Takahiro Miyauchi and Takuya Okada’s Tokyo Cosmo is currently in the running for the Audience Choice Award in the 2015 DigiCon6 awards, and it’s easy to see why. Clocking in at under five minutes, this animated short paints a striking portrait of the mundane, lonely life of a young woman in her Tokyo apartment. Exhausted and crammed into a tight urban living space, she is kept company by an assortment of appliances interlocked like Tetris blocks.
The film suddenly shifts gears as the woman begins to daydream a fantasy world based on her surroundings. Toy pigs take flight, cockroaches become rampaging kaiju, and rolled up magazines become lightsabers. While Mashable is comparing the movie’s quality favorably to Pixar, the Tokyo Cosmo has its own distinct voice. For instance, the apartment scene comes to life with ambient humming, with each shot generating its own distinct volume and pitch, based on relative proximity to appliance motors. Meanwhile clever editing deftly conveys how the woman resolves her conflicted feelings over squashing her insect house guest.
All of the impressive Audience entries can be found at the DigiCon6 site.