The creative challenge and promise of the self-imposed brief makes the short film a treasured opportunity for both professionals taking a break from client work and students trying to launch careers with the perfect graduation project.

All these films were published in The Stash Permanent Collection during 2018 and appear here in chronological order by the date of publication.
 
 

“BACCHUS”
Short film 5:09
STASH 128

Rikke A. K. Planeta, director in Viborg, Denmark: “As ‘Bacchus’ is a graduation film from The Animation Workshop, our hands were free to create our own vision – it was a team project and everyone contributed to the story and the look of the final film.

“With that said, the film took off as a visual concept where I wanted to portray a light-hearted message through colorful, abstract animation. It was an experimental project from the beginning, and our goal was to not only share the story, but to also challenge ourselves.”
 
 

“TO BUILD A FIRE”
Short film 13:00
STASH 128

Nexus director FX Goby commemorates the 100th anniversary of American author Jack London’s death by adapting his novel into “To Build a Fire,” an animated short film created in 4K Cinemascope that tells the tragic tale of a man and his dog trying to survive the hostility of nature in Canada’s Yukon Territory.
 
 

“DEUSPI”
Short film
STASH 129

Directing collective MegaComputeur, who all graduated from French animation school MoPA, created this CG short film during their summer internship at WIZZ Design in Paris.
 
 

“LOVE NEST”
Short film 1:21
STASH 130

Co-directors Remus Buznea and Kyriaki Kyriakou in London: “We came up with the premise for the short about one year after we moved out of our old student flat.

“We started feeling nostalgic for the poster-covered walls, the blanket-taped-to-wall-in-place-of-curtains, and since we forgot to take photos of the place before we left we decided to recreate it via the magic of animation.

“That room had witnessed (among many other sordid things) the start of our creative collaboration, with us working on our first animation together and consequently finding new ways of getting on each others’ nerves.

“The events depicted in the short are all true to life and have actually happened.”
 
 

“DARREL”
Short film 3:20
STASH 130

Directors Alan Carabantes and Marc Briones in Barcelona, Spain: “We had no idea what this film was going to be at the beginning. Finally, we opted for a story of seduction with increasingly serious hiccups of the protagonist.

“We first came up with a lot of super funny jokes that couldn’t be matched together to tell a story.

“Giving coherence to them was the most challenging and the only way through was to try all the possible combinations and to test them with some friends, till we knew from their reactions that it was working. It took between half and a full year to get to this point.”
 
 

“OOZE”
Short film 5:29
STASH 132

Director Kilian Vilim in Paris: “This project was my graduation film to get my Bachelor of Animation degree at