Director Shane Acker (9) has teamed with Brown Bag Films to create an animated movie called Deep , an undersea adventure set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. The company describes the project as "an animated film unlike any other … using new technologies that result in high-quality production value at a fraction of the time and cost."

Those new technologies, according to a Brown Bag press release , come from video game developer Valve, the producers of Half Life and Portal. The Deep team has already been working with Valve, using tools based on the developer’s Source game engine. "The tools enable flexible cinematography and editing, a simplified character animation process and economical lighting, sound and visual effects," reads the release. "Render time is cut to nearly nil, enabling rapid revisions to animation, which brings dramatic savings in time and money over traditional production."Since Deep will be produced as a film, but via a game engine, it means that the material can "easily translate" to a game format. And, in fact, the Deep team has already started work on a playable level to be distributed via Steam, Valve’s online game distribution network, with plans to make more content including "opportunities for user-created content in the Deep universe."No word yet on how or when the movie version of Deep will be distributed.