WDAS Short Circuit

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D82
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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Sotiris wrote:A new batch of shorts will be released on July 30, 2021.
That's great! I thought we would have to wait much longer for a second batch.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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D82 wrote:I thought we would have to wait much longer for a second batch.
As it turns out we will. At least, a little while longer. The release date has been pushed back to August 04, 2021. Also, the second batch will only consist of five shorts.
“Short Circuit” (Season 2 Premiere)

If you could tell any story with the team of talented artists at Walt Disney Animation Studios, what would you create? Welcome to Short Circuit, an experimental, innovative program where anyone at the Studio can pitch an idea and get selected to create their own short film. Season 2 features five all-new short films.
Source: https://dmedmedia.disney.com/news/summe ... adventures
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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^ Well, it's just a few days later, but it's disappointing that there'll be just five shorts this time. I would've preferred to wait a bit more and get a similar number of shorts as the first time. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to watching these five shorts.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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The five shorts in the upcoming batch have been revealed. Notably absent is "A Kite's Tale". Out of the five, one of them is 2D (Dinosaur Barbarian) while another is a 2D/CG hybrid (Songs to Sing in the Dark).

Here's Your First Look at 'Short Circuit' Season 2, Streaming on Disney Plus
https://www.etonline.com/heres-your-fir ... ive-168798

Disney’s Experimental Shorts Return in ‘Short Circuit’ Season 2
https://www.awn.com/animationworld/disn ... t-season-2

Disney Animation’s experimental Short Circuit program is building up new directors
https://disneyexaminer.com/2021/08/03/d ... directors/

'Short Circuit' Animators Liza Rhia, Jacob Frey And Ryan Green On Making The Leap To Directing Shorts For Disney+
https://www.slashfilm.com/583139/short- ... interview/
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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Do you know if the running time is the same as before? (2 or 3 minutes?)

I’m dying to watch these and the previous batch. Hopefully I’ll be able to in the future.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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Finally a hand-drawn animated short! :D I almost can't believe it. It's the first since Get a Horse! in 2013, right? I hope it's not an exception and they keep making more. I also hope A Kite's Tale is not forgotten and they release it as part of a future batch. The five shorts in this batch sound interesting and I'm surprised by the wide range of visual styles; they couldn't look more different from one another.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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Poster, trailer, and featurette for the newest batch of shorts.

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Source: https://twitter.com/DisneyAnimation/sta ... 2333018116


Synopses for each short.
Dinosaur Barbarian
Directed by Kim Hazel
Battling evil is all in a day's work for Dinosaur Barbarian, but what about taking out the trash? Sometimes even a superhero needs to clean up his act.

Going Home
Directed by Jacob Frey
A story about growing up and the meaning of home in which a young adult repeatedly visits his hometown, but with every new arrival he starts to face the inevitable: change.

Crosswalk
Directed by Ryan Green
A law-abiding citizen must find his inner strength to cross the street at a light that won't change.

Songs to Sing in the Dark
Directed by Riannon Delanoy
Two creatures living in the depths of a dark cave engage in a battle of acoustic one-upmanship. As things escalate, they come to realize that they are stronger together.

No. 2 to Kettering
Directed by Liza Rhea
On a dreary, ordinary morning, a girl learns how the power of laughter can lift even the most sullen among her fellow bus riders along their journey to Kettering.
Source: https://dmedmedia.disney.com/disney-plus/short-circuit
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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Loving the full, bouncy animation of Dinosaur Barbarian!

That is one Chris Sandersesque feline! :D
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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Jules wrote:Loving the full, bouncy animation of Dinosaur Barbarian!
Me too! That's the most appealing short to me visually, though the others don't look bad either.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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David Stodolny is at WDAS?? :)
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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^He's been working there since 2016.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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I had no idea!

I remember his Harry Potter hand-drawn parody shorts, 10+ years ago. They amused me! He was a CG animator at DreamWorks back then.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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A new short titled Reflect will be released on September 14:
After Disney+ Day, a new episode of the experimental, innovative program Short Circuit will debut on Wednesday, September 14. In “Reflect,” directed by Hillary Bradfield, a ballet dancer battles her own reflection, overcoming doubt and fear by channeling her inner strength, grace, and power.
Source: https://d23.com/everything-new-you-can- ... mber-2022/
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

Because the purpose of these shorts, among other things, is to test new technology, it could be interesting to see if they could use "real time" animation as the foundation for a short.

