Pixar Beyond WALL-E: Perfect At Any Length

Finally. Pixar has a YouTube channel, and it’s about damn time.

With the release of the incredibly-well-reviewed WALL-E, the creators of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles are poised to continue their proud tradition of earning massive amounts of cash with quality films. And there’s another important tradition they’re continuing: Presto, a new original short, will play before the beginning of the feature.

Tacking shorts onto the beginning of a feature film is an antiquated notion, something from the days of newsreels — but Pixar has a long, proud and Oscar-winning history of doing this, and Presto — the story of a rabbit who gets revenge against his magician — looks likely to be another classic of the short-form genre. It isn’t available online yet, but hopefully it will be soon. Because Pixar’s shorts play beautifully as web content — even though that’s not how they were intended.

The first Pixar short Luxo Jr. (from which Pixar derives its iconic logo) was created by now-Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter to show at the 1986 SIGGRAPH conference, basically as proof that computer animation could be just as creative and exciting as 2-D. Since then, Pixar has stayed in the habit of creating these shorts — using them as a way to test out not only new animation techniques (Geri’s Game was developed “to take human and cloth animation to new heights”) but also give below-the-line staff a chance to prove themselves. (Sound designer Gary Rydstrom, who directed the 2007 short Lifted, is now directing the 2011 Pixar film newt.)

But these aren’t just proofs-of-concept — the “story first” approach to animation that’s made Pixar such a success over the past 13 years applies to the short films as well. Each takes a simple concept and uses it to create characters and scenarios that delight in the same time it takes the Chinese Backstreet Boys to perform one of their odes. They’re also, with the exception of Boundin’, completely dialogue-free — and if you’ve ever tried to tell a story through images alone, then you know what an achievement that is.

There’s something to be said for the perfect little sliver of film, a short that takes advantage of every second it’s got to reach you in some way. It really just comes down to the fundamentals — a good story is a good story. No matter why it was created, or where you watch it.