Pixar’s theatrical short films are one of the studio’s most beloved traditions, and they can trace their roots all the way back to 1984. Pixar has produced 20 official short films in total, most of which played in theaters before their feature films. The studio has recently deviated from this model, with more varied shorts now being released on Disney+ rather than in theaters. These new films include stories related to classic Pixar movies, and SparkShorts, which are produced by employees with the challenge of a set budget and time limit.

Pixar’s last official short film was 2018’s Bao, which played before Incredibles 2 in theaters. Many fans are hopeful that the studio will reinstate this tradition for Pixar’s upcoming projects, but there has been no indication that this is imminent. Pixar’s first short films were all about exploring and developing the medium of computer-generated animation, but they soon developed into more complex stories that could be laugh-out-loud funny or more tender and emotional.

20

The Adventures Of André & Wally B. (1984)

No theatrical release

The Adventures of André & Wally B. was Pixar’s very first short film, back when it was still known as the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project. By today’s standards, it looks, frankly, terrible, but this represented a groundbreaking technological leap 40 years ago. The film follows a strange blue boy with a red hat who wakes from a nap in the woods to find a pesky bee floating in front of his face.

The film wasn’t produced to entertain big audiences like Pixar’s modern shorts. It was just an exercise in developing technology and showcasing different animation techniques. In that regard, it was a roaring success, but The Adventures of André & Wally B. does very little for modern audiences who aren’t interested in the history of animation or the humble beginnings of Pixar.

19

Red’s Dream (1987)

No theatrical release

Like many of John Lasseter’s early Pixar shorts, Red’s Dream is more of an experiment in animation than anything else. There are a few hints which suggest that Lasseter was poking at the boundaries of the technology and his own artistic skill. Red’s Dream includes juggling, raindrops falling in a puddle, and dramatic shadows, all of which show a steady development from Pixar’s first short film.

Red is a unicycle relegated to the dark corner of a bicycle shop, marked at 50% off, presumably because they have 50% of the desired number of wheels for a bicycle. Red dreams of performing with a clown, but they wake up from this fantasy and solemnly squeak back to the corner. It’s an uncharacteristically sad ending for Pixar, but this emotional ending saves an otherwise uninteresting short.

18

Tin Toy (1988)

Released later with Toy Story’s VHS and DVD releases

Tin Toy features a toy one-man-band who tries to escape from a baby who plays with his toys a little too roughly. The success of Tin Toy laid the groundwork for Pixar’s longest-running and most profitable franchise, Toy Story. Although Toy Story 5 is now on its way, and the franchise has branched out into spinoffs with Lightyear, it can trace its roots back to this simplistic five-minute short film.

Tin Toy won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It was the first Pixar film and the first film using computer generated imagery to win the prize. Some parts of it have aged beautifully, like Tinny’s wordless expressions and the comedic cuts, but the big problem is Billy the baby. Billy sits deep in the uncanny valley. Pixar designed Tinny with plenty of character and charm, but Billy is supposed to be as realistic as possible, and this makes him look creepy and inhuman all these years later.

17

Lava (2014)

Released with Inside Out

Lava is a love story which spans millions of years, as a lonely volcanic island longs for someone special to share the ocean with. It features a song written by Lava‘s director, James Ford Murphy, which provides the perfect island vibes. Unfortunately, the lyrics of the song aren’t as sweet as the tune. Lava is fairly didactic with its information. It tells the audience everything rather than showing it in a more creative way.

It’s difficult to make a short film interesting when the only two characters are incapable of moving, but Pixar’s most creative films showcase a flair for making difficult things look easy. Lava lacks any real dynamism, as the characters are propelled by geothermal forces rather than their own motivations. It’s a gorgeous film, especially during the opening with two birds soaring over the lush island, but the story doesn’t live up to these high standards.

16

Sanjay’s Super Team (2015)

Released with The Good Dinosaur

Sanjay’s Super Team never reached the same audience that other Pixar shorts have, because it had the misfortune of being paired with The Good Dinosaur, one of Pixar’s rare box office flops. Fortunately, fans didn’t miss out on much, because Sanjay’s Super Team is a relatively weak offering. It follows a young boy who begins to empathize with his father’s religion by likening the Hindu gods in his shrine to the superheroes he sees on TV.

