I don't particularly like this, but yeah, I assume the "amateur" commend in the description is a joke, because that's one thing it definitely isn't.

That's what I was hoping, but my "sarcasm-o-meter" didn't have enough data for a proper reading.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion I guess...a few of my animator friends were pretty darned impressed.

From a technical animation standpoint, it's very good.

But it's creatively bankrupt -- yet another in the long string of bland crap that boils forth from the eternal carbuncle of Joseph Campbell and all the Universal Story people who've been lapping at his pearly wisdom.

From a technical standpoint, the visual effects of TRANSFORMERS is very impressive too.

It's a student work and a collab between BYU's animation instructor and dance choreographer:

http://news.byu.edu/archive10-dec-danceanimation.aspx

I'm not sure how you make the leap to this all being from Campbell's works, but if it suits your mood, go nuts.

The visual effects of Transformers were works-for-hire, directed by a man who substitutes explosions for plot and gets very rich doing it. I don't think it's even remotely comparable.

I don't get where you start getting Campbell in here. Maybe it's fun to sound like a blowhard.

It's a nice piece of work by just about any standard. I'm going to guess you've never actually drawn anything in your whole life. Give it a try sometime.

Take a look at what you can do after a year of practice (5 days a week for at least 6 hours a day). Then compare it to this or to the portfolio of some no name who worked on Transformers.

Then cry.

I met and talked Ryan Woodward about this piece at an animation convention. The guy is really passionate about interpretive dance - even when just talking about the creation of this short he was really fired up. This is a personal film for him, and he was really concerned with the emotions expressed, I think. You're seeing a piece of his heart and soul here.

To dismissively call it 'creatively bankrupt' shows an impressive amount of ignorance of what goes into something like this film.

I am one of those no name visual effects work for hire artists. This piece is wonderful, an nothing like Transformers.

Okay, I was being overly harsh. I should have rated it three stars because it really and truly is technically beautiful. My distaste for the subject matter has no bearing on that. I apologize for pooping in your cornflakes, GMol, fora like this make it easy to forget that people are genuinely passionate about their interests.

Not trying to change anyone's mind, but the reason I drag Campbell into this is because I read the animation as springing from the 'universal stories' school of narrative which sprung up as a cottage industry in the '70's. It's been relentlessly taught to animation students as 'simplify!' and as a professional writer who enjoys complexity and depth I abhor it. I truly do not come at this as an ignorant outsider. I can't stay anonymous here and prove I'm not talking out my ass about it, so believe me or not. But I'm lathered up about it because I'm passionate about animation and storytelling.