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I had never heard of this guy or his films before my sister had us marathon his two most well-known (I think) works:

[spoiler=The Secret of Kells]

The basic story is based on the creation of a very famous page in a famous illuminated manuscript whose pages survived the Viking raids. The art style and colors are obviously influenced by the style of illuminated manuscripts, and it's a really breathtaking visual experience all around:





The animation is also really beautiful and smooth and there's this really awesome sequence where this white ghost-cat kind of ghost-wisps down a dark hallway and it just lOOKS REALLY COOL. Just watch it. Trust me.

Soundtrack is also beautiful? Holy poops. So good.[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Song of the Sea]

I LOVED THIS ONE A LOT. It's about the myth of selkies, and the main characters are an adorable little babby selkie girl and her adorable little very-realistic-depiction-of-an-older-sibling brother. I'll just let the screencaps speak for themselves.





The soundtrack for this one was also super great because it was around a central tune (the song of the sea, obvi) and it's just so cohesive and nice. [/spoiler]

All of his works have the final product looking exactly like concept art? I love it so much. Each one feels like it has a very specific artistic direction and it's beautiful. They interact with myths and really make you feel like you're in a fairytale- in the slightly eerie, slightly creepy, definitely mystical, and beautifully serene sense.

They're also fairly short films, so...

ANYWAY! Highly suggest. If you have seen, please come fangirl with me because I get very emotional thinking about how these films make me FEELLLLL

I haven't seen either one yet, but I reeeeeeally want to.

I personally prefer Song of the Sea bc it's 10000% my aesthetic but I highly HIGHLY recommend both.

They're short so it's totally doable to just watch both in one sitting too B)

I bought em both as soon as they came out, and have yet to watch either one. (In my defense, there are a lot of videos on Youtube.)

Huh.

I didn't think much of these films when I saw them on Netflix. I guess it's that reflex where if I haven't heard of it before than it's crap.

Maybe I should fix that.

Song was brilliant when I watched. The only complaint I really had was that the animation was very 2-dimensionally oriented, and also it kind of gave me flashbacks to my older brother being awful even when he thought he was fair but that's not because it was bad in any way, just yeah - accurate. The story and visuals were really very interesting and very lovely to experience otherwise.

I had the thought that you in particular would like it, CL, but forgot to bring it up. Glad you found it through your own means!

If you're cool with watching older, problematic, in a kind of okay way that you would expect films - I'd suggest checking out Mr Magoo in 1001 Arabian Nights simply for the art style of which this was a little reminiscent -





Best part is when dude hits on a cactus from what I recall, it was a favorite of mine as a kid