While the premise of seeing Hindu gods through the eyes of an adventurous child has a lot of potential, Sanjay’s Super Team fails to develop this idea. The bulk of the film is a colorful fight scene, which is not as dynamic or interesting as something like The Incredibles. The fight also has no stakes, because it’s clear that it’s taking place within Sanjay’s imagination. This, coupled with the fact that the powers of the gods and their opponent are completely unknown, makes it hard to engage with.

15

Geri’s Game (1997)

Released with A Bug’s Life

Pixar took a break from short films in the 1990s to work on other projects, including Toy Story, so Geri’s Game was their first short in eight years. It was also the first Pixar short to play in theaters before a feature film, kicking off a beloved tradition that is still alive and well. Geri’s Game uses a human protagonist, and Pixar worked hard to make sure that Geri’s skin and clothing were adequately lifelike.

Geri’s Game features an elderly man playing a game of chess against himself in a park. With each move, he gets up and sits at the other end of the board, adopting a completely different personality as he goes. While Geri is a charming protagonist – and antagonist – there’s a subtle tragedy to his isolation. The end of the film pulls back to highlight the fact that he is completely alone, playing games with himself to pass the time.

14

Luxo Jr. (1986)

Released later with Toy Story 2

Luxo Jr. is a static shot of two lamps of different sizes that runs for less than two minutes, but it perfectly crystallizes so much of what makes Pixar popular. With such simple everyday objects, there is humor, personality and story, all without any dialogue. Pixar’s “what if X had feelings” formula starts here, not with toys, cars or insects, but with a pair of Anglepoise lamps that somehow convey a parent-child relationship.

Pixar’s Luxo ball also makes its first appearance in this short film. The ball has become almost as iconic as the lamps themselves which appear in the company’s logo. Luxo Jr. left a lasting impact on Pixar, and its still an undeniably charming little film all these years later. It’s incredibly simple, but Pixar has often shown that simpler is better. Some light music and a sense of fun is all it takes to make an audience root for a small lamp.

13

Boundin’ (2003)

Released with The Incredibles

Before Boundin‘, no Pixar short film had used any dialogue, and they had all been aimed at making the audience laugh. Boundin’ still has some comedic touches, especially with the awkward physicality of the lamb, but it’s more concerned with delivering an optimistic message about taking life’s knocks and keeping positive. The jackalope character acts as a wise guide to the lamb.

Writer and director Bud Luckey also provides the folksy music for Boundin‘. It’s a sweet song, although it does occasionally stray on the wrong side of the line between cute and twee. Boundin’ can easily be forgiven its faults though, because its packed with visual treats, from the setting which evokes ballet or opera to the host of charming critters who watch the lamb’s dance.

12

Partly Cloudy (2009)

Released with Up

The idea that storks deliver babies has been around for centuries, and Partly Cloudy answers the question of where these babies come from. It features a stork who makes deliveries for a gray cloud, but while other storks get to deliver puppies and kittens, this cloud only creates dangerous animals that inevitably hurt the stork, including a crocodile, a porcupine and an electric eel.

Partly Cloudy has a fun concept, and the perennial sunset in the clouds creates some dreamy visuals. Unfortunately, the humor is rather thin, with most of the jokes coming from repetitive slapstick. The main joke in Partly Cloudy is that the stork repeatedly gets injured by the baby animals. This mediocre humor would be excusable if Partly Cloudy had a bigger emotional payoff. In the end, the stork goes to another cloud to get football pads to keep him safe. It’s a nice story of friendship, but it’s not much more.

11

La Luna (2011)

Released with Brave

Pixar has been struggling to return to sci-fi since the success of Wall-E, and La Luna seems like another attempt at doing something new with the genre. The coming-of-age story incorporates elements of magic and fantasy, as a young boy is guided by his father and grandfather as they sweep luminescent stars on the surface of the moon. The two men clearly have a fractious relationship, and the boy is the one who ultimately brings them all together.

