Nova Seed

One minute into watching this movie my patience was being tested. Ten minutes in, I was hooked.

This is a brilliant film. There's nothing profound about its plot (although I love the way they introduce the protagonist) but Nova Seed's animation, direction, and style (style being the key words here) is like a cross between Mad Max: FR and the best of the 80's thrown into a blender: it's wonderful.

From what I can see, Nova Seed looks like it was developed primarily by two men with the same last name-- I'll hazard that they're brothers. I'm impressed by this labour, it's inspiring.

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!

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.

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.

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.