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Beautiful animated short movies are excellent for tedious coffee breaks and uninspiring monday mornings. To put some beautiful story in a short 2-5 minutes sequence isn’t easy, but even in this case designers and artists are quite creative and manage to come up with very surprising and unusual results. The selection below is supposed to make you cry, laugh, feel bizarre or even shocked — in every case being absolutely smashed.

Let’s take a look at the collection of 25 brilliant animated short movies. Among them you’ll find funny cartoons, typography-related movies as well as artistic masterpieces — hopefully everybody will find something interesting and unusual for his/her personal taste.

Please take a look at the related articles

• Funny And Creative Animated Videos with funny and touching animated videos and
• Typography in Motion showcases examples of typography embedded into movies and videos.
• 29 Brilliant Music Videos covers original and inspirational music videos,
• Graphics In Motion with beautiful examples of videos in which graphics are set in motion.

Short and Sweet

Starless Night
A short animation about a cat, a dog and… a sleepless night. Sweet!

Circle of Life
“Life constantly changes, as it comes full circle…” A finalist of numerous animation contests and festivals.

Space Alone
Everyone is looking for a friend. Even in space. A beautiful piece of art by the Greek animator Ilias Sounas.

At a glance
2nd single of 2nd album Ease Your Mind of the Belgian band Sioen. [via resfest]

Jasper Morello Animated Movie (AMV)
An AMV made using clips from ‘The Mysterious Geographical Adventures Of Jasper Morello’ and The Widow, by The Mars Volta.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Israel Kamakawiwo Ole’s version of Somewhere over the rainbow. It’s just damn hard not to love this song.

Artistic Short Movies

Elephant’s Dream
Elephants Dream is the world’s first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use under a Creative Commons license. Quicktime-version.

Illuminations
The film consists of a choreography based on an original musical score. The movements illustrate a dialogue between the figurative and the abstract, attempting to find a mutual meaning and an affinity between them while at the same time emphasizing the polarity. By an Isreali artist Itai Froumin.

Doll Face
A machine with a doll face mimics images on television screen in search of a satisfactory visage. Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.

Herr Bar
Epidermis ornamentation and a ballet of legs. Images of vegetation encircled by humming birds initiates a science-fiction-style journey into a surreal and meaty landscape. By Clemens Kogler.

Seasons
A fluent sand animation about Spring in the form of a beautiful young girl hatching from the ground. Singing nature’s bustling song of life, she dashes through the seasons until, having spend all of her strength in one go, she must once again sleep in the earth before being reborn.

Hold your breath – Apnée
Apnée / Hold you Breath by Claude Chabot is an impressive one shot sequence short movie. A photographer tries to capture an embarrassing moment of someone in the public eye, but he doesn’t realize that time is working against him.

Ted
The animation might be not the most attractive piece of art, but it perfectly blurrs the border between real and abstract motion.

Typography

Tenspace
A short movie created by a Japanese design agency WoW. Wow, beautiful.

Full Metall Jacket
Taking a famous scene from the classic film, Full Metal Jacket, typography is used to illustrate a heated dialogue between a Sergeant and a Soldier in a station bumper for AMC, American Movie Classics.

Handlettering Animation
A stunning handlettering-animation presented during the TYPO Berlin 2007 party in 2007.

Alternative Rugby Commentary – The Ten Commandments
This typographic video reveals 10 commandments of rugby.

Justice DVNO
Typographic motion design by design agency Machinemolle.

Oceans Eleven
Ok, nothing phenomenal. But the elevator part is pretty fancy.

Funny Cartoons

Cane Toad
What the hell happened to Baz?

Gopherbroke
A hilarious story of a funny gopher who wanted to eat some tomatos. Life is tough, buddy.

In the Rough
A cartoon created by the Blur Studio.

Bananas
Zach Parrish A greedy monkey gets what he wants… sort of. A short movie by Zach Parrish.

Last Click

Robin Hood
If you haven’t seen Robin Hood you haven’t lived. This is the opening sequence of the 1973 Disney animated version of Robin Hood. At 00:50 starts the best moment in the history of music film scores. Well, it’s not really short, but it’s indeed brilliant.

Further Movies

• It’s Art Forum – Animation and VFX section
• How To Make An Animated Movie
• 25 of the best title sequences