On monday, it was released on Youtube “In a Heartbeat”, a four-minute animated short film about a young gay kid and his crush, and is going viral.
Written and directed by Beth David and Esteban Bravo during their final year at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, the dialogue-free short follows a high school student who is so in love with the most popular kid in school that his heart literally leaps out of his chest.
In the story, a school-aged boy is outed by his very own heart, which pops out of his chest to chase down another male classmate on whom the boy has a crush. The film follows the boy as he tries to contain his heart, all the while containing the emotions that are common when a person’s crush is revealed.
“The original pitch was a story between a boy and a girl,” David told NBC News. “But it wasn’t until we made it about a same-gender crush that the idea really started to take form and resonate with Esteban and I. We realized that we had something that could potentially be really special to us.