I caught this little short film at the tail end of something else on late night channel 4. The 8 bit design of the main character and the slightly comic-tragic air to the film caught me immediately as something I would like and indeed it mostly was. The little blocky animated character makes his way through the modern streets, disturbed by various signs that indicate his days are numbered. When he stumbles upon a van filled with old computers, he finds himself taken to a wrecking shop and targeted – however what lies beyond is more than just this.
The story intrigued me but unfortunately with the plot summary above, I've pretty much given you everything because the end is open and really doesn't deliver anything to fulfil the sense of interest or rapid emotional investment i had with the character. Perhaps it is meant to be clever in its own way but the "ending" just didn't work for me and left me feeling unsatisfied when up till that point it had done a great job of drawing me in. The mix of real world and character animation is very effective and the design of J03 is cool – keeping personality while also still being a blocky creation. As I said it did have a tone to it that I found engaging.
It is a shame then that it doesn't come off at the end because it did let me down on the promise it had so quickly offered. Animation, tone and idea is cool but the ending (such as it is) really doesn't come over as clever as the writers thought it would be.
The story intrigued me but unfortunately with the plot summary above, I've pretty much given you everything because the end is open and really doesn't deliver anything to fulfil the sense of interest or rapid emotional investment i had with the character. Perhaps it is meant to be clever in its own way but the "ending" just didn't work for me and left me feeling unsatisfied when up till that point it had done a great job of drawing me in. The mix of real world and character animation is very effective and the design of J03 is cool – keeping personality while also still being a blocky creation. As I said it did have a tone to it that I found engaging.
It is a shame then that it doesn't come off at the end because it did let me down on the promise it had so quickly offered. Animation, tone and idea is cool but the ending (such as it is) really doesn't come over as clever as the writers thought it would be.