From traditional 2D craft to mixed media extravaganzas, there was an animation style for everyone at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Whether created in a cramped apartment by a singular passionate artist or done in collaboration with an artistically driven group of animators between commercial projects at a studio, the films displayed at the Animation Spotlight, truly shine as the brightest and best stars in the art form.

Winner of the Sundance Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking, The Wraith of Cobble Hill took director Adam Parrish King (left) six years to complete. © Adam Parrish King.

The Wraith of Cobble Hill (USA, 2005, 15 min. B/W, Sony HD Cam) Director: Adam Parrish King

Winner of the Sundance Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking, this heartfelt Brooklyn fable tells the coming-of-age-tale of Felix, a disaffected teen, left to fend for himself by his deadbeat mom. Felix habitually pilfers candy bars, comic books and TV dinners from the corner deli, right under the noses of the shopkeeper, Mr. H, and his beloved dog, Mitzie. At night, when the widowed shopkeeper returns home, the lonely young man can hear Mr. H’s sobs and the nostalgic Polish ballads he plays on an old 78 in the apartment above the boy’s room. When Mr. H asks Felix to watch the store and care for Mitzie while he is on holiday, the boy must decide between acting with uncharacteristic honesty or betraying the trust the kindly shopkeeper has bestowed upon him.

Director Adam Parrish King converted the only bedroom of a small apartment into an animation studio while he and his wife slept in sleeping bags on the floor. Started while he was a student at University of Southern California, the production became an all-consuming passion, eventually taking six years to complete. King painstakingly crafted this haunting, visually stunning film from scratch, meticulously re-creating the brick exteriors, fire escapes, cramped interiors and sorrowful characters of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn where he had lived for a number of years. The detailed process included constructing costumes and hundreds of props including the original comic books, liquor bottles and branded TV dinners that line the store’s shelves.

King created the film using stop-motion animation. Monique Zavistovski produced and co-edited. Steven Gutheinz composed the original music, a Polish ballad reminiscent of Edith Piaf, which was sung by Magdalena Bircynska. To King, the choice to use animation was “a more subjective approach to story” than telling the tale with live-action. It was like choosing between having a portrait painted and taking a photograph.

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello is an award-winning, Oscar-nominated animated short created entirely in silhouette using a unique style of animation that director Anthony Lucas has dubbed, “Shadowlands.”

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (Australia, 2005, 27 min., color, 35mm) Director: Anthony Lucas

In a story that pays tribute to the gothic traditions of Edgar Allan Poe, Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator, journeys on a desperate voyage, attempting to redeem himself by finding the cure for a deadly plague that is decimating his world. Set in a fantasy future, where magnificent airships are fashioned like iron dirigibles and computers are steam-powered, Jasper travels into the unknown through vast un-chartered skies filled with horrors. It is a very personal race against time, because his beloved has become infected with the fatal disease. In the shocking climax, Jasper discovers the greatest horror of all.

The nearly half-hour, award-winning, animated film was created entirely in silhouette using a unique style of animation that director Anthony Lucas has dubbed, “Shadowlands — a silhouette world of gothic horror, of spindly figures dwarfed by bleak landscapes and Jules Verne machines.” The characters were computer animated over photographic collaged backgrounds.

The film was written by three-time Awgie Award-winning writer, Mark Shirrefs, exec produced by Susie Campbell and co-produced by Julia Lucas and Anthony Lucas.