Margarita is a beautifully designed, drawn and realized animated short (about 12 minutes long) from Hampa Studio.
Another example of small independent studios doing high level work, this award winning story follows the adventures of a young princess (lived in the imagination of our actual protagonist, a young girl being read the story by her mother), who sets out to find an evening star that has captured her fancy.
The film is based on a poem by Rubén Dario, and the adaptation works to evoke the poetic images wordlessly, with only sound effects and music to accompany the images.
The animators chose to take the approach of traditional hand-drawn animation, with wonderful backgrounds, delightful character design and fluid, elegant animated motion.
There is a Making Of feature that is actually a bit longer than the film itself, in which the creators discuss the conception of the project as well as their process in bringing it to fruition.
There is also a trailer that was released prior to the final film. In addition to the page on the Hampa Studio site, there is a site for Margarita, that has an English version, as well as a blog.
[Via Animation Blog]
