Sequel To Oscar-Nominated Animated Short ‘World Of Tomorrow’ Arrives On Vimeo

Don Hertzfeldt has rolled out his latest slice of animated ingenuity.

Hertzfeldt has shared World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts via Vimeo On Demand. The film is a sequel to his 2015 project World of Tomorrow, which earned an Academy Award nomination in the Animated Short Film category.

The original World of Tomorrow introduced viewers to Emily, a young girl who is visited by a clone of her future self. The clone reveals the twisted and outlandish science of her age, which is threatened by an impending meteorite. Judging by Episode Two‘s trailer, young Emily will return in the sequel, where she will be joined by several other characters and a new complement of fractured settings.

Hertzfeldt is best known as the creator of Rejected, a short film, that has received more than two million views on YouTube. Many of that video’s catchphrases, mostly notably “my spoon is too big,” have been accepted into the internet lexicon. Rejected, like World of Tomorrow, earned Hertzfeldt an Oscar nod. His nominations came 16 years apart, in 2000 and 2016.

Several Oscar-nominated animators have leveraged the power of internet distribution to share their work with a wide audience. 2012 nominee Adam Pesapane, known online as PES, has uploaded many of his stop-motion videos to his YouTube channel.

While it is available online,World of Tomorrow: Episode Two will also screen at the Sundance Film Festival. A rental copy of the short film costs $4.99 on Vimeo On Demand. Its predecessor can be found on Netflix.