Today, as part of Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival, we’re delighted to present Money Bunny Blues by Ellen Coons of Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. As stop motion animation in feature films becomes slicker and increasingly indiscernible from CGI, it’s refreshing to find a stop motion short that embraces the technique’s quirky and whimsical possibilities. The film’s setting is an intricate handmade universe comprised of common household objects–candy, coins, fruit, playing cards. Within this fantasy backdrop and accompanied by a folksy, unadorned song of economic woe, loose-limbed Dolly attempts to connect with the elusive Money Bunny. Whether you’re in need of a few bucks or have more money than you know what to do with, the free-spirited charm of Money Bunny Blues will put a smile on your face.

Continue reading for comments from the filmmaker Ellen Coons:

THE IDEA

Money Bunny Blues was built around a song I wrote last summer in the midst of unpaid work. It was written out of the frustration of dependency. The Money Bunny character sort of grew from the concept of Money Karma, believing that what you give will eventually make its way back around. I won a cash raffle with a dollar that I found in a parking lot that summerâ€¦ it might’ve been what started this whole thing. Money Bunny was a sick infusion of childhood’s Easter Bunny with my semi-grown-up financial priorities.