In Japan, this is blasphemy. Koji Yamamura, one of the country's leading young animators, hates almost all animé, the nation's proud, futuristic-looking art form. "I don't think animation done by big production companies is interesting," he says. "It's commercially produced in an assembly line. Images become watered down and too uniform. Supposedly pretty girls always have big, round eyes, but they're not based on an observation of reality." Even Hayao Miyazaki, legendary creator of the hits Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, fails to impress. "His work is different from others, but it doesn't interest me."

Yamamura, 39, is the anti-animator, a creative force who is redrawing the art form's conventions and clichés. He eschews the assembly-line approach, typically working alone. His pieces use few words. His characters are rarely cute or bubbly. Instead, in most of his animation works, a series of unrelated images flashes onto the screen in rapid succession, creating strikingly irrational scenes that instantly grab the viewer's attention. While most animators draw in a well-defined, superflat style, Yamamura mixes it up by using pencils, markers, clay or a combination of several materials. "For me, animation is a pursuit of individual expression," he explains. "Because it's so free, you can do anything."

Yamamura, who began drawing comics in grade school, has won a raft of international awards with this idiosyncratic approach, and his work has been shown in some 30 countries. In February, he also landed an Academy Award nomination for his short, Atamayama (Mount Head). Based on a traditional comic tale, it relates the peculiar story of a stingy man whose head sprouts a cherry tree after he eats a cherry pit. When the tree blooms, people gather under the branches and throw drinking parties (a blossom-viewing tradition) on top of his overcrowded skull. Yamamura thought the surreal story was ideal for an animated rendering. "We create two-dimensional realities out of an invented world," he opines. "That's why I thought it'd be interesting to do this eccentric story." Working solo, as usual, he took two years to complete the project, producing more than 10,000 meticulously executed drawings for a short that lasted just 10 minutes.

What's next? An animation about time and art, says Yamamura. Pressed for details, the soft-spoken animator grins: "If I could express that in words, I wouldn't be doing animation at all."