The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations Of Jasper Morello is a series of Australian animated short films directed by Anthony Lucas, notable for their unique CGI cut-out animation style which shows almost everything in silhouette. The first film, Jasper Morello And The Lost Airship, was released in 2005 and nominated for an Academy Award, while several more are planned.
This film contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: Dr. Claude Belgon. He's the nicest of the crew towards Jasper, and gets on well with him. Right up until the good doctor starts letting the creature feed on the crew.
- Apocalyptic Log
- The Atoner: Jasper, for accidentally knocking a man off the ship on his last voyage with a navigational error.
- BFG: Kovacks wields one while out on the island. It appears to be steam-powered, and is fired to save Jasper from the carnivorous vegisectoid creature.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The creatures on the island are mixture of this and man-eating plants. The first of them transforms one of its tendrils into a tropical bird, and even sings with it to draw in prey!
- Bittersweet Ending: Or just a Downer Ending, depending on how you interpret it.
- Body Horror: The Sickness, which starts out with flu-like symptoms, then goes into horrific glowing orange boils and growths.
- Character Title
- Cool Airship: The Resolution and the Hieronymous.
- Death World / Everything Trying to Kill You: According to the Gothia Gazette, it seems that everything can and will malfunction, maul you, poison you, kill you or drive you insane.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The film uses B&W with Silent Film-influenced tinting: the island is green, the stormier areas of uncharted air are dark blue, the mountain peaks are pale blue, and everything else is sepia or grey.
- The Fantastic Trope of Wonderous Titles
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Gothia is essentially a gothic/Steampunk version of Victorian England.
- Floating Continent
- Flying Seafood Special
- For Science!: Dr. Belgon seems to be a positive example of this at first, what with his kooky, harmless experiments and fascination with insects. Then he gets obsessed with the creature from the island...
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The vegisectoid predator on the uncharted isle. Also, Jasper's nightmare of a plague-stricken Amelia.
- Ill Girl: Jasper's wife, Amelia.
- Jerkass: Captain Griswald.
- Machine Worship: Word of God says that The Ebeneezer, who is continually referred to, is a living computer.
- Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr. Claude Belgon. Looking at his character profile, he appears to have plenty of motive to be desperate for a find, no matter the cost.
- Man-Eating Plant: Mobile and intelligent, too!
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The "porcfish", a flying fish/porcupine hybrid.
- Nothing but Skulls: The crew of the Resolution find a pile of these with skeletons in the cargo hold of the Hieronymous.
- Ominous Fog: All of the airships have to navigate through it. And like the sea, many dangers can be concealed within.
- Ominous Pipe Organ: Used when LeBrun is eaten by the creature.
- The Plague: The Sickness, which ravages Gothia.
- Retraux
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Dr. Claude Belgon.
- Scenery Porn: Every single frame.
- Shadow Discretion Shot: Inverted - everything else is monochrome and shown in silhouette, but blood and gore are red and very visible.
- The Sky Is an Ocean
- Sky Pirates: Captain Griswald suspects that the ship may have been attacked by these. Unfortunately, something far worse was responsible...
- Soylent Green: The only cure for the plague that's killing the people of Gothia is a creature that feeds on human blood. And tissue, when it can get it.
- Steampunk
- Those Magnificent Flying Machines
- World in the Sky