La Luna shows off the best of Pixar’s simplistic, charming character design. The father is a broad man with a bristly mustache, so naturally he uses a bristled push broom. The grandfather has a long, bushy beard, so of course, he uses a rounder broom. These characters communicate in low, coarse grunts. Other Pixar shorts are much more creative with their sound. The lack of dialogue in La Luna seems like a rule that the filmmakers begrudgingly agreed to here, but it would probably have some dialogue if it were made by any other company.

10

Lifted (2007)

Released with Ratatouille

Lifted starts off like many classic alien abduction movies, with a man fast asleep, unaware that there is an enormous spaceship hovering above his house. Then, the ship’s tractor beam slams him into the wall of his bedroom, and it’s revealed that the ship is being operated by a rookie alien, being given some sort of test. This twist injects the epic sci-fi visuals of movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind with hilarious bathos.

Lifted is an intrinsically human story, even though it’s about two aliens. The larger alien has a clipboard and a permanent frown like a stern driving instructor, and the smaller one is a bundle of incompetence and anxiety. As well as treating aliens like humans, Lifted also succeeds by treating humans like objects, as the target of the abduction is tossed around like a ragdoll, and eventually yanked out of his window butt-first.

9

The Blue Umbrella (2013)

Released with Monsters University

The Blue Umbrella is one of Pixar’s shorts which is aimed directly at the heart. There aren’t many jokes, but the love story is still an upbeat crowdpleaser with a typically happy ending. Only Pixar could pull off a romance between two umbrellas. Somehow, The Blue Umbrella is genuinely sentimental without being too gimmicky. As people in gray clothing shuffle around the rain-beaten streets of New York City, The Blue Umbrella shows that its about urban isolation as much as it is about umbrellas.

Comparing The Blue Umbrella to some of Pixar’s earliest works shows how far the company has developed. The city scene is astonishingly realistic, to the point that it often looks as if the only animation work involved is digitally painting two cute faces onto the umbrellas. The umbrellas aren’t the only anthropomorphized objects in the city though, as traffic lights, mailboxes and rain gutters all smile at each other without the humans noticing.

8

Day & Night (2010)

Released with Toy Story 3

Day & Night blends 2D animation with Pixar’s traditional 3D style. It features two embodiments of day and night. When they first bump into each other, they have a fight over who is superior, but they soon learn to love what the other represents. Day loves the bright lights and fireworks he can see at night, and Night is a big fan of the women sunbathing by the pool in the daytime.

Pixar often sneaks adult jokes into its films, hiding them in creative ways that make them even more of a treat for people who are old enough to understand them. Day & Night is so boundlessly inventive that it delivers a couple of these amid a constant stream of other creative quirks. The sounds all come from the images too. When Day has to pee, he runs over to a waterfall, and Night uses the sounds of wolves and dolphins to communicate.

7

For The Birds (2001)

Released with Monster’s Inc.

For the Birds is representative of everything that makes a Pixar short film so distinct. It uses cute visuals and sounds to tell a sweet story without any dialogue. As a row of squabbling birds perch on a wire, they are met by a big, goofy heron who wants to be their friend. For the Birds is a story about an outsider, but it has a set-up and punchline instead of an emotional journey for the big bird.

Although Pixar pioneered 3D animation, For the Birds works so well because of its flat shot composition. Almost the entire short film uses a perspective directly facing the row of birds. This makes it even funnier when it breaks this rule to show the small birds huddled together in fear. For the Birds is all about revealing information piece by piece, and it resembles a comic strip in this way.

6

Bao (2018)

Released with Incredibles 2

Bao is about a mother whose life changes when one of her homemade dumplings comes to life. Her journey in taking care of the dumpling mirrors a mother’s relationship with her child, as she worries and loves the dumpling, only for him to slowly turn away from her as he grows. The dumpling is soon revealed to be a stand-in for her actual, human son, and they begin to patch up their damaged relationship.

