This is a long shot, but:
There’s a young people’s film group around here, and in high school I attended a couple of viewings. In one, they preceded a movie with an animated short they called ‘SOUND INSECTS’ in the program. I wasn’t paying much attention at the time, unfortunately, but it was really beautifully animated (and utilized 3d techniques as in Futurama), with an epic futuristic urban setting with lots of great color palettes, and I think I remember some cute puffy things. It played through very fast. It was in Japanese without subtitles (I don’t remember any of the dialogue, though) so I assume they couldn’t get one with. When I recalled the experience I tried googling it, but couldn’t find anything like what I had watched. Anyone know what this might be? It seemed too well done to be as obscure as it appears to be, even if it was short. This would be 4 to 8 years ago, I guess. Thanks for any leads!
Possibly the short film Onkyo(u) Seimeitai Noiseman, translated as Noiseman Sound Insect. Info from AnimeDB:
Interestingly, the music is by none other than Yoko Kanno, who I happen to be a bit of a fan of.
Good god, that was fast.
That does definitely sound like it! I’m going to hunt it down and see. Thanks so much!