Pixar Animation Shorts

As I was looking back at the facial expressions we drew yesterday, I came up with a character idea for my story. I’m thinking of some sort of inanimate object, but it could have cartoon like facial features. Perhaps a cup or some other piece of litter, or a household appliance. I like the idea of the story being about something that couldn’t happen in real life, I think fantasy is one of the great things about animation, you can create things that in reality, would be impossible. As Walt Disney once said;

“Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.”

When thinking of my storyline, I did some research into other animation shorts. In particular I looked at the storylines of Pixar.

La Luna

This short shows a boy on a small dingy boat with two men, one who looks like he could be his father and the other his granddad. Once they’re in the middle of the sea they throw the anchor over the side. They each try to convince the boy of the right way to wear his hat. They pull a ladder out of the boat that goes up to the moon, and they climb up on to in. On the moon, the boy sees that the moons shine is made up of shining stars. They then begin to start using brushes to sweep the stars along the surface of the moon.

A large star bigger then the others crashes into the moon. They try to move it but it is too big. The boy climbs up the star and when he gets to the top, taps it with a hammer. The star explodes into lots of the smaller stars and the boy falls down with them onto the moon surface. They continue to brush all the stars to the other side of the moon, before going back down the ladder to their boat. When they look up, the crescent moon shines.

-          3 simple characters

-          Fantasy style story

-          Shows them overcoming struggle

Day & Night

In this short there are two characters, one is Day and one is Night. When they first meet they don’t seem to like each other. Each of the characters has things happen inside their body that would normally happen in the day or night time. These things can express how they are feeling at the time. When things are happening to each of them, the other becomes jealous, and they fight. In the end they start to warm to each other. The short ends with them relating to each other, and they swap places.  

-          2 simple characters

-          Complex detail inside characters

-          Characters fight then make up

For The Birds

This short focuses on a group of birds that land on a telephone wire, and start to argue. After the fight a bit, a larger bird lands in the middle of them all. The smaller birds pick on the larger one because he is different. The big bird is so heavy that the wire comes all the way to the ground. The smaller birds slowly push the big bird off the wire. The birds suddenly realise what will happen when the big bird falls off the wire, but it is too late. The wire pings up into the sky and the birds are sent flying. The small birds all fall to the ground, they have all been plucked featherless by the speed they were sent off, and the large bird laughs at them.

-          Simple characters, 2 types of bird

-          Simple setting

-          Smaller bird characters are mean but get their comeuppance

I’ve come to the conclusion that the most successful stories are always fairly simple, and often play with humour and emotion.  The narrative is important but doesn’t necessarily have to contain any actual spoken word, and the audio is key. It’s very important to have the right sounds at the right time, and just in general think about each object/sound carefully, does it need to be there?