The short film has been a staple format of animation since its inception. For decades, it was the primary showcase for cartoons outside the Disney camp. Today, whether they’re the rare short attached to a theatrical release, playing on the festival circuit, or showcased online, animated shorts act as a splashy exhibit for up-and-coming talent and unique experiments in style, form, and narrative.
The animation community of Ireland has made its mark through the television services and feature films, and its catalog of animated shorts is just as rich. Here are ten of the best, and where to watch them.
Midnight Dance (1997)
Spooky subjects set to music: it’s a common situation in cartoons. Whether it’s “The Skeleton Dance” of Disney’s Silly Symphonies or Betty Boop’s “Minnie the Moocher,” animators love them some melodically motivated specters. “Midnight Dance,” the work of director John McCloskey for Northern Ireland’s Raw Nerve Productions, is essentially the same story as “The Skeleton Dance:” On a moonlit night, a bunch of skeletons…well, dance, with a little torment of a poor dreamer thrown in. But McCloskey’s choice of music, “Danse Macabre” by Camille Sait-Saëns, is a more sweeping composition than Disney’s accompaniment. “Midnight Dance” is also far more ambitious with its animation, both in the sweeping movement of the “camera” wherein every element is drawn frame by frame, and in its unique production method. All the drawings were transferred onto gray sugar paper and then hand-colored with a limited palette. If the speed of the film’s movement can sometimes leave gags and a sense of orientation behind, the styling pops from beginning to end.
WHERE TO WATCH: Raw Nerve host the film on their YouTube channel.
The Last Elk (1998)
Brown Bag Films has built up an impressive portfolio with its animation services for Nickelodeon, Disney, Netflix, and PBS among others. But their work in television shouldn’t overshadow the short films they’ve created and serviced. A commission by RTE and the Irish Film Board, “The Last Elk” is concerned with just that, the passing of the last wild elk of Ireland. The story is straightforward, but it’s the presentation that sets this film apart. The forest landscapes pair naturalistic colors with whimsical stylization, while the elk themselves are like something out of a Salvador Dalí painting. Headless, spindle-legged, and paired with musical instruments that die as they die, the elk nevertheless have majestic and naturalistic movement to them.
WHERE TO WATCH: Brown Bag Films host the film on their website.
Give Up Yer Aul Sins (2000)
This Brown Bag effort originated well before the studio existed. A series of recordings from the 1960s of schoolchildren reciting Bible stories was rediscovered and released as a best-selling soundtrack. Brown Bag adapted young Mary’s recounting of the story of John the Baptist. In keeping with the aged quality of the soundtrack, the studio went as far as animating scratches and holes in the “film” of their cartoon. The results netted Brown Bag their first Oscar nomination. It’s a sweet little short, but it does feel as if it were one in a series rather than a standalone, as indeed it was. And, indeed, as it became: Brown Bag would later adapt more of the recordings into a series for RTE.
WHERE TO WATCH: Brown Bag hosts the original short on their website.
From Darkness (2002)
Cartoon Saloon have won international renown for their Irish folklore trilogy, three feature films co-written and directed by Tomm Moore exploring facets of the country’s native mythology. But several years before the trilogy began with The Secret of Kells, the studio drew from Inuit folklore for their first theatrical short, “From Darkness.” You can see the roots of their distinctive character design in the short, though the backgrounds here are much more sparse than what would come later. It’s an appropriate choice for the austere environment of the piece. The story is a rather gothic tale of murder and resurrection. Its ending can feel rather abrupt, but the journey there is in turns beautiful and haunting.
WHERE TO WATCH: Cartoon Saloon host the short on their YouTube channel.
Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty (2008)
By the nature of her fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty is the stakes before she’s the protagonist, but few versions spend as little time on her as the one told by old Granny O’Grimm. She’s far more interested in the Elderly Fairy, the one not invited to the christening, the one who, in Granny’s imagination, bears a certain resemblance to the storyteller. This angle allows for an airing of all the grievances Granny nurses as a senior member of the community – but it’s not exactly the bedtime story her granddaughter was hoping for! This 2D-CGI combination, inspired by the work of comedienne Kathleen O’Rourke (who provides Granny’s voice) is a hilariously inappropriate take on a classic, and it brought Brown Bag Films another Oscar nom.
