The Smoke Seller (2012)

OK, so the computer has done the animation here but I really enjoyed this story. It's an handsome young man with a medicine show type affair who arrives in a small village where nobody is remotely interested in his wares. Then a small boy approaches him and he proves he can do wonders by making an acrobatic toy aeroplane out of purple smoke! When this plane has an altercation with a local, rather scrawny, mutt it's owner wants to keep the plane instead. The magician manages to turn the dog into a much more useful hunter and now he has everyone's attention - especially the mayor. We begin to suspect something is amiss as the storm clouds gather and all of a sudden he seems to want to get going. Is it all just a case of colourful smoke and (no) mirrors? There are some really quite entertaining sequences here and the score jauntily escorts the whole thing along for seven minutes that did make me smile. Give it go, you ought to enjoy it and appreciate the sentiment behind it, too.