100 Greatest Animated Shorts / Introduction
Every Thursday, Skwigly will be bringing you a new series of articles: ‘100 Greatest Animated Shorts’…
This collection contains films under 30 minutes in length, in no particular order, using any form of animation technique and from anywhere in the world. There are no TV episodes and although music videos are included, for the purposes of this list I’m going with Bill Hicks and considering all advertising off the artistic roll call.
This list will try to balance how a film stands up to viewing now, in 2010, against its historical importance. This may be questionable, subjective, impossible and even heretic but Ill try and explain it like this. When I was a kid I had a book about the history of horror films, which I loved, but what annoyed me about it was how it pretty much said all the old Universal movies were great while the modern horror films were trash. Now as far as I could see, while a lot of the old classics were indeed great, most of them seemed slow moving with clunky dialogue, primitive effects and the ones with Abbot and Costello were just stupid. A lot of the new ones were in fact trash of course, but a lot of them were great too. I just thought the book needed more balance and open mindedness- it was like a lecture from an old person about ‘the good old days’. On the other hand we don’t want another list like one of those TV polls where everything is from the last few decades and Star Wars is always number one.
The animated short has changed a lot though from the days when it meant a few minutes of cartoon fun with Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck or Popeye. A short film is usually no longer about making money, it exists outside the commercial world. The best of the ones made by big companies like Pixar are used to explore original ideas, experiment with techniques and take risks, as well as to promote the company, but shorts are more often now made by individuals or small teams making their bid for recognition. In the digital age the low cost of powerful home computers means that there are now more short films made than ever before. The downside is that a lot of shorts, mostly the ones made for showreels, can be flashy empty superficial show off pieces. Self-indulgence can also set in when finding an audience becomes unimportant. If we can cut through all the ego trips and training exercises however, a lot of the greatest animated films have been shorts and a lot of these have been largely unseen. One of the great things about the age of the internet is that most of these can now be watched online.
So this is just an opinion of the 100 greatest animated shorts and like all opinions it can be changed by the views of others. Films can be removed from the list as well as added, there’s a million great films I’m not even aware of. All suggestions, comments and outrage are welcome but please don’t shoot me, its only a list.