Start with World of Tomorrow, Don Hertzfeldt's 16-minute 2015 short — a festival landmark widely ranked among the best animated shorts ever made, and available on its own through the filmmaker's own distribution. Each of the eight films here runs under 30 minutes, several are Academy Award winners, and the whole list totals about two hours. It's the animation equivalent of a short-story collection, and it's the best two hours a busy fan can spend.
SSS Comics publishes viewing guides from documented release information — availability changes, so check current digital storefronts.
Why watch shorts at all?
Because the short form is where animation does its purest experiments. Without feature-length pacing obligations, animators test techniques, tones, and ideas that later reshape the whole medium — many of Pixar's landmark technologies debuted in shorts before features. For viewers, shorts are low-commitment, high-density: a complete artistic statement between sips of coffee.
What are the eight films and how long is each?
As documented by the Academy and the studios' own catalogs:
- Bao (Pixar, 2018) — 7 minutes. Domee Shi's Oscar winner about a mother and a dumpling that comes to life; it preceded Incredibles 2 in theaters.
- Piper (Pixar, 2016) — 6 minutes. A sandpiper chick learns the shore; Oscar winner, directed by Alan Barillaro.
- Paperman (Disney, 2012) — 6 minutes. Black-and-white Manhattan romance that blended 2D and 3D workflows; Oscar winner.
- Feast (Disney, 2014) — 6 minutes. A romance told through a terrier's meals; Oscar winner, directed by Patrick Osborne.
- World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015) — 16 minutes. A clone recounts humanity's future to her original; grand jury prize at Sundance isn't on its shelf, but near-universal critical placement on best-of-the-decade lists is.
- The House of Small Cubes (Kunio Katō, 2008) — 12 minutes. A flooded town, a stacked house, a memory per level; Japan's first Oscar win in the short animation category in decades.
- Dear Basketball (Glen Keane, 2017) — 5 minutes. Keane's Oscar-winning hand-drawn farewell to the sport, animated in pencil-inspired style.
- If Anything Happens I Love You (Will McCormack and Michael Govier, 2020) — 12 minutes. A wordless Netflix short about grief that won the Oscar in 2021.
Which one should I watch first?
World of Tomorrow for ambition, Bao for emotion in miniature, Piper for pure technical craft. Hertzfeldt's film is the list's centerpiece because it does what only animation can: renders abstract memory and future history as simple figures on flat color fields, and lands harder than most features manage in a hundred minutes. The Pixar and Disney entries, by contrast, are precision instruments — each one a studio proving a new pipeline or a new director, which is exactly how Domee Shi went from Bao to directing the feature Turning Red (2022).
Are these safe for kids?
Mostly. The Pixar and Disney shorts are family viewing without qualification. World of Tomorrow is philosophical but clean, suitable for older kids. If Anything Happens I Love You deals with school-shooting grief and is squarely adult viewing — beautiful, but choose the moment for it.
Where do these usually live?
Streaming rights for shorts rotate constantly — Pixar's shorts have been bundled on Disney+, Hertzfeldt sells his work directly through his own site and digital storefronts, and the Japanese and independent entries move between services. Rather than promising a home, check the current storefront for each title; the one stable fact is that none of them requires a feature-length commitment.
Eight films, roughly two hours, five Oscars among them. Queue them for a slow Sunday, or ration them one coffee break at a time — shorts forgive interruption, and each one still lands whole.
How do I find more shorts after these eight?
The pipeline is public and reliable. Every year's Academy Award shortlist and winners put a new batch of animated shorts on the map each winter, and the nominated shorts have historically toured theaters as a compiled program — the easiest single ticket in film for catching five nominees in one sitting. Festival winners from Sundance, Annecy, and Ottawa Animation Festival supply the auteur track, and dedicated short-film platforms plus the studios' own collections keep back catalogs available. If you enjoyed World of Tomorrow, note it became the first entry in a series of sequels Hertzfeldt released through 2020 — same filmmaker, same direct-distribution model, same 15-to-20-minute scale.
One viewing habit worth building: when a new animated feature premieres, check what short preceded it in theaters. Studios still use that slot to debut new work, exactly as Bao and Piper debuted — you're watching the next generation of directors audition for their features.
Why do studios still fund shorts?
Because they pay twice. A short costs a fraction of a feature, proves a technology or a filmmaker, and earns goodwill and awards that reflect on the whole studio. Every technical leap those Pixar and Disney shorts showcase was a feature pipeline's test run under audience conditions — the short takes the risk so the movie doesn't. For the audience, that makes shorts a rare deal: you watch the industry's experiments at their most daring, in the smallest possible package.
Can I share these with someone who says they don't like animation?
Yes, and shorts are the best tool for it. The objection is almost always to animation's time commitment and genre habits, not to the medium itself — and a six-minute film can't trigger either. Start someone skeptical on Piper or Paperman: no dialogue barrier, no fandom context, a complete emotional arc before their skepticism finishes forming. Follow with Bao if it lands. Save World of Tomorrow for the second session — its abstraction works better once a viewer has accepted that animation can hold adult feeling. By film three, the conversation usually stops being about animation at all, which is the entire point: these eight movies make the case for the medium precisely by refusing to argue it.
For more context, read How to Watch Star Wars Animation in Release Order.
For more context, read why adult animation boomed.
For more context, read What Separates a Great Comics-to-Animation Adaptation.