At Annecy International Animation Festival, Walt Disney Animation Studios revealed three new shorts coming from its experimental animated short program Short Circuit. Similar to Pixar's
newly launched SparkShort program, Short Circuit — which started in 2016 — gives Walt Disney Animation Studios employees a chance to pitch their ideas for original short films and then turn them into a reality.
The goal of the program, according to Disney, is to
“take risks in both visual style and story, surface new voices at the Studio and experiment with new technical innovation.” So far 20 artists have had their ideas turned into actual shorts, and at Annecy we learned about three more:
"Just a Thought," "Exchange Student," and
"Jing Hua."
Just a Thought is directed by Brian Menz, who has been with Disney since 2008 and has worked on
Bolt,
Frozen,
Big Hero 6,
Wreck-It Ralph, and
Ralph Breaks the Internet. Currently serving as an animation supervisor on Disney's' 2020 release, Menz's project is inspired by his own awkward pre-teen years and his love for newspaper comics. The film follows a young boy named Ollie, a student whose thoughts are revealed to the audience via a comic-strip bubble over his head. Menz's son Jack voices Ollie in the short.
Exchange Student is from director Natalie Nourigat, a comic book artist who served as a story assistant and artist on
Ralph Breaks the Internet. The short is inspired by Nourigat's personal experience in which she was enrolled in a French language emersion summer camp for arists, only to realize every other student in the class was a first or second generation French speaker. Her experience resulted in a new perspective she had towards immigrant children for whom English was not their primary language. Similarly,
Exchange Student is about a young human girl
"who feels like an outsider at a school for aliens."
The third short,
Jing Hua, comes from Jerry Huynh, a technical director on
Moana,
Ralph Breaks the Internet, and the studio's upcoming 2020 release. This one seems the most emotional of the batch,
"inspired by a period of intense grieving in the director’s life that he says still hasn’t passed." Hyunh lost both of his grandparents and a close cousing during the development and production of the film, and Huynh's feelings of loss and grief are reflected in
Jing Hua, which features a grieving woman who pays tribute to her recently departed teacher with a magical form of kung fu.
Jing Hua featured no dialogue, but the score and action shots were enough to evoke incredible emotion from the audience, according to Variety.
Disney's Short Circuit animated shorts will be featured on Disney+ starting in spring 2020. The streaming service is set to launch in November and will cost $6.99 per month.