The Animatrix

I got woken up this morning at 9am (thankfully, only half an hour before my alarm usually starts blaring) by the door buzzer. “Package for ya.” Rock on. Hauled myself out of bed, tossed on clothes, and stumbled downstairs.

End result — thanks to Amazon, I’ve got my copy of The Animatrix one day before its official street date. As long as I was awake, and didn’t have to actually wander out to my bus stop until around noon, I popped in the disc.

Very, very cool.

The Animatrix (just in case you didn’t catch my earlier posts) is a collection of nine animated short subjects expanding the universe portrayed in the Matrix films.

My favorite two episodes are Final Flight of the Osiris (incredible near photorealistic animation from the team behind Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and the sexiest sword fight I’ve ever seen) and Beyond (nice animation, and a quietly magical story).

Back in October, I mentioned an upcoming DVD release called ‘Animatrix’ — a series of short animated films set in the universe of The Matrix. It turns out that of the nine shorts that will be on the disc, four are going to be released to the web, and the first has just been posted.

Very interesting stuff, as it turns out. Well animated, and at least in this epsisode, fleshing out the back-story of the universe, taking a look at the creation of the machines and beginnings of their rise to power. In fact, I think that one of the sequences in the short — a robot on trial for the murder of it’s owner — reminded me of one of Asimov’s robot stories, though I can’t bring to mind exactly which one. Or I could be remembering something else, which is entirely possible. In any case, I’ll definitely be picking up the DVD when it finally hits the streets.

(Via /.)

What is the Animatrix?

Well, okay, so my first answer would probably involve something along the lines of Betty Page making a cameo in a Roger Rabbit cartoon. But that’d be wrong.

It’s actually the title of a DVD coming out sometime in 2003, where (as far as I can tell from the trailer) nine stories set in the universe of The Matrix will be told using various styles of animation. Sounds cool, and quite a few of the shots in the trailer are little short of mindblowing. Certainly seems to be worth keeping an eye out for, in any case.