Here’s a couple of animated shorts for you to enjoy. First, by my buddy Steve Ogden of Croaker’s Gorge - a wonderful animated short titled “Flakes.” An extremely well produced piece that did really well, even winning some awards. Great script, design and execution!

Secondly, my own little foray into animation that I did a couple years ago titled “Meteorlogical Justice.”

Enjoy!

I’m not a huge Manga fan, I find most of the storytelling absurd. I did enjoy certain things like Captain Harlock and one other show that was similar in that it had space-faring ships that were kind of like big battleships. The characters wore red and white suits (No, not Macross or Robotech) - if you know what I’m talking about leave a comment.

You can see I obviously have always enjoyed space-themed story lines. Anyway, one of the most amazing little manga films I have ever watched is a short film called Voices of a Distant Star by Makoto Shinkai.

This wonderful film was not produced by a studio, but was done entirely by Shinkai himself. He wrote the story, did the animation, production - everything but the music I believe. It’s a story that conveys incredible emotion and uses technology as a foundation for that story. In other words, the technology itself isn’t the story, it’s a supporting character as it were. That’s one reason why it succeeds so well. Too much you see over the top technology being the story and that gets old fast.

The story begins with Mikako and Noboru being separated at the beginning of high school in 2046. Mikako gets accepted into the training program for mecha pilots to fight the aliens who attacked human settlements on Mars (must have been some other mean aliens other than Ugo). The story evolves as she moves further out into space, where time becomes a factor. She continues to try and contact Noburu as he patiently waits for her.

The story is powerfully presented and delivers a keen emotional punch. The cream on the top is the amazing music composed for the film, which fits absolutely perfectly (in fact I bought the soundtrack).

Do yourself a favor and rent or buy this great little film, you will not be sorry. Let me know what you think! Maybe later I will share some of my favorite parts of the film, but I don’t want to ruin anything for those who have not seen it yet. You can get the film at Amazon.

As some of you may know I’m working on a fun little “trailer” for Marooned. I’m having a lot of fun with it and last night I reached about the halfway point. I’ve engaged Steve Ogden to do the voiceover work (which came out great) and he’s provided some valuable feedback as well. I was hoping to have it done before I leave for San Diego next Tuesday, I’m not sure that will happen. In any event, here’s a little teaser image.

I thought this little dot matrix animated film was really cool. It’s the history of the computer set to some cool music and animated in this “dot matrix” style. It’s done by superbrothers, who do some pretty neat stuff with pixel art. Check it out:

DOT MATRIX REVOLUTION from superbrothers on Vimeo.