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'AGT' contestant tells an incredibly moving story with her unique sand art

Even among all the extraordinary acts on "America's Got Talent," Kseniya Simonova stands out.

America's Got Talent/YouTube

Kseniya Simonova tells a moving story using only the sand in her hands.

Usually, it’s singing, dancing and magic acts that take the lion’s share of applause on “America’s Got Talent.” But every once in a while, more out-of-the-box performances take the spotlight.

Kseniya Simonova, a Ukrainian sand animation artist, makes it onto that list.

Simonova, who won the title for “Ukraine's Got Talent” in 2009 and was a finalist for other “Got Talent” seasons, returned for the first ever “America's Got Talent: Fantasy League,” where fan favorite contestants form teams under each of the judges: Howie Mandel, Mel B, Heidi Klum and Simon Cowell.

For this performance, titled “Follow your Dreams,” Simonova told a sweeping, poignant and heartfelt story honoring the love between a mother and her son—using only the sand in her hands.

In only a couple of minutes, a phone turns into a house, then into two faces, then into two figures, then into a boy looking out of the window and into the sky, then a rocket and finally an astronaut in space. It’s pretty unreal.

Watch:

Not only did Simonova receive a standing ovation from the audience, but praises from three of the four judges, with Howie Mandel calling her work “an amazing, emotional work of artistry.” Simon Cowell also commended her, saying, "no one else in the world can do what you can do.”

Online viewers seemed to agree and found Simonova to be one-of-a-kind.

“I always love these types of acts. Something unique that you don’t often see but can clearly see the talent and skill that it takes to perform,” one person wrote on YouTube.

Another added, “An incredible talent. Such an original and unique form of artistry!”

Not only is sand animation a rare art form, it’s also a fairly new one. According to the site Animation Explainers, it’s only been around since 1968, when artist Caroline Leaf manipulated beach sand on a lightbox for each frame of her film, “Sand or Peter and the Wolf.”

Animation Explainers also has a great passage about why sand animation is intriguing, saying, “The beauty of sand animation lies in that it only lasts for a short moment. It is a fragile form and often evokes very impassioned responses in viewers.”

If that doesn’t sum up the raw beauty of Simonova’s art, I don’t know what does.

By the way, if you’d like to see even more of Simonova’s sand animations, check out her website. You can also find a full length version of “Follow Your Dreams” here.

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How a work from home mom saved 'Toy Story 2' after a Pixar employee accidentally deleted it

@Hollywood/YouTube

"Toy Story 2" got deleted and backups weren't working. Whoops.

A newborn baby saving an entire animated film production from unprecedented disaster? Sounds a bit like the plot of a Pixar short, doesn't it?

Something (sort of) like that actually did happen during the making of "Toy Story 2." (There are a several retellings of the story out there, from an in-depth interview on The Next Web to the simplified, animated version in the "Toy Story 2" extras shown below.)

Here's a basic rundown of what happened:

The film was well underway when an unnamed Pixar employee who was trying to delete unneeded files accidentally applied the "remove" command to the root files of the film. Suddenly, things started disappearing. Woody's hat. Then his boots. Then Woody himself.

Pixar folks watched characters and sequences disappear in front of their eyes. Obviously, this was … not good.

Oren Jacob, the associate technical director of the film, got on the horn to the systems crew with a panicked "Pull the plug!" They did. Were they able to stop the bleed? Nope, 90% of the movie was gone. Surely there was a backup system, though, right?

Yes! But unfortunately, no one had been checking to make sure the backups were actually working. Oopsie. And as luck would have it, the backups were not working, and hadn't been for a month. Nearly all of "Toy Story 2" had gone bye-bye. Big honking oops.

Jacob called the film's supervising technical director, Galyn Susman, to deliver the bad news. Imagine making that phone call. No, thank you.

But this is where the story gets good.

Susman just happened to have been working from home because she'd recently had a baby. (That's right, she was directing one of the most iconic animated films to date while also creating and birthing human life. Respect.) And it just so happened that she had backed up the film on her home computer so she could work on it while taking care of her newborn, Eli.

"As a mother who wanted to see her children, I needed to have a computer at home," Susman says in the animated recreation of the mishap. "And so I would copy the entire film onto my computer."

Jacob and Susman wrapped the computer in blankets to protect it, seatbelted it in to the backseat of Susman's Volvo and drove it to the Pixar studios. (Remember, this was 1998—clearly this process would look much different today.)

"Eight people met us with a plywood sheet out in the parking lot and, like a sedan carrying the Pharaoh, walked it into the machine room," Jacob told The Next Web.

It worked. The film was recovered. (The simplified version makes it sound like this was an instant fix; however, the in-depth version clarifies that there were tens of thousands of technical files that employees had to pore through one by one in a lengthy, arduous process. But still, their bacon was saved.)

Babies and work-from-home moms for the win, am I right?

How Toy Story 2 Almost Got Deleted: Stories From Pixar Animation: ENTVwww.youtube.com

However, this story has a perfectly ironic ending, as the version of the film recovered from Susman's computer ended up being almost completely scrapped anyway. When the Pixar bigwigs took a look at the movie, they decided it simply wasn't good. The film ended up being rewritten and remade into the delightful movie we know and love today.

Bless the Pixar people for their dedication to greatness—and for learning their lesson about routinely checking backups the hard way.

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Someone realized these scenes from different Disney movies are identical and you can't unsee it

@fred035schultz/Twitter

Have you ever been watching a Disney movie and had a bit of deja vu? Not just that "Oh, this movie has that familiar Disney look and feel" feeling, but more like, "I swear I've literally seen this exact scene before in another movie"?

If you've watched a lot of Disney films, you actually have seen the same scenes repeated in different movies. People have been pointing out parallel sequences on social media and it's got some folks super freaked out.

