In July The New York Times’ Robert Ito and Jeremy Egner named the five young rising animators to watch. Among them—who not only have shows on major TV networks but also Oscar nominations to their credit—is CalArts’ own Minkyu Lee (Film/Video BFA 09).
Lee caught the NYT’s eye with his 15-minute film about a dog who finds himself a master in Adam, the first man, right before the Fall. Titled Adam and Dog, the film was his first animated short, and it was also Lee’s first time animating a quadruped. It earned Lee an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film this year.
Ito writes:
The pacing of the tale… is glacial compared with your typical feature — Mr. Lee cites Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard and Terrence Malick as influences — the message and story, subtle.
Mr. Lee, a 27-year-old graduate of [the] California Institute for the Arts, worked on the film for two and a half years, laboring nights and weekends when he wasn’t working at Walt Disney Animation Studios on projects like Tangled and The Princess and the Frog.
Above, we posted the Oscar-nominated film in its entirety.