Nova Seed

The animation, design, visual styling and storytelling are all great here. The music is serviceable but rarely matches the highs and lows of the narrative, coming off ineffective and monotonous. But what crushes this obvious labor of love by a talented team of creators is the unforgivablely terrible voice recording and foley work. You can't sell this world without believable audio. Send it back for a rescore and professional audio, and you have something. Don't ask an audience to buy or believe in a film with what amounts to a rough temp track. It's not charming. It's just half a film.

'Nova Seed.' Er, where do I begin? It's a film? Or is it? Perhaps it's more like an 'experience.' Who would like it? Who knows? I'm not even sure if I did! The closest I can liken it to is either an experimental music video from the seventies, the cult BBC adult cartoon 'Monkey Dust,' or a bad acid trip. I've watched a few David Lynch films in my time and people often say that his work is 80% feeling and 20% story. I think that's a fair statement for 'Nova Seed,' too.

It's a cartoon set in a weird, slightly futuristic version of Earth and the plot revolves – loosely – around a giant lion-man who's our only hope against an insane super-villain known only as 'Mind Skull.' I guess that's all I can really say as the story sort of bounces from one action-packed animated scene after the next. There's very little dialogue apart from various reporters and newscasters doing their best to inform you a little more about what's happening. However, a lot of what you see is kind of up to you to interpret.

So there's not really that much story to speak of. Does that make it bad? No. Although I may not watch it again for quite some time I'm glad I invested an hour of my time into it (yes, it's slightly shorter than your average film). Simply put, it has one hell of an interesting look and feel. And that's pretty much its major selling point.

It's one of those films where, if that's enough for you then you'll love it. It's hard to say what sort of audience it's trying to reach. It's part sci-fi, part animation, part music video, little story. I suppose if you're a certain age from a certain generation where there was no such thing as computer animation and everything was hand-drawn (which I am!) then you'll always have a nostalgic appreciation from cartoons which took their animators hours to slave over (as opposed to create in a Pixar studio!).

It's not the greatest film ever made, but that's simply because it's not really a film as you'd imagine. It doesn't conform to the 'classic Hollywood narrative' model that we're so used to. It's just great to watch as it's colourful and very different (unless of course you've seen that episode of 'South Park' where they hallucinate a weird, cartoon sci-fi world – then you've seen something similar!).

Got to see a still a progress version of this last night at the What The Film Festival (everything is complete but the sound design). Hand drawn over the course of 4 years by one solitary man, Nova Seed is an impressive feat of human determination. I went in only having seen a few short clips and one of DiLiberto's shorts, I kind of felt like I was already going to love this movie, when someone puts that much time an effort into something it's always worthwhile to at least give it a watch. I think I spent about 95% of this film with my mouth hanging open. The animation felt somewhere between "Heavy Metal" and "My Neighbours the Yamadas", every frame undulating hypnotically. You can feel influences from both DiLiberto's time in North America as well as his time abroad in Japan. The combination of the animation and thumping music are so engrossing I completely forgot that I was super exhausted from just working a 12 hour shift. I don't think there was a single thing about this film I didn't enjoy, my only complaint is that it wasn't nearly long enough!

Watching it was not just a bit like a dream. Artistically a bit surreal (mostly thanks to the old fashioned hand made animation) story about all the important things in this genre. There's not too much too say and analyze in this one, mostly because of it's free artistic approach. Everybody can find a piece of their own in it. Put in shortly and rudimentary, as usually it's about struggle in between good and evil. I really loved this poetic, dreamy landscapes and characters. As this type of retro-animation give it this special artistic glitter, as I said in the beginning. Especially for those of us who remember the old days of "Heavy Metal" or such. Anybody who loves the genre of (animated) fantasy should see it, especially because though it looks slow, it's actually concise and is put in quite small time frame of about an hour.

This film isn't about the story. As another reviewer said, this film is all about creating a feeling, an atmosphere. Often feeling like a 1980s Saturday morning fever dream, Nova Seed doesn't really waste time on plot exposition or give you much context about the world it's set in, but instead thrusts you straight into it and allows you to draw your own conclusions. The film is littered with trope-y sci-fi elements, like a crazed mad scientist building a perfect life form, giant bio-mech warriors, hybrid creatures, and impractical spaceship designs. This is great in my book. The animation is delightfully wonky and really feels like the labour of love that it is. Highly recommended, but don't expect a groundbreaking, original story.