9

A rag doll fights a monster that has been stealing the souls of his people.

I saw this on you tube. Having a running time for about 10 minutes, I decided to watch this film and you know what? It was actually a fantastic and brilliant kind of "short" film. The animation is fantastic and original-looking and what I love about this film is that it's not afraid to be a dark animated film. There are some moments in here where it might be truly frightening for a child.

More on animation: It looked fresh, original, and gritty. I loved it! Another great thing is that this film has NO (ZERO) - NADA - dialog but yet it still pulls off for great character development through the actions of the characters! This is just an animated film with a simple plot done in an extraordinary way. The look is fantastic and I'm sure Shane Acker will be a great animator when he makes more of these types of films. So if you have ten minutes to kill, go to you tube right now and search up "9".

9 is a visually creative short animation by Shane Acker. It was nominated for a best animated short Oscar and later Acker got funding to release a feature length version.

There is no dialogue so the story is hard to fathom. There are two ragdoll type creatures. One of them is designated the 9th one left alone when the other one perishes and loses its soul to a mechanical type monster.

9 has to find a way to defeat the monster and ends up releasing the souls devoured by this monster.

The short animation has a post apocalyptic Gothic steampunk style, it is very well lit and clearly a labour of love.

This is a really fun animation, mostly because it's just so simple of a story very detailed in animation and visually exciting. I mean, for all the complicated methods of the computer animation with great lighting effects and detailed skins and movements of the characters and their effects on the environments, it's a very easy man-vs-monster story that can appeal to everyone.

A ragdoll named 9, or marked 9, or the ninth ragdoll or something to that effect is tragically left alone after its partner 4 sacrifices itself to a monster that steals its soul. 9 devises a way to defeat the monster so that it will no longer torment it, and in the process discovers a way to provide closure to the souls' entrapment (the souls of 1 through 8). This is presented through actiony fantasy pretty much existing as never-before-seen.

It's very enjoyable and visually amazing. The monster seems almost perfect for the environment they come from, and the characters are very well emotionally presented considering their darned faces. The plot contains no real desire to be stretched into feature length or accepted as important, just presents six minutes of about as much fun as six minutes can give.

--PolarisDiB

A pretty effective short.

Without a single spoken dialogue, it manages to tell a very engaging story, mostly thanks to its haunting atmosphere and endearing main characters.

The feature length version was good too, and showed once again the great potential of Shane Acker as animator.

I hope to see another animated film directed by him sometime in the future.

I was planning on watching the movie 9 recently until someone pointed out it was an expanded version of a short film that I'd not seen, which made me want to watch the short film in the extras and then leave it a while before watching the more recent version. I probably made the right call on that since the original was made on a much more limited budget to say the least and is much simpler and smaller – so seeing it after a full version may have worked against it. Anyway, what I found was a short film that does what a short film is meant to do – engage and deliver quickly.

The plot is not really explained – or at least the background to the world and characters anyways. Instead we are thrown into the middle of it as one ragdoll character has its soul captured by some sort of mechanical creature; this leaves doll #9 to either survive it, kill it or die trying. The short is as simple as that and, in the absence of detail and plot to engage, it is all about atmosphere and feeling. These are almost harder than the visual aspect to create but Acker gets it right, producing a very dark feeling film that engages because of its Gothic feel and dark air. Visually the film works very well even if the limited resources do show. The animation is smooth, the creatures have character and presences with only the slightest touch and the wider world is interesting.

Overall this was an enjoyable and dark short film that worked off atmosphere and visual creativity. I will be interested to see if an expansion and additions of characters, voices etc make it a better experience or if it dilutes the simple short too much across a longer running time.