Four U. S. film festivals recently selected Bippy the Little Robot for animation awards and awards of excellence, citing its “exceptional artistic and technical achievements.” Bippy is the newest animated short film created by Glenna Burmer.
Judges at the Hollywood Gold Awards and Phoenix Shorts selected Bippy as the winner in the Best Animated Short Film category. Both festivals showcase up-and-coming filmmakers, drawing entries from around the globe.
At the Depth of Field International Film Festival, based in Rehoboth Beach, Del., Bippy was selected for a coveted Award of Excellence. According to festival organizers, “Awards of Excellence are granted to entries with truly exceptional artistic and technical achievements.”
Bippy was also selected for an award of Award of Excellence at the biannual Global Shorts festival in Los Angeles where select films are screened monthly at The Hudson Theatres, seen above. More than a dozen national and international film festivals have recognized the film’s merits in the past few months.
The story of Bippy takes place in the future after humans are annihilated; all that remains are broken and forgotten machines. But the bleak landscape does not deter Bippy, a perky little trashcan, who sets out with his android-cat sidekick on a journey to find other machines.
In an abandoned music studio, the little robot discovers a broken-down piano where he improvises a jazz piece that awakens a pink toaster named Anna. In a swirling dance sequence using innovative motion capture, Anna and Bippy perform a dreamy pas de deux that personifies the beauty and resilience of the human spirit. As music fills the air, the future, once dismal, grows a little brighter.
Bippy is the second animated film produced by Glenna Burmer in collaboration with Deep Sky & Imaginary Planet. Unlike most films where the music is composed after filming ends, Burmer’s music drives the story. In her creative process, she envisions the storyline, composes the music to relay that narrative, and creates its distinctive characters, then brings in an animation studio to visually translate the music’s style and atmosphere.
Deep Sky’s design/post-production work and Imaginary Planet’s 2D and 3D animation perfectly capture the story’s bleak post-apocalyptic world. The innovative motion graphics used in the dance sequence between Anna and Bippy, along with additional 2D and 3D animation, result in a digital montage that is unique in its scope and originality.
The team’s first joint project, Nana korobi, Ya oki, completed in spring 2021, won more than 50 festival awards worldwide. Among top honors were awards from several prominent Pacific Northwest festivals, including the Seattle Film Festival and the Oregon Short Film Festival, as well as awards from India to Istanbul, Spain to Singapore. It remains a favorite on the film festival circuit: In November 2024, Nana korobi won Best Animation at the Alpine International Festival in Bern, Switzerland, where it was shown at the request of festival producers.