Check it out:

Watching that "Jungle Book" and "Winnie the Pooh" sequence, there's no denying it's exactly the same animation template, just with different backgrounds and characters. But how? And why?

Disney has actually been recycling its animation for various movie scenes since it created Dumbo in 1941. Floyd Norman, a veteran Disney animator who has worked on Disney films as far back as Sleeping Beauty in 1959 and as recently as Mulan and Toy Story 2, weighed in on the reason for reusing animation sequences, saying:

"It was done probably to save time, save money. Although I don't think it saved much time and I don't think it saved much money because it was much more of a hassle to go dig this old footage out of the archive. It would've been easier to just sit down and animate a new scene than to go back and try to retrofit all this old stuff to something new. We're looking back to the 1960s and 70s when people weren't thinking how films would change, how media would change, and how people would be able to look at these various films and compare one film against another."

This video by Cartoon Hangovers shares various recycled Disney scenes and explains why they were reused, showing how it all began with animators tracing over live footage of real actors to create more realistic animation in Disney's first full-length feature film, "Snow White."

Every Recycled Disney Shot & Why - Snow White, Frozen, Toy Story, Moana and More - Cartoon Hangoveryoutu.be

Despite the eventual mega-success of the Disney empire, the company's beginnings were not so rosy. "Snow White" was a surprise box office hit, but follow-up films "Pinocchio," "Bambi," and "Fantasia" went way over budget and were considered losses for the studio. "Dumbo" was a success, but then WWII hit. That's when Disney really got started with resuing animation.

The main reason was purportedly to save time and money. According to Floyd Norman, Walt Disney himself probably never even knew or noticed that animators were recycling scenes. He was focused more on the big picture and not so concerned with the technical processes of the animators.

The practice of reusing scenes continued, with "The Sword in the Stone" and "The Jungle Book" in particular snagging lots of scenes from previous Disney projects. But there are lots of well-known examples, including "The Aristocats" reusing scenes from "101 Dalmations," and "Robin Hood" stealing scenes—and even parallel characters—from "The Jungle Book" (Ever notice how similar Little John and Baloo are?) and other Disney films.

These Disney films from the 60s, 70s, and 80s can trace their recycled animation primarily back to one director–Woolie Reitherman. He's not the only one to utilize the reuse of animation, but he's best known for it. He basically didn't see a reason to reinvent the wheel.

However, the practice didn't necessarily save time or money. Floyd Norman has pointed out that it's a lot of work to go through old footage, find what you want, and remake it into a new animation. In some ways, it would be easier just to animate from scratch.

Even newer Disney movies have reused scenes, though more often not, those serve as an homage to the original films that made the newer films possible. Such is the case with the dancing scene at the end of "Beauty and the Beast," which mirrors the one at the end of "Sleeping Beauty."

So no, it's not your imagination—there is no shortage of Disney scenes that are repeated in different Disney films. No one is complaining, of course, with Disney having made dozens of beloved productions enjoyed by billions of people. Perhaps recycling scenes is even part of what gives us a sense of familiarity when we watch a Disney movie.

At the end of the day, animators are magicians. Whatever tools they use to make the magic happen, so be it.

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An awkward boy falls for another guy in this short film, and people are loving it.

It's just 25 seconds long, and no one says a word in it. But the trailer for "In a Heartbeat" has the internet talking.

Even the two creators behind the project can't believe the response.

Beth David and Esteban Bravo, students at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, were "floored" when their Kickstarter page for the short film reached its initial fundraising goal a mere three hours after launching.

The film — the duo's senior thesis project — looks downright adorable, sure. But it's the subject matter that really makes the short stand out among the rest.

Watch the trailer for "In a Heartbeat" (article continues below):

"In a Heartbeat" is about a middle-school boy who "runs the risk of being outed by his own heart after it pops out of his chest to chase down the boy of his dreams."

It's a story that most audiences have not had a chance to see before.

“Being gay is a subject that hasn't been widely explored in computer animation," Bravo explained in a video promoting the film, noting that rates of bullying for LGBTQ teens are much higher than their straight and cisgender (non-transgender) peers.  

The film is a heartstring-tugging reminder that those kids — and LGBTQ adults — deserve their stories be told on-screen, too.

“We want to put out a message of love and self acceptance to all the kids and young people who struggle to identify as LGBT+, just like [the main character] Sherwin does,” David said.

David and Bravo have had fun promoting the film using parodies of iconic movie posters, like "The Fault in Our Stars."

Image courtesy of "In a Heartbeat."

And 2005's "Brokeback Mountain."

Image courtesy of "In a Heartbeat."

But the film's rapidly growing online fandom is even cooler, reflecting audiences' hunger for a delightful, important queer love story like this one.

The hashtag #InAHeartbeat has been filled with creative works from devoted fans on Tumblr and Instagram. And they definitely give you a sense of just how important this film is shaping up to be for many young people.

"I'm genuinely happy to see LGBT representation, especially when it's shown at a young age, with something that's as sweet and simple as a crush," one fan wrote on Instagram.

#inaheartbeat #heart #love #art #myart #fanart #scketch #scketchbook #cute

A post shared by Maria Isupova (@maridiamsy) on

"Okay if you don't know what in a heartbeat is don't talk to me," joked another.

Some fans are even pulling out the all-caps to express their excitement.

"We're very touched by the response we've gotten so far and we're happy to know that our project has already had a positive impact on so many people," the creators say of the overwhelming fandom.  

"It proves to us that there is a need and a want for media that addresses LGBT+ themes in a positive and lighthearted way," they note, "and gives us hope that films like this could be more widely accepted and produced in the future!"

To learn more about the short film, visit its Kickstarter page.

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