"Dragonboy"

I found this great little short-film I would like to share with you:

The plot is simple: A knight. A princess. A dragon.



In my opinion this was a great little story. It's the classic tale of two guys fighting over a girl, but the setting in this one is very clever and interesting.
It's a school-play, the characters are young kids acting in a play. But their real emotions are getting in the way of their performance. The boy playing the knight (who would originally been the hero in the classic tale of knight vs. dragon) is the antagonist and the boy playing the dragon is the hero (protagonist), the one we emphasise with and the one we eventually want to see win the girl.
He is the shy, unpopular boy, but with the big heart and true feelings for the girl playing the princess. We emphasise with him because most of us recognize the feeling of being overshadowed by the more popular kid.

I thought this film was well made, the animation isn't amazing but it's still quite good.
I also like the character designs, very stylistic with the sharp edges in the face like the nose and areas around the eyes. This brings out the eyes, which are big and make the characters more appealing.
I like that they left out dialogue, the story is clear and communicates well so we easily understand it without any more explanation.
I was not overwhelmed by the sound effects and soundtrack, didn't feel as well produced as the rest so that was a bit disappointing. (Might of course be youtube's "fault", but I don't know for sure).

All in all I thought it was a really well made film with a very entertaining and touching story.

The film was made by Bernardo Warman and Shaofu Zhang, from Academy of Art University, California
and it won a gold medal at the 38th Student Academy Awards. (2011)