This marvelous student film is as polished as a feature cartoon

Iker Maidagan and Dana Terrace created Mirage as their School of Visual Arts thesis film, but it could easily be mistaken for a studio-produced short. A young Inuit boy and his dog go fishing and stumble on an unexpected bit of magic.

Maidagan came up with the concept for Mirage and created the layouts, and Terrace designed and animated the actual characters. The film itself is a delight, filled with expressive characters and a magical event whose rules are explained without words. It's a true accomplishment in its length and quality, and hopefully we'll be seeing much, much more from these two in the future.

[via Cartoon Brew]