Jurors from the Milan Gold Awards International Film Festival called Bippy the Little Robot “a small visual masterpiece where the power of music reanimates objects and rekindles the desire to return to life.”
Bippy is the second animated film produced by Glenna Burmer in collaboration with Deep Sky & Imaginary Planet. At the Milan festival in January 2025, the film won a Best Animated Short award.
Besides calling the animated short a visual masterpiece, the four-person Italian jury, composed of writers, actors and directors, noted in their comments that the film’s “animation, the cinematography and the editing are just perfect; the visual effects bring us into this lonely yet fascinating atmosphere where everything can happen.”
The story of Bippy takes place in the future after humans are annihilated; all that remains are broken and forgotten machines. The bleak landscape does not faze Bippy, a perky little trashcan, who sets out with his android-cat sidekick on a journey to find if other machines still exist.
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.
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 distinctive characters, then brings in an animation studio to visually translate the music’s style and atmosphere.
Watch the Bippy trailer here.
Read the full review of Bippy here.
More about the production team
A classical composer and award-winning concert and animated-film producer in Seattle, Burmer’s music and original voice create compelling stories that resonate with audiences worldwide. Her first animated film Nana korobi, Ya oki received the 2021 Seattle Filmmaker Award and was selected to tour Great Britain in 2022.
Deep Sky, based in Portland, Oregon, is a design, post-production and live-action studio known for its groundbreaking work in 2D and 3D animation, motion graphics, product visualization and visual effects. Collaborating with fellow Portland-based studio Imaginary Planet, which specializes in character-centric 2D and 3D animation and development, the team brings remarkable versatility in style and genre to their projects.