This film is very gorgeous of its unsettling themes of Gothic, and horror. The animation is very different than most animation films that I've seen because for most of the movie it just a silhouette. However they put the details of buttons on their clothes to recognized class. Our main character, Jasper Morello's clothing is very nice and the audience knows that he is intelligent because of his career of being a geographic. However at the beginning of the film, he feels unhappy of one little mistake during one of his explorations leads one of the crew members died. This film made me feel for the main character a lot and he cares about the people of his city that he lives in. I can't say that much of the climax but I have to say that it is very creepy and gets into the monster horror element of the story. And it is something that first time audience has to experience first. My only complains about the film is the story is just narrative driven by at the end of the film someone finds his journal and reads it because my theory suggest that Jasper's city that he lives in no longer exists because of the plague has already decreased the human population. And after a long period of time, someone found the journal and reference the title of the film. That he is a "mysterious geographic" and his explorations. And that is what I believe this is the whole point of the title of the film, and the last of the human population that found his journal use that to cure the plague that spread in Jasper's world.

A nominee for a Best Animated Short Film Oscar in 2006, this is a visually beautiful and richly layered Gothic steampunk adventure story that is equal parts Lovecraftian and Conradesque horror. Young navigator Morello (voiced by Joel Edgerton) in the industrial city of Gothia accepts a commission to help fly a dirigible to parts unknown. He does this partly to atone for a previous voyage in which, due to a mistake he made, a crewman fell to his death. Morello leaves his wife Emilia at home as she is needed at a hospital to nurse patients dying from a mysterious plague.An eccentric scientist Claude Belgon joins the crew and the ship chugs away; it crashes into an abandoned vessel and the crew quickly transfer to that vehicle. In his regular radio correspondence with his wife, Morello hears her hacking coughs and realises she has contracted plague. Nevertheless the men continue their journey despite one man also sickening from plague and they soon come across several sky islands. By accident, they discover that the boiled blood of a strange creature on one island cures the sick crew-member so they collect cocoons and take them back on board the ship. While on the journey home, Morello realises that crew-members are mysteriously vanishing and stumbles across the awful truth about the hatched larvae from the cocoons and their link to the disappearances.The story is very focused, not too complicated, and the pace moderately fast. The animation is a mix of layered 2D pictures and cut-outs made to resemble 3D objects and the characters themselves appear as silhouette cut-outs reminiscent of an Indonesian wayang shadow-puppet play. The use of first-person narrative makes the film resemble a Joseph Conrad novel and Joel Edgerton's measured and refined tones make his young navigator a sensitive character. Morello does tend to be passive and easily influenced by the sinister Dr Belgon and the blustery Captain Griswald, and this passivity brings a touch of J G Ballard to the proceedings. The mix of Australian and near-English accents brings a salty nineteenth-century flavour to much of the film. The story gradually transforms from the thrill of adventure in its first half to quietly macabre and devastating in its second half, topped by an open-ended conclusion in which Morello, in the manner of a Ballardian hero, submits to the advice of the malevolent Belgon in the near-hopeless belief that by so doing he will save his wife's life if not his own.Themes of sacrificing one's own life for the greater good of society and the advancement of scientific knowledge, and of the moral dilemma that faces Morello when he discovers what the last larva from the cocoons needs to survive – yes, if he kills it, he'll save his own life but not his wife's life; if he allows it to live, then he must offer himself to it - give "… Jasper Morello" a deep, dark intensity befitting its Victorian Goth look of sepia, blue and grey tones. Belgon is a typical mad-scientist type who embodies Conrad's Kurtzian hero: his thirst for knowledge and fame drives him to commit heinous acts of murder. Interestingly the film has as its climax a conflict between Belgon and Morello that forces Morello into choosing whether or not he should repeat a past mistake, and it is this choice that determines whether Morello becomes his own man, albeit with horrifying consequences.Morello's passive nature, the switch from Jules Verne adventure to macabre horror and the anti-climactic cliffhanger ending probably counted against the film in competition for the Best Animated Short Oscar but I find this is a very immersive short piece of great intensity, technical detail, bittersweet tragedy and many allusions to great horror and science fiction writing: depending on where viewers are coming from, they can probably find hints of Edgar Allan Poe, H P Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, H G Wells and Bruce Sterling. The film is aimed at a general audience though it is very creepy and chilling for young children, and it's well worth watching a few times to appreciate its distinctive animation.

Mind bogglingly animated tale of a world where people fly instead of sail, its tale of a navigator called into service after a tragedy only to find himself on a voyage of a life time.One of the best looking animated films,I've ever seen. This is a film filled with very Victorian and steam punkish images and contraptions. Its great to look at. The story about a man taking a job a a means of redemption and then having things begin to go wrong though no real fault of his own is the sort of things that make for grand adventure. I really fell in love with this film and by the time it was over found myself clamoring for if not a sequel (I want to see what happened next) at least another film set in the same world. One of the best animated short films in many a year.

This flick has just the perfect blend of experimental ideas, an interesting story and meticulous animation work. The creators opted to use a 3D-flattened-to-silhouette animation technique, which is quite unique and hard to describe. Suffice to say that it works well to emphasize the mood of the story. Oh, and it also looks absolutely stunning...Jasper Morello is a navigator on an airship, who gets a chance to help save his wife, as well as humanity from a plague, by venturing to unknown territory. His Verne-like trip takes him to strange lands and strange creatures...I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just say that you should go check it out (or at least the trailer at www.jaspermorello.com).