I just found this article, where former Pixar employee Mark Andrews explains how they have created a new animated show using an Unreal Engine:

https://www.awn.com/animationworld/supe ... production
An you explain exactly how you’ve used Unreal Engine, why this is so unique at this time, and where it’s leading in terms of a real, robust set of production tools?
Mark Andrews: Speaking as a visual storyteller, it allows me to work in a context that I can't work in in animation. Animation is a process that pulls everything apart and puts it in buckets, and once you’ve filled one bucket, then you're allowed to go the next bucket, and then the next bucket. So you're building one step at a time, and everything is out of context. Character designs are out of context because they're not created inside the environment. The environments are built out of context. Everything is out of context, because we don't have the final until too late in the game.

90% of stuff that Unreal does is amazing, but there was still a little 10% that it didn't do well, because that's the difference between what you need to make a video game and what you need to produce a film. There were huge growing pains as we were making this thing, but we got over these barriers because we had to. We had a deadline. That was the great push on the technology.

When you say “game engine,” everybody thinks it's going to look like a video game. And what they’re talking about is that the animation, the facial animation specifically, is so poor in games. They haven't worked on that enough. Rich and his team solved that, so we used it. And you'd never know that this was done in engine.
Adam Maier: At the beginning of this, there were a ton of challenges. We were building a new pipeline and way of working. We were building a whole new division.
So the real challenge was building this pipeline from the ground up, but it was a challenge that we were really excited to take on. It felt like a startup in many ways.
Last question. I don't know whether you've given this much thought, but how much time do you think you saved? How many fewer people did you need? Can you quantify it at all?
Mark Andrews: That's a great question. I think it's tricky, because you could have done this in a traditional way in the same amount of time that we did it. You could've done it in two years piece of cake, but I wouldn't have been able to direct every episode. You would need at least four or five directors. You would need a much larger animation crew – probably double or triple the size to get where we got. And just to add another qualifier to this, in traditional television animation, you're given about six to eight weeks to storyboard one episode.
As one can see from the trailer, especially in the opening where there is a crowd of humans running in the streets, the animation is still not good enough to be used in a feature. It is used on a TV-show where they needs to work fast and effective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLYDpx7zqRI

But what if all the scenes in a short (or even feature) could be done this way, and then given green light? Then all the scenes could be recreated using more traditional CGI, where handdrawn animation is superimposted over the CGI characters (at least they often do this at Disney) and other familiar methods. In a way it would be the equivalent of making a pencil test of the whole short, but with all the lighting, camera angles, colors and so on already prepared. Or when all the keyframes are ready, so the inbetweeners would know what to do to complete the animation.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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D82 wrote:A new short titled Reflect will be released on September 14.
It's a bit odd they are releasing only one short this time around instead of another batch. Are they in such a need for new content, they can't wait until more shorts are finished? But if that's the case, then why aren't they releasing A Kite's Tale?
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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The new short Reflect is now available on Disney+. Here are the trailer, a still and more details:

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The film is directed by Hillary Bradfield, a Disney Animation story artist (Frozen 2, Encanto) since 2017, and centers on Bianca, a ballet dancer who battles her own reflection, overcoming doubt and fear by channeling her inner strength, grace and power.

Reflect features an original score by Jake Monaco (Cars on the Road, Jerry and Marge Go Large). Jennifer Newfield (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Short Circuit) served as production manager and veteran Disney Animation cinematography, lighting and compositing expert Brian Leach (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Zootopia) lent his expertise as project advisor.
Source: https://www.animationmagazine.net/2022/ ... ircuit-s2/

Sotiris wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:05 am It's a bit odd they are releasing only one short this time around instead of another batch. Are they in such a need for new content, they can't wait until more shorts are finished? But if that's the case, then why aren't they releasing A Kite's Tale?
I also found it a bit strange. It turns out the new short has been added to season 2, so perhaps from now on they won't wait until they have enough shorts to release a new batch/season and will just add individual ones to the current season.
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Re: WDAS Short Circuit

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I watched the trailer and while many of those clips are familiar, they make me giddy with pleasure.

Based on these snippets, these shorts look gorgeous. While I don't expect that all of them are outstanding, I hope at least some are remarkable despite the ultra short runtime.

I haven't watched them yet. Strangely, I don't recall much commentary on them on this forum. What did you guys think of them?
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