WHERE TO WATCH: Brown Bag host the short on their website.
The Gentleman’s Guide to Villainy (2010)
Great shorts need not be connected to a production company. Animator Aidan McAteer has worked for Brown Bag, Cartoon Saloon, Boulder Media and others in various capacities, but he’s made several animated shorts on his own time. “The Gentleman’s Guide to Villainy” is a short and sweet parody of silent melodrama clichés. The instructional video format is a great springboard for gags, while the 2D animation plays out in silhouettes marked by few key details. The effect is almost a throwback to shadow puppetry – though not many puppet shows could pull off the hapless villain’s final blunder with quite the same punch as traditional animation.
WHERE TO WATCH: McAteer hosts the short on his Vimeo.
The Ledge End of Phil (From Accounting) (2013)
Cartoon Saloon’s work doesn’t lack for humor, but they tend toward more subtle and motivated sources for laughs than the broad antics so often used in animation. “The Ledge End of Phil (From Accounting)” is probably their most traditionally cartoony work in concept and execution, and it’s one of their most unique stylistic efforts. The character designs remind me a little of Sylvain Chomet’s work, particularly the hapless bird that makes itself at home in Phil’s office while he’s trapped out on the ledge. But not even this wacky short lacks Cartoon Saloon’s penchant for introspection, spiritual feeling, and a brave leap away from a boxed-in life.
WHERE TO WATCH: The short is hosted by the IFI archive.
Deadly (2014)
One of the boons to Irish filmmakers working in animated shorts is the Frameworks scheme, created to provide funding up to €27,000 for such projects. It benefited many of the titles on this list, including this one: Kavaleer Productions’ “Deadly.” Another project by McAteer, it’s a laid-back and good-humored look into a working man grim reaper’s unlikely friendship with a woman at a nursing home, spiced with an unexpected tribute to Fred Astaire. A combination of hand-drawn elements animated with Flash, gone over with another hand-drawn line frame by frame, offer a unique feel to the movement of the characters, particularly during those Astaire dance nods. We’ve recommended “Deadly” before as a Halloween short, but there’s no reason you can’t give it a watch any time of year.
WHERE TO WATCH: McAteer hosts the short on his Vimeo.
Late Afternoon (2017)
If “The Ledge End of Phil (From Accounting)” saw Cartoon Saloon veer off in one direction, “Late Afternoon” takes them down another. The characters here are soft and round, the color saturation carefully controlled, the backgrounds impressionistic and changing. It reminded me of Ludwig Bemelmans’ illustrations for the Madeline books when I first saw it, but this design scheme came from director Louise Bagnall to serve a story “about the inner life of a woman.” With that woman struggling to connect her past and present, it’s a poignant short, but also gorgeous to watch and uplifting in the end. It brought Cartoon Saloon an Oscar nomination in 2019.
WHERE TO WATCH: RTE and Screen Ireland have made the short available here.
The Bird and the Whale (2018)
We began this list with a film made in an unconventional manner, and so we end it. “The Bird and the Whale” is the first short film by Paper Panther Productions (my vote for best-animated studio name) executed through a painstaking animation technique: paint on glass. Each frame of the film was a fully-rendered oil painting. Working this way, there’s no flipping through drawings on a light table to help maintain form and no onion skin tool to help track movement; each new frame means wiping away the old one. The short holds together nicely and features some fine whimsical flourishes to its animation in the sinking debris of a shipwreck. It’s the friendship of the two lost animals of the title that’s at the heart of the picture, however, and it’s the sort of heartstring-tugging bond that animation of any kind does so well.
WHERE TO WATCH: The short is available for purchase through Apple TV.