While Pixar and Dreamworks maintain their stranglehold on the attention spans of America’s youth, Don Hertzfeldt has been quietly establishing himself as the finest animator on the planet. His wildly imaginative multimedia creations have won him an ardent if unduly small fanbase, gradually growing with each new release. His typically surreal 2000 short "Rejected" not only planted the seedlings of cult love, but earned Hertzfeldt a surprise Oscar nomination. 2006 saw the beginning of what fans affectionately call “The Billogy,” a series of three films about the seriocomic trials of lovable stick figure Bill. The titles alone clue the uninitiated into the trilogy’s intense focus on emotional nurturing: Everything Will Be OK, I Am So Proud of You, and It’s Such A Beautiful Day. Not too long ago, Hertzfeldt was also responsible for one of the more strikingly bizarre couch gags in recent memory on The Sampsans. But today, a new report from Deadline indicates that Hertzfeldt is preparing what sounds like his most ambitious project to date.

Hertzfeldt has joined forces with production house Snoot Entertainment (the folks behind You’re Next and last year’s Essential Viewing-certified The Guest) to bring his newest feature Antarctica to life. The Deadline item plays it a bit stingy with the details, only going so far as to confirm that the film will take place on the title frost-bitten landmass, and that Hertzfeldt will continue to develop his trademark mixed-media style. But the most enticing tidbit happens to be that Antarctica will be the first occasion in which Hertzfeldt has a full team of animators at his disposal. Heretofore a lone wolf, Hertzfeldt corralled a group of collaborators, ostensibly to lighten the workload. There’s no telling what story will play out in Antarctica (though, to play the odds, we can bet that it’ll concern the sentimental value of sadness and devastating elusiveness of inner peace) but it outwardly seems like this film will play out on an unprecedentedly grand scale.

Hertzfeldt’s currently preparing to screen "World of Tomorrow," his newest short film, at Sundance later this week. (Frequent Dissolve contributor David Ehrlich has already declared it “the film of Sundance 2015.”) But he had the time to provide the Deadline staff with a characteristically wry quote: “After 20 years of animating alone, this will also mark the first time I’ll have the opportunity to work with a talented team of animators, and I’m looking forward to being able to walk into a room of hard-working artists every day and telling them that everything they’re doing is wrong.”

Stock up on Kleenex, y’all.