The Original Short Film

http://vimeo.com/8070532

The short film took four and a half years, on and off, to create. Originally, Shane Acker wanted to make it as stop motion, but then went for CGI when realizing it would have turned out too expensive. He used Maya 1.5–5.5 for 3D modeling, Photoshop for the textures, After Effects for compositing, and Premiere for editing. There are homages to Acker's influences like Brothers Quay and Pixar placed throughout. Most of it was rendered at 720x540 pixels on a three-computer dual-processor render farm. Tim Burton saw the film and was so impressed by its artistic vision that he went on to produce a feature-length adaptation using the same title, directed by Acker and distributed by Focus Features.