The Fly

From the 3D World showreel: in this excellent animated student short inspired by Asian philosophy, a samurai seeks inner peace. But as he tries to rid himself of distractions, he discovers that they seem to be coming at him harder and faster…

The smallest things can wreck your concentration. Take the humble housefly, for example. He buzzes and flits and makes a general pest of himself. In his animated short, The Fly, animator Hanjin Song has seen it fit to introduce such an irritant into the placid world of Musa, a meditating samurai. But this swordsman is no ordinary housefly victim; he uses a samurai sword for a flyswatter.

VITAL STATISTICS
Running time: 02:44
Budget: $1,000
Funding sources: Self-funded
Time taken: 8 months
Software used: Maya 7, RenderMan, Shake, Premiere, Photoshop
Hardware used: HP workstations
Public screenings: Animation Theater, Siggraph 2006, USA

SYNOPSIS
As a samurai tries to meditate, he is continually being bugged by distracting things

LOOK OUT FOR
00:16 The antagonist arrives
00:32 Stop bugging me!
00:40 Cut down in mid flight
00:46 The fly regenerates
01:15 Creating more problems for himself
01:38 Getting the picture
02:02 An exercise in visualisation
02:31 It is what it is

SEE ALSO
Aeon Flux (1995) Peter Chung
Samurai Jack (2001-4) Genndy Tartakovsky

Click here to download (~16MB, DivX required)