Rabbit and Deer (original title: Nyuszi és Őz) is a Hungarian animated short film, created by Péter Vácz in 2013. It tells the story of a rabbit and a deer living together in harmony. But their friendship is put to test when Deer becomes obsessed with a whole new world: the third dimension.
The film provides a lot of creative examples of Medium Blending. You can view it here
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Tropes:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Rabbit wears only a pink bow.
- Bittersweet Ending: Deer cannot return to his old two-dimensional self, and Rabbit cannot become three-dimensional. However, despite this they keep living together, and they appear to have come over their differences in the end.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: Rabbit is a sweet, innocent, girly character.
- Catapult Nightmare: Deer's first dream about the third dimension makes him sit up in his bed.
- Chasing a Butterfly: In the 3D world, Deer is so distracted by a butterfly that he doesn't notice the coming storm.
- A Dog Named "Dog": A rabbit named Rabbit and a deer named Deer.
- Fur Is Clothing: Deer has pockets on his fur.
- Funny Animal: Rabbit and Deer walk on two legs, live in a house, sleep in beds and read books. However, they don't wear clothes and don't look like humans at all.
- Interspecies Friendship / Interspecies Romance: It is intentionally left ambiguous whether Rabbit and Deer are lovers or Just Friends.
- Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves: Deer has a rectangular head and body. Rabbit has a round head and flexible, often curved ears along with a triangular body.
- Medium Blending: Of traditional 2D animation and Stop Motion (the latter representing the third dimension).
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: There is no dialogue at all.
- Mind Screw: The entire premise that a two-dimensional world exists within a three-dimensional world is pretty mind-boggling.
- Noodle People: The two main characters have limbs that are essentially just lines. It remains that way in the third dimension too.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Rabbit and Deer are most likely this. Even more in the end when they remain separated by a whole dimension.
- Rock–Paper–Scissors: Rabbit and Deer play this game in the beginning of the short. Their hands temporarily turn into actual rocks, papers and scissors.
- Silence Is Golden: There are lots of quiet moments.
- Stick Figure Animation: The 2D world is drawn with this kind of aesthetic, probably to make it as distinct as possible from the gorgeous 3D world. When Deer becomes 3D, he still mostly keeps the stick figure aesthetic.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Rabbit has a pink ribbon on her head indicating that she's a girl.
