"The Lighthouse Keeper," a beautiful, heart-warming 3-D animation has won audiences over in major film festivals such as the Pusan Asia International Short Film Festival and the granddaddy of them all, the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival. And now, the Short Shorts Film Festival. Kim Jun Ki, the director, was born in 1972 and studied illustration and design at a junior college in Korea. After graduating, he embarked on a career at a computer company. "I didn't last long there," he says of his job at the computer company. "This company focused mostly on design and hand drawings, and I was the only one who could do animation." "The Lighthouse Keeper" is Kim's third film. This is the first time that he used 3-d software to create it, and because of the software's limitations, it took a long time to make the film, which he proudly states he did on his own. "The only part I didn't do was the music, which a good friend composed for me." "I'd like to someday make a feature-length animation film. I feel like short films are a sort of practice, the necessary step you have to make before going into features. I'll continue making them. I'm currently writing the script for a Sci-Fi animation film." One of the most striking parts of 'The Lighthouse Keeper' is the absence of dialogue. 'The reason I didn't put it in there is simple. I wanted anyone anywhere to be able to understand the story. I'm not putting dialogue into my next film either. But I think eventually I'm going to have to start putting narration into my work…" 'The Lighthouse Keeper' takes place in a small, fictitious town. The opening aerial shot has Korean titles on it, but soon thereafter, it's hard to figure out where the film might actually be from. "At first, I wanted to give the film the feeling that it was a traditional Korean town. But that didn't fit the mood that I was trying to create. So, I looked at many, many pictures of town, cities, villages from all over. I watched both Korean and foreign films, and got a sense of some really original ways in which towns were depicted." Inspired by all his research, Kim created his own, unique little setting.