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"Minushi": D.I.Y. Flash-Animated Feature Film Launches Online
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Tyler Gibb, a 31-year-old Montreal-based animator, has spent the last four years toiling away by hand on his flash-animated 2-D feature "Minushi." But rather than travel the film festival circuit or pitch the movie to conventional distributors, Gibb is drumming up buzz for the project on the web.
A dystopian sci-fi adventure, "Minushi" chronicles the adventures of Trixi, an orphan girl on the search for her long lost brother in an Orwellian near-future, complete with giant robots and a corrupt and ruthless military. Gibb has posted about half of the movie at minushi.com (the first ten of a total of 19 chapters). You can also watch the YouTube trailer here (or to the left).
Gibb says his unique strategy came as a result of his previous web efforts. After studying Design and Fine Arts at Montreal's Concordia University, he developed the animation website Boneland.com and developed two highly popular, sadistic little interactive flash animations, 1998's "The Stress Relief Aquarium" and 2000's "Alcohol and Ammo" (both of which involve torturing, by turns, a goldfish and a hick, with the click of a mouse).
"I just kind of stumbled into a comfortable place online making shorts," he says. "And when I woke up one day and found that I'd written a 100-page script, it was just a natural inclination at that point to look at it as a web project."
A devotee of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki as well as the Transformers, Gibb says "Minushi" was specifically influenced by "Godzilla," The Flaming Lips and "Tank Girl" comics. The project already got the attention of AtomFilms a few years back, and the company (now owned by MTV) even licensed the first four chapters of "Minushi." "But then they sat on them for two years and didn't launch them," says Gibb.
While Gibb sees any future offline distribution prospects as "gravy," after four years of 9-5 work on the movie, he admits "living hand to mouth is getting a little tedious, so that's why I'm trying to make a go of 'Minushi' as best I can." In the last couple weeks, Gibb says his New York based sales rep Palisades Media Corp has begun fielding offers.
Whether or not the film gets picked up, Gibb is committed to a complete online version at some point, as well as offering his years of experience as a way to assist other D.I.Y. animators: A series of making-of videos are currently available on YouTube and his own site. Someday, they might just appear as DVD extras.
