glance.

"Thank you, sir," a voice that used to be yours says.

"The pleasure is entirely mine," the chauffeur replies.

If you had a face, you would be smiling.

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Let's look at it again, through the eyes of animator Ignacio Ferreras. An old lady snoozes in her rocking chair before a flickering, blank TV. Death hovers over her, like a mummified skeletal warrior from Mordor, preparing her head for the scythe.

She awakes and fights the beast. Far from going gently, she turns into kung-fu gran and gives it large. The battle is fierce; feathers fly. Death's grinning skull takes a bashing from the splintered rocking chair.

And the message is: "Don't let the bastard take you."

If old-fashioned animation means clean lines and subdued colours, this is old fashioned. Death is truly scary. Three minutes go by and there isn't a bad camera angle, or a character defect.

Also, it's true. Even the chronically sick find strength for The Final Battle.