While all eyes are focused on our latest film exports, our animation industry is quietly thriving under the radar. Well, not that quietly. Crammed within the confines of a windowless, bedroom-sized space, Rhubarb Zoo's animation studio has a lively computer buzz going. Among the stacks of paper, drawing desks and technical equipment, Dane Jacobs and Jeremy Hay are busy working on a scene for Entropy, their second short animation.

The mess in the studio shows where the animators' minds are: far, far away. The Freelance Animation School graduates started Rhubarb Zoo last year before they finished their diplomas in character animation. Still, it was behind schedule. "Dane's pretty much always planned to have a studio," Hay says. "In first year he was like 'Let's start a studio guys!' We all thought Dane was crazy." Hay rolls his eyes, acknowledging he's now joined the asylum.

Their creative talent has made small ripples around the country. Their first short film, Ectype's End, was shown at Short Fuse film events, the 2006 Armageddon Expo and the Urbis Animax Festival of Animation in July. They used a combination of photo collages and digitally animated hand-drawings to create Ectype's End, an uncommon method in New Zealand animations.

That first film had limited success, but Hay and Jacobs expect the classically animated, beautifully coloured Entropy to do better. "Entropy is prettier and it's got more in it within the shorter space of time," says Hay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3t3bqlm3Vo

Ectype's End is a combination of photo collages and digitally animated hand-drawings-an uncommon method in New Zealand animations With an original soundtrack that Jacobs created on his home computer, Entropy follows the main character, Harmony, on a musical journey to the moon. Two years in the making and currently stored in a filing box that Neko the cat guards, Jacobs envisages the project won't fit in the box for much longer.

Their next project has also ballooned in trademark Rhubarb Zoo fashion. Instead of creating the traditional low budget, updated-weekly series, Rhubarb Zoo will spend all of next year in pre-production, recording voices, scripting and making models with a minimal budget, funded by part-time jobs.

They plan to use similar techniques to Ectype's End to create the series, with computer animation and photo backgrounds. "Essentially it's going to be done half like an animated feature film and half like a series," says Jacobs. "It isn't going to be based on humour like most web series. It's going to be more of an intriguing drama," adds Hay.

Fellow animator Michael Glasswell says while Jacobs is the stronger animator, Hay is the technical whiz and can colour images beautifully. "Jeremy's style is a bit darker and more serious than Dane's. You know when Jeremy tells a story it will blow you away. But Dane can show you what a four-year-old can see when they look at the moon. Most of us have lost that now."

Jacobs may view the world with child-like eyes, but he has little interest in entertaining the little guys. "We find people don't do enough with animation. A lot of the time it's purely used for kids' movies and we want to create things that people like us will enjoy."

Why thank you, Rhubarb Zoo.