Rabbit and Deer (2013) - 2D and Stopmotion meet and it's beautiful

In 2013 hungarian director Péter Vácz (1988) released a short called Rabbit and Deer. It tells the story of the friendship between the two animals, which is menaced by a terrible discovery: the existence of the third dimension. 

Deer studies geometry and math books.

It starts out as a regular 2D cartoon, with a very graphic style. But after Deer finds out something incredible, reality changes and the movie introduces the stopmotion technique. And it's incredible how the animation technique is absolutely fundamental to the narrative of the movie.The movie goes on exploring the interaction between these two worlds.

The discovery of the third dimension.

The animation begins to merge 2D with stopmotion. The 2D character is animated on a piece of paper that needs to be animated in stop motion. It makes me think of how it would be for us to discover the 5th dimension. How would we perceive? How traumatic could it be? We would see time as we perceive lenght, we could move in the future and in the past at our will. Well, if a short animation makes us think about stuff like that, I call it a success.

2D and stopmotion merge

On the official movie website you can find some stills from the movie and some pictures that document the process and the making of.The short movie was Péter Vácz's graduation project, together with Streamschool. His works became world renowned and earned him about 120 awards worlwide. Thanks to his art he travelled all over the world and now lives in Berlin. His movies are extremely creative when it comes to both animation techniques and narrative. It feels like a successful try to bring innovation to animation. 

Here is the link to the director's personal website where you can find his works, his BIO and some more information about him.
And here instead is the full movie Rabbit and Deer. Enjoy!