"Zero"

I found this short film today while browsing animations on youtube and I really want to tell the world about it.

First time I watched it it broke my heart, it's such a powerful story and so beautifully put together. So I had a minute, and watched it again, where I noticed a few things.

I understood the concept of numbers a little more. It seemed that the number 1's were the lowest you could get while still being respected, they swept the floors and kept their world in order in exchange for not being treated like the zeros. The number 6's were nurses, the 7's were guards and policemen, the 9's were just horrible. I also noticed that the 9's were 'wrapped' perfectly, not a string out of place and as the numbers lowered in denomination, the scrappier they looked. I wondered if this was a lesson about life an social class, are people who grow up to be doctors, nurses or just rich prats that way because they were born with that way of life already determined for them? Of course it seems that way, if you look at poor families who grow up to be the number 1's and 2's. Is this also a lesson about racism? Is the fact that the 0's are a different colour significant?

Anyway, the people who made this uploaded a lot of other interesting videos showing how they made this short, the commentary being the most interesting:

To think that this was once an idea in someone's head and now it's on my screen feels like magic. It took a team of about 43 people and two years to produce this 12 and a half minute movie. It took an additional 6 months for the team to come up with a solid idea, create a story board, and begin development ready for creating the movie. A task that I have been given about 4 weeks to achieve. It's on the second, third and fourth watch that you realise how much work went into this, how many dolls there are that were all hand made, the sets, the finest details like the newspapers and even the language they created for the characters.

The majority of this film was stop animated, but there was quite a lot of finer details that were added in 3D software, such as glittering water, the mouths on the characters, and the backgrounds used.