Home is Where the Heart Is

          In a dystopian society, a house uproots from its foundation and embarks on a journey. On this adventure, he meets a new friend of old age that needs one last adventure in life. The two houses, one resembling a small 2-floor home from the 1920s and the other a more modern, San Diego style home,  trek across the world (presumably North America). Their journey takes them across mostly suburban areas in the beginning of the short. Luckily this was the case for them because the older house was using a tree branch as a makeshift cane until he put too much weight and broke it. The younger house appeared selfish as he ran ahead into the near neighborhood, but the audience realizes it was to help his friend because he came back with a pillar from a grand, victorian house. Following him on his sprint back to his friend was a dog who very cleverly took on the shape of a doghouse.

They appeared to be heading north as the next full scene took place on the bank of any icy pond where we see the main character fall in love with a trailer home before she vanishes behind the glaciers. The protagonist is clearly upset, but he continues with his new friends. We next see the two and a half houses crowded around a fire in what appears to be a desert. However, the fire is about to run out and the protagonist sees that the old house is shivering, so he selflessly tears off more of his own wood to contribute to the fire in order to keep the old house warm. The final scene exists when the house seems to have found his destination in what appears to be California and the three look out upon the ocean at a beautiful sunset. The doghouse begins barking after everything seems right, and the young house knows exactly what's wrong after the new makeshift cane snaps under the leaning weight of the aged house. The young house understands and begins walking down the shoreline (likely towards his old place of rest) with the doghouse following him.

["CGI **Award Winning ** Animated Shorts HD: "Home Sweet Home" - by Home Sweet Home Team." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.]

         This work was very professionally done. The animators who worked on this paid attention to every minor detail and spared no expense of effort; the lighting was fantastic, everything was almost hyperrealistic. The motion of each object was smooth and seemed very natural with appropriate use of physics and went along with the very nature of the outside world.
         The creators of the story taught a very touching lesson using houses as their actors and made them so relatable that at the end, the viewer feels empathy for the main character. It may seem silly to feel pity for a fake house on a computer screen, but that's the power behind the animators and their storytelling ability without uttering a single word on screen.
          An element I would like to take is the hyperrealistic settings the animation uses surrounding the communities. It also tells a magnificent story that any good animator must be able to do.