Tarboy

Tarboy is a short animated film made by James and Hania Lee (married). It is simply the best short film I have ever watched. Not only does it have great graphics, voice acting, score, and design, the plot was designed and implemented outstandingly well.

The story is short enough that it would take less time to watch it then to explain it, so I entreat you to just go and watch it now, but I will spend a little time talking about the setting. Tarboy is set in a world populated totally by robots; This is used mostly as a graphics device, as the robots tend to act similarly to how you would expect a human to act. The main protagonist is aptly names Tarboy, as he is made of tar and he is out to get the tyrannical leaders ("fat cats") of this mechanical world.

Currently, Tarboy 2 is in production. As far as I know no release date has been given, and only a few details have been provided.

While little can be found online about James Lee, the talented Hania Lee (pronounced "Haa-nya") has many active electronic abodes. Primarily she is a musician, and has a quite a few award winning songs on newgrounds. as well as some videos of her singing and playing piano on youtube. In addition to her selection of free songs, she has a commercially available album titled Cuddle Punch!. She also manages to do the music for a lot of projects; Most recently she worked on the audio to a nice little internet video called Ballgina Safari.

Getting down to the basics, her musical ability; I just love her music and voice. Her collection is surprisingly diverse, while quite a bit of it is romantic/love songs she also has a bunch of songs for comedic/general flash movies and even a few games; She even has one song about necrophilia, which is very creepy. Out of her magnificent library of songs, for me, one stands slightly above the others in at least memorability. This is Come Closer, a romance song with very memorable lyrics.

In addition to Tarboy, the development team has also done a few less ambitious films: Popstar, Roller Coaster Junkie, Purged, and Make Snacks not War. Popstar and RCJ are both very good satirical flash films; While Purged is more of a serious short film and MSnW is pretty much an advertisement for Doritos.