Yesterday I came across a link to an awesome outstanding animation, I figured I share it with you all. The studio that created this little masterpiece is called The Black Heart Gang, who happen to be South African like myself, (I'm not try to write blogs purely about South Africans, it just happens that there is some cool stuff going on here and I hear about it first), the animation they created that got me drooling all over again is called The Tale of How.

It's an animation short which is part of a series, which is called The Dodo Trilogy; The Tale of How will be followed by The Tale of Then and The Tale of When. The animation was actually released in 2006 and won many, many, and I mean many awards. It's like a whole page of awards... It's kind of ridiculous... Makes you wonder how many festivals there are worldwide handing out awards... None the less the awards are deserved as it really shows some ingenious creativity and originality.

The story revolves around Otto the Monster, an octopod like creature with a tree for a hat. Otto in turn eats the poor defenseless Dodo's which inhabit the nearby island. The Dodo's become desperate as their numbers start to dwindle and send out many thousands of notes in bottles. The bottles eventually reach a little white mouse that comes to the rescue of the Dodo's by setting a trap for Otto the Monster.

Well enough talk, let's watch...

The Tale of How by The Black Heart Gang

Well to be honest I am adding this to the Kosmo's must-see-list for animators, this is quite a radical departure to the Pixar way of doing things and it works too. This animation has interesting characters, great textures, nice clean effects and an awesome poetic song to guide the story, it really blows me away. There is little more I can say, just watching the animation, you can pick out all the little details that bring this animation to life.

This knocks down the door of creativity in animation; its official animation is as much an art form as any traditional painting. So do something funky or weird or dark or happy it doesn't matter. I'll accept that this isn't necessarily the commercial norm but that's what's great it's a bit underground or independent... What you call it is up to you, I'm just going to say this is droollicious...

Kosmo