The Lost Thing short filmanimation

"The Lost Thing, a deceptively simple remembrance of a boy’s encounter with a bizarre orphaned creature. Writer-directors Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan elevate a familiar storyline into something exceptionally moving that touches on friendship, loneliness, and the tragedy of how getting older numbs us to the wonders of the small oddities around us." 

"The best animated film is Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan's "The Lost Thing," a richly imagined story, with Tim Burton overtones, about what it's like to be an outsider. Fans of the steampunk genre may detect an influence." 

Running 15 minutes, helmers Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan's "The Lost Thing" also feels like a storybook come to life, using a highly eccentric design style to sell its melancholy Kafka-like message to kids: A teenager realizes just how absorbed everyone around him is in their mindless, mundane existence after finding a strange Lovecraftian creature on the beach. Highly conspicuous, the thing looks like a cross between a rusty red teapot and a giant green octopus, and yet, no one seems to pay it any mind, leaving the boy to navigate a bureaucratic maze alone in order to find it a new home.  

"The Lost Thing" from Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan, takes the story of a boy's affinity for a misshapen creature he finds on a beach but includes an adult's ruminative perspective."