In a Heartbeat is a 2017 computer-animated short film produced by Ringling College of Art and Design. Written and directed by Esteban Bravo and Beth David, the project was funded through Kickstarter, raising $14,191 from 416 backers on a goal of $3,000. The short film concerns a closeted gay boy, Sherwin who has a crush on another boy named Jonathan and his heart desires to be with him. The short received wide praise on various platforms and was shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Animation studio Simpals produced its fourth short animated film Dji: Death fails.
Dji is an unusual death. The Dark Knight has appeared in a different form. No, he is not white and fluffy. Dji is just terribly unlucky. All he has to do is to take the soul of a dying man. But the screenwriters prepared some obstacles for Dji. Will he manage to overcome them? You’ll see.
One of the very first computer animated shorts. Nominated for an Oscar. In this animated short, director Peter Foldès depicts one man’s descent into greed and gluttony. Rapidly dissolving and ever-evolving images create a contrast between abundance and want. One of the first films to use computer animation, this satire serves as a cautionary tale against self-indulgence in a world still plagued by hunger and poverty.
Hunger/La Faim is a 1973 animated short film produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It was directed by Peter Foldes and is one of the first computer animation films. The story, told without words, is a morality tale about greed and gluttony in contemporary society.
Peter Foldes worked in collaboration with the National Research Council’s Division of Radio and Electrical Engineering’s Data Systems Group, who decided to develop a computer animation application in 1969. NRC scientist Nestor Burtnyk had heard an animator from Disney explain the traditional animation process, where a head animator draws the key cels and assistants draw the fill in pictures. The work of the artist’s assistant seemed to Burtnyk to be the ideal demonstration vehicle for computer animation and within a year he programmed a “key frame animation” package to create animated sequences from key frames. The NFB in Montreal was contacted so that artists could experiment with computer animation. Foldes made a 1971 experimental film involving freehand drawings called Metadata. This was followed by Hunger, which took him and his NRC partners a year and a half to make. It cost $38,893 (equivalent to $233,358 in 2021) to create.
Technological Threat is a 1988 American animated short made by Brian Jennings and Bill Kroyer and was produced by Kroyer Films. It was an example of early computer animation, integrated with traditional animation, and is itself an allegory for the threat computer animation represented to traditional animators at the time. The robots and backgrounds were drawn based on computer-generated 3D models, while the dogs and wolves were drawn by hand.
Daffy’s Rhapsody is a 2012 3D computer-animated Looney Tunes short film featuring the characters Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. Directed by Matthew O’Callaghan and written by Tom Sheppard, the film is an adaptation of the song of the same name which was sung by Mel Blanc and recorded in the 1950s by Capitol Records.
Elmer Fudd goes to see an anti-duck hunting musical starring Daffy Duck to which upon seeing Daffy as the star of the show, his hunter instincts kick in and he chases Daffy throughout the short while Daffy (whilst singing to the tune of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2) is initially unaware of Elmer but soon realizes the danger.
Starring Mel Blanc as Daffy Duck and Billy West as Elmer Fudd.
Destino is an animated short film released in 2003 by Walt Disney. Destino is unique in that its production originally began in 1945, 58 years before its eventual completion. The project was originally a collaboration between Walt Disney and Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, and features music written by Mexican songwriter Armando Domínguez and performed by Mexican singer Dora Luz. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2003.
The short was intended to be one of the segments for the proposed but never completed third Fantasia film.
Destino was storyboarded by Disney studio artist John Hench and artist Salvador Dalí for eight months in late 1945 and 1946. However, production ceased not long after. Walt Disney Studios was plagued by many financial woes in the World War II era. Hench compiled a short animation test of about 17 seconds in the hopes of rekindling Disney’s interest in the project, but the production was no longer deemed financially viable and put on indefinite hiatus.
In 1999, Walt Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney, while working on Fantasia 2000, unearthed the dormant project and decided to bring it back to life. Bette Midler’s host sequence for The Steadfast Tin Soldier also makes mention of Destino. Disney Studios France, the company’s small Parisian production department, was brought on board to complete the project. The short was produced by Baker Bloodworth and directed by French animator Dominique Monfréy in his first directorial role. A team of approximately 25 animators deciphered Dalí and Hench’s cryptic storyboards (with a little help from the journals of Dalí’s wife, Gala Dalí and guidance from Hench himself), and finished Destino‘s production. The end result is mostly traditional animation, including Hench’s original footage, but it also contains some computer animation.
Raya and the Last Dragon is an upcoming American computer-animated adventure fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Animation Studios for distribution by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The 59th film produced by the studio, it is directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, co-directed by Paul Briggs and John Ripa produced by Osnat Shurer and Peter Del Vecho, written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, and music score composed by James Newton Howard. The film features an almost-entirely Asian American cast, including the voices of Kelly Marie Tran as the titular Raya and Awkwafina as Sisu, the last dragon, along with Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh, Benedict Wong, Izaac Wang, Thalia Tran, and Alan Tudyk.
Raya and the Last Dragon is scheduled to be released theatrically in the United States on March 5, 2021. The film will also be simultaneously available on Disney+ with Premier Access, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s negative impact on movie theatres across the United States, with many of them remaining closed.
