Nibbles (2003)

Based on the true story of a father who takes his sons on a fishing trip in the untamed forests of Montreal, this hilarious animated short by Academy Award-nominated director Chris Hinton is a paean to the joys of family travel and the multiple wonders of fast food.



Displaying Hinton's trademark wacky humor and unique graphic style, this film captures the primal and carnal serenity of fishing, mixing the soothing harmonies of nature with the powerful desire for food consumption along the way. For parents, the true essence of family travel is driven home with riveting clarity.

The Meatrix (Annecy 2004 Netsurfers Award for Short Films)

With this short, Free Range Studios wants to criticize the methods of industrial agriculture and to encourage consumers to purchase organic food products and free-range meats.
In early 2003, Free Range Graphics invited nonprofit groups around the country to submit proposals for their first-ever Free Range Flash Activism Grant. After reviewing 50 proposals, Free Range awarded the grant to the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE), an organization committed to halting factory farms and promoting sustainable agriculture. Their decision to spoof The Matrix was based on the similarities between the film and today’s corporate system of agriculture.



Leo, a pig on a seemingly bucolic family farm, is approached by Moopheus, an anthropomorphic bull. Moopheus shows Leo that the farm he has known is an illusion, and that he is really trapped in a horrific factory farm. Leo and Moopheus then work to break out of the Meatrix and help others do the same, with some help from a third character, Chickity..
In 2006, Free Range studios also released two sequels: The Meatrix II: Revolting and The Meatrix: II and 1/2.
The Meatrix will be the best parody flash animation with a political message you've ever watched!

Measles (2007)

Measles won the Public Choice award at the British Animation Awards 2008. It's animated by Sweetworld TV, directed by Lisle Turner and written by Robin Ince and Neil Redmond.
Usually I don't enjoy commercial films but it is worthywhile watching this short. It's a funny cartoon with an important message: every day someone dies. Did you ever ask yourselves how many lives can be spared? Amnecy International estimates that in 2010 more people are going to be killed by armed conflict than by diseases!

The visual style is impressive: the contrast between the coloured germs and the black and white scenes give the germs more humanity than mankind. In the animation and the filmmaking there are references to Lyonel Kouro's F.A.E.L.L.

Trembled Blossom

During the past edition of NY fashion week, Prada presented an incredibile short-film, Trembled Blossoms, during a wonderful party to introduce their new collection. This animated movie captures the essence of Prada's Spring/Summer 2008 Collection.
An army of CGI operatives were enlisted to show Prada's alien morphing from a Lalique-like blossom, through a pastel coloured meadow and into a splendid, seductive glade, where she meets Pan. The fashion element is subtle yet cleverly handled. Directed by the performance artist James Luna, animated by Sight Effects and based on James Jean's Nouveau-esque wallpaper seen in the ad campaign, the film is an ambitious narrative fantasy depicting a nude alien's journey through a magical, illustrated forest.

She begins as a sort of pale neuter alien wearing nothing but PRADA heels and then a mysterious character emerges from the trees and clothes her in the stand-out red and blue check sheath dress from the S/S '08 collection. Next, Pan shows her how tropical fish can be transformed into multi-coloured PRADA handbags in the shimmering pool at the heart of the wood. Clothes and accessories that appear by magic!
Illustrator James Jean has posted some of the concept artwork that he created for Trembled Blossom.

Coldcut - Just For the Kick (2006)

Lucy Izzard won the BBC's New Talent New Animation competition in 2005 with her Tea Total. This short film was screened at Antenna in London and attracted the attention of UK audio visual legends Coldcut, who asked Lucy to make a video for them.

She didn't have a huge amount of time to get it done, so she enlisted two fellow animators, Matt Latchford and Lucy Sullivan, from her Illustration/Animation course at London’s Kingston University. They formed an art collective together under the name Smuggling Peanuts.


It took the trio two weeks to come up with all the ideas in the video and then three weeks of hard work completing the entirely hand drawn animation on laptops in each other’s flats.

Coldcut - Just For the Kick is a pop video in which there is a clear key element: the quest of young people for popularity. You can find many references to the 70's and 80's generation. Their desire to be photographed, to be watched while they "exhibit" themselves is evident. There's also a sense of anger and alienation in this video. Can people survive this kind of life?

Sukkis' Story (2005)

Sukki's Story reflects on Thomas Leung's changing relationship with his mother when he leaves Hong Kong to start his new life in a new country. The narration is often non-linear as we are unsure of where Sukki's new life will take him or what obstacles lie ahead in the future which could lead to an inner and/or imaginative journey.

This short film has won the Victorian Student Animation Festival 2005 for Best Sound Design. It has also been selected as part of the Australian Digital Shorts Program at the Sydney Film Festival 2006.
You can feel the sorrow and the joy the scenes bring. It is a simple and yet powerful film with a soul. It's not just a story. It's an incredible animation for its magical atmosphere and tenderness!

I Met The Walrus (2007)

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. In 2007 using the actual audio he recorded during his meeting with John Lennon, filmmaker Josh Raskin recounts his experience in his short “I Met The Walrus”. A six-minute animated film in which John Lennon talks about global conflict and the need for peace. The idea for an animated movie jelled three years ago, when he met the young Toronto filmmaker Raskin.


This short film, directed by Toronto's Josh Raskin, earned an Academy Award nomination for best animated short. Raskin combines traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message. The style of the drawing is modelled on Beatle's era animation for movies such as Yellow Submarine.
The Walrus is an extremely timely revisiting of Lennon’s revolutionary freedom of thought with razor sharp yet artful deconstructions of the military-industrial complex. This narrative tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multi-pronged animation.

The World of Stainboy (2000)

The World of Stainboy is a series of flash animation shorts created in 2000 by director Tim Burton and animated by Flinch Studios. Each of the six episodes is under five minutes in length.The character Stainboy first appeared in two short poems in the book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, also created and illustrated by Tim Burton.
It is difficult to describe what Stainboy is. It's impossible to have a clear idea of what this tale is about. What we can say is that the series is a parody of superheroes, where superheroes are simply strange creatures, and that Stainboy is another one of Burton's darkly mischievous and funny creations. In the shorts, Stainboy works for the Burbank police, and at the beginning of each episode he is ordered to investigate and bring in social outcasts. Many of the outcasts are characters from the Oyster Boy book.
If you have appreciated this episode, you can download the other episodes.

Who I Am and What I Want (2005)

Who I Am and What I Want is a 7 minute animated short directed by Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley in 2005. It's based on the David Shrigley book of the same title.

The quirky funny black and white animation was commissioned in 2004 by the Animate! project. It was co-directed by David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd and animated by Alan Andrews, Siren Halvorsen, Ellen Kleiven.

David Shrigley's book of the same title had a story which featured a narrative and a fictional autobiography. No aspect of his insignificant life, as he deems it, is spared: Pete shares his deepest and darkest wishes, fears and thoughts. It is the story of a man who bares his emotions, history, hang ups and desires in all of their dysfunctional absurdity and then leaves us to assemble not only his identity but to question our own. Despite his eccentricities, a very strange paternal relationship and a spell in the nuthouse, Pete’s really one of us.

A psychoanalitical story which won more than ten short film awards.

It's a unique, weird and short film.Who I Am and What I Want will surprise you, because you're not sure what's going to happen: you could be scared of it, or you could really connect with it!