The Cute, it burns! In animated form! Andy Runton’s Eisner Award-winning Owly character has gotten the 3-D animation treatment in a cartoon short set to debut at this month’s San Diego Comic-Con International.
Image: Top Shelf Productions
I found Owly in early 2008, when I was looking for suitable graphic novels to share with my then-10-year-old daughter. We were immediately hooked.
Yes, there’s definitely a massive adorability factor, from the main character’s wide, expressive eyes to the body language of his little pal Wormy, but much, much more is at work here. Runton’s wordless storytelling style – dialogue and thoughts are expressed as icons and images – is engaging and heartbreaking and hilarious and genius all at once.
Runton storyboarded the new cartoon project for Sprite Animation Studios, and the resulting short feature will be shown at Owly publisher Top Shelf Productions Comic-Con booth (The cartoon’s director, Sprite CEO Moto Sakakibara, co-directed Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within).
After taking a look at the still images teasing the cartoon at Sprite’s web site, I hope it’s not long before the short is available online. In the meantime, looks like it’s time for my daughter and I to hit the library catch up on a couple Owly adventures.