Bao is about the sacrifices of parenthood, but it’s also about the power of food to bring people together and create memories that last a lifetime. Bao is tender and complex without being too on-the-nose. It also has one of Pixar’s greatest twists, which usually work better in longer films, but Bao fits a lot of story into its short runtime. It uses an extended montage to show the years whizzing by as the mother cares for her dumpling, and this makes the moment when everything slows down much more powerful.

5

Lou (2017)

Released with Cars 3

Lou is Pixar at its most playful and flashy, as the protagonist is a silent mass of objects that shifts and changes form constantly. Lou also has a great Pixar villain, J.J. the bully, who has an emotional journey, a tragic backstory, and a redemption arc all squeezed into just a few minutes. J.J. starts off by stealing toys on the playground, but the creature who inhabits the lost and found box, Lou, teaches him a lesson.

J.J. and Lou’s chase scene is filled with creative twists and turns, as Lou utilizes more objects from his ever-evolving mass to try and get the upper hand. In the end, Lou has to appeal to J.J.’s emotional side, and this reflects how Lou transitions seamlessly from fast-paced humor to a heartwarming ending. Lou may be gone by the end, but he has served his purpose, and J.J. is a better person.

4

Piper (2016)

Released with Finding Dory

Piper is the perfect mixture of humor and heart, and it distills the Pixar formula into a hugely enjoyable six minutes. It’s a lot funnier than any of Pixar’s short films had been for a long time, but it’s also utterly heartwarming. Piper follows a young sandpiper taking her first tentative steps out onto the beach where she has to overcome her fear of the ocean so she can feed herself.

Piper‘s photorealistic style makes some shots look like a nature documentary, but Piper herself is an adorable ball of fluff with plenty of animated personality. The adult sandpipers look more naturalistic and therefore less relatable. This means that Piper stands out, both visually and emotionally. She’s inquisitive and easy to root for. Piper was the perfect accompaniment to Finding Dory in theaters.

3

Knick Knack (1989)

Released later with Finding Nemo

Knick is a grumpy snowman trapped inside a snow globe from Alaska, but he tries to break free when a sunbathing souvenir from Miami catches his eye from across the shelf. Knick tries using a jackhammer, a blowtorch, dynamite, and several other Wile E. Coyote-style inventions that all inevitably backfire. Knick’s repeated failures are reminiscent of Tom and Jerry or other classic cartoons.

Knick Knack is the first Pixar short which feels worthy of playing before a movie in theaters. It’s lighthearted and genuinely funny, and the punchlines pile up beautifully in the final minute as Knick’s fortunes repeatedly flip between good and bad. Rather than pushing the limits of animation like most of the earliest Pixar films, Knick Knack works within these limits. This gives it a timeless charm, so it’s no surprise that it was released with Finding Nemo, a full 14 years after it was produced, and it still held up.

2

One Man Band (2006)

Released with Cars

Michael Giacchino has composed film scores for many of Pixar’s biggest hits, including The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Up. He also created the music for One Man Band, a delightful short film about two dueling musicians who compete for a coin from a young girl. The music is as important as any character here, as it becomes increasingly chaotic and complex as the musicians try to one-up each other.

The visual designs of the characters complement their musical styles perfectly, painting a contrast between the rakish, elegant man with a string section on his back and the clumsy, stout percussionist. The irony is that they sound best when they work together. The only problem with One Man Band is that the musical battle is so captivating that it makes the aftermath feel like a letdown, as the girl outdoes them both with a single violin, only to toss two shiny coins into a fountain.

1

Presto (2008)

Released with Wall-E

Presto is about a stage magician with a real magical hat, but the rabbit he plans to pull out of it is less than cooperative. Alec Azam goes on strike until he gets his carrot, and this labor dispute escalates until Presto has had his fingers in an electrical socket, a ladder slammed into his groin, and his pants removed in front of a huge audience. Ultimately, the two realize that they make a great team when they work together.

Presto has an incredible number of visual gags packed into its five-minute runtime, and it manages to keep them feeling fresh despite the fact that they mostly share the same premise. Presto uses the magic hat in more new and inventive ways than seemed possible at first, and its grand finale makes it the perfect curtain-raiser for the feature film that follows. No other Pixar short provides such an appropriate warm-up act.