“Lake Beast” is a short film funded in part by an early Kickstarter project by Vance Reeser, and it’s one I’m proud to say I contributed to. (By “early,” I mean the pre-2011/2012 explosion where people started making millions of dollars. It was up around the same time that my Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show project was up, in late 2009.)
At long last, the short has been completed. It’s a dream-like short about childhood vision that “compels a man to explore the bottom of a toxic lake,” and I highly recommend investing the seven(-ish) minutes of your life to watch it. It’s also up on Vimeo and you can purchase it (for however much you’re willing to give) via Gumroad, as well. Or, just watch it here:
Epipheo spoke with Daniel H. Wilson — Robotics PhD and author of Robopocalypse — to find out how to survive the inevitable robopocalypse, and the result was a very funny animated short.
As a huge fan of the 2009 blaxploitation parody Black Dynamite, I’ve been looking forward to the upcoming animated series, coming soon to Adult Swim. AS has kindly posted the unaired pilot to the series, which will
Titmouse, Inc., produced the 11-minute pilot below, which features much of the original film’s voice cast, including Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, Kym Whitley and Tommy Davidson. The animated series is aiming for a Spring 2012 premiere.
KÅji Morimoto is one of my favorite animators whom I’ve never seen a feature by. That’s partly because the only feature he’s done to date is the 1991 Fly! Peek the Whale (an out-and-out kid flick, that I’ve never even seen a copy of), but he’s better known for his animated shorts, anyway.
His most seen short in the US, at least, is undoubtedly “Beyond” from the Animatrix anthology, which was one of that very strong collection’s best. He collaborated with Katsuhiro Otomo for the brilliant “The Order to Stop Construction” in Manie Manie anthology (also known as Neo Tokyo). He did Franken’s Gears from Robot Carnival. He’s also done an OVA series called Eternal Family and — most recently — a short called “Dimension Bomb” for the Genius Party Beyond anthology, neither of which I’ve seen. (A lot of this stuff is pretty hard to find!)
Morimoto has also directed a bunchof J-popmusic videos, some of which are gorgeous. His stories have been hit and miss (in the films I’ve seen), but the skill of the animation always impresses me. It’s fascinating work, and it’s all begging to be collected onto one “The Work of KÅji Morimoto”-type set one day.
The reason for this post, though, is a 15-minute short he did back in 1997. Be warned: it’s weird. SFW weird, but weeeeiiiird. (And don’t worry; it’s not all filled with visual noise like the first few minutes. That’s intentional. The video gets perfectly clear after a couple of minutes.
Morimoto is supposedly at work on a feature called Sachiko, but I haven’t heard anything about that in years.
