“Alight” by Jason Keyser

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Effects animator Jason Keyser created this film at Brigham Young University “in about 2 semester’s worth of work, spread out over 3 years”.

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  • http://www.jjsedelmaier.com J.J. Sedelmaier

    Brigham Young U has an impressive animation program. I was fortunate enough to judge the student sequential submissions for the Society of Illustrators this past year and BYU had an impressive film there as well. The support afforded the students there (as evidenced by the credit list) is unlike most other schools. . .

  • TStevens

    It is an attractive film with nice animation. Very well produced. I have to admit that the story lost me though.

    To be a student today must be pretty cool. There is so much technology to take advantage of that wasn’t around ten or fifteen years ago. It use to be rare that students even had a chance to go to paint. If you look back at most student films from the eighties, few if any had cleaned up animation that was fully inbetweened. Now you see films that are on a par with anything done in the professional world.

    Programs like the one at BYU give me a lot of hope for the future of the industry here in the states.

  • cbat628

    I’ve always enjoyed looking at effects animation, even just as stills. This was very impressive.

  • Keith

    To be a student today must be cool, with all the tech bells and whistles. But then comes graduation and you join the tsunami of fresh graduates from every college and university on earth that has an animation program, which is now most of them. It has become an efficient machine to feed tuition-hungry schools but there aren’t enough jobs on earth to accommodate all the annual grads. Something has to give. Has anyone in a position of power devoted any real thought about that, other than keeping their head down?

    • Paul N

      This certainly isn’t unique to animation majors. They probably stand a better chance at employment than those that choose to study philosophy or European literature, and those majors (among many others) have been offered for far longer.

      As with any major, your chances of employment upon graduation hinge on the quality of your work, the depth of your education, and the general job market. As for the latter, there are more animation-related jobs now than at any point in history, provided you’re not aiming only for feature studios or TV.

  • Mike

    Really really loved the animation, but the story could have used a little work.

  • http://www.mrseanlane.com Sean Lane

    That story was really contrived and the human was kind of ugly and weird, but the animation was really well done and the color choices were well made.

    I think it would have made more sense or would have more of an impact if it were longer, but I know that’s asking a lot of an animator to do a long project all by themselves.

  • Aaron

    looks like an homage to michel gagne

    • The Gee

      Yeah. To one film in particular.

      It was nice to look at. I don’t think the story matters all that much though, oddly enough. It should, given the cause and effect theme but I guess I’m grateful it didn’t end note-for-note like I thought it would since it is obviously an homage.

      Now if it had ended with a car chase scene and characters grimacing….I’d be less forgiving. Unless it was a car chase scene and they were chasing down Grimace. That would be…oh well. It is a nice piece.

  • Prelude to Alight?

    Looks *verrrrry* influenced by Michele Gagne…. A bit too much perhaps.

  • Eric Paulsen

    Very nice but I have to ask – is this the new creationist theory seeking to supplant evolution?