GREAT TV ANIMATION: MINUSCULE

I wrote about the charming pilot for the TV series MINUSCULE back in September. MINUSCULE is a new CG series from France created by Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo at Futurikon. The show is comprised of seventy-eight shorts chronicling various (mis)adventures in the insect kingdom. When I wrote about the first short, I said, “If the rest of the episodes hold up to the quality of this pilot, I think we’re in for something special.”

Well, two more of the shorts have been posted onto YouTube and I’m happy to report that they’re absolutely wonderful. The visual mixture of live-action backgrounds, semi-realistic characters and cartoony animation works flawlessly, and the storytelling and pacing of these shorts are things of beauty. In the “Catapult” short, the grasshopper’s snickering laugh seems like a tribute to Tex Avery’s bulldog character, which is only appropriate since these shorts remind me of Golden Age theatrical shorts more than anything else I’ve seen recently. The show is currently airing on the Disney Channel in the US, and if I read the schedule correctly, new shorts air Sunday nights at 7:55pm. The show’s official website is Minuscule.tv.

(Thanks, Graham Finch)