List of Pixar shorts

This is a list of animated short films produced by Pixar Animation Studios.

Beginning with Pixar's first film Toy Story, almost all subsequent Pixar feature films have been shown in theaters along with a Pixar-created original short film, known as a "short." Other Pixar shorts, released only on home media, were created to showcase Pixar's technology or cinematic capabilities, or on commission for clients.

Pixar began producing shorts in the 1980s.[1] The first shorts were made while Pixar was still a computer hardware company, when John Lasseter was the only professional animator in the company's small animation department. Starting with Geri's Game, after Pixar had converted into an animation studio, all later shorts have been produced with a larger crew and budget.

Pixar produced four CGI shorts for the educational TV series Sesame Street between 1990 and 1994. The shorts illustrate different weights and directions starring Luxo Jr. and Luxo — Light & Heavy, Surprise, Up and Down, and Front and Back.[2]

During the development of Toy Story, Pixar set up a division to work on Pixar video games called Pixar's Interactive Products Group, specifically Toy Story entries in the Disney's Animated Storybook and Disney's Activity Center. Due to the intense resources required, the division was eventually folded and the staff were redistributed to start creating short films to accompany Pixar's theatrical releases.[3][4]

Beginning with A Bug's Life, Pixar has created extra content for each of their films that are not part of the main story. For their early theatrical releases, this content was in the form of outtakes and appeared as part of the film's credits. For each of their films, this content was a short made exclusively for the DVD release of the film.[5]

Toy Story 4 was the first film not to have a theatrical short before it. Coco and Onward had theatrical shorts from other subsidiaries related to Disney. Lightyear and Inside Out 2 had no theatrical shorts before them. Elemental was the first film, released theatrically in the United States, to have a Pixar-produced short in front of it since Incredibles 2.[6]

  1. ^ Haswell, Helen (2014). "To Infinity and Back Again: Hand-drawn Aesthetic and Affection for the Past in Pixar's Pioneering Animation". Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media (8).
  2. ^ "Disney Shorts: 1990ies". Disney Film Guide. Retrieved June 8, 2012.
  3. ^ Price, David A. (June 22, 2008). "The Pixar Touch". The New York Times.
  4. ^ "Pixar Closes CD-ROM Division". Wired. March 31, 1997.
  5. ^ "Walt Disney Pictures Presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios Film, The Incredibles, Sells Five Million Units on DVD and Video in First Day". Pixar. March 16, 2005. Archived from the original on December 30, 2010. Retrieved June 8, 2012.
  6. ^ Taylor, Drew (March 28, 2023). "Pixar's New Up Short Film Carl's Date to Debut Theatrically With Elemental".