Billed as a children’s film, Jiahang Li‘s 9-minute animation implements a simple approach regarding the protagonist of the short, a bird, but gets more intricate as time passes.
Rare Stone is distributed by Dogme23.
A little bird whose beak is essentially a long straight line, tries to pull up a little stone underneath a boulder, only to cause a landslide, which essentially allows it to movie forward in the rocky beach it finds itslef in. Roaring thunders are heard, and the bird starts experiencing various new things, as it continues to chase the initial stone, but also the light of the sky.
The bird’s drawing is quite simple here, just a few lines, but the same does not apply to the environment it inhabits, which starts as simple, but becomes more and more intricate as the short unfolds. At the same time, that the bird is growing bigger and more bulky, could be perceived as a comment on how people grow through their experiences, and by “exploring” the world around them.
As soon as color is introduced in the short, the images become quite impressive, with the speed of the animation and the morphing working particularly well and the flow of the movement emerging as the biggest trait here. Furthermore, the growth of the bird is quite appealing to watch, wiith Jiahang Li even implementing it in humorous fashion. Lastly, that the settings seems to be first painted and then animated definitely works in favour of the visuals here.
Although quite brief, the artistry in “Rare Stone” is rather evident, with Jiahang Li and his crew definitely being a group worth following in the future.
