Eye candy: Franssiss
Franssiss is a small bear with a speech impediment. He is being interviewed by a nice man about the time that he and his friend Rabbit came upon a magic frog in the woods who offered to grant them three wishes. The story starts out charming, then quickly becomes distressing.
Animated in Blender 2.61 and composited in After Effects, Franssiss actually came out a couple of months ago, but I didn’t manage to cover it at the time, and I’m on holiday this week, and… well, you can guess the rest.
Sadly, some time during February, the original English-subtitled version disappeared off Vimeo, so if you don’t speak French, you’re going to have to rely on the beautiful, rather Creature Comforts-esque animation and the plot spoilers in this thread on BlenderNation.
If that isn’t enough to convince you of why Franssiss is so weirdly compelling, his creator, Matray, is also responsible for the animated series Babioles, which blends ‘cute’ and ‘disturbing’ to similarly disarming effect.
Babioles being wordless, travels more naturally across borders – and better still, can be seen on YouTube.
We’d like to think that all of the terrible things that happen to the rabbit here balance out what the rabbit does to Franssiss in some karmic sense – but the truth is, they’re probably just put there for our twisted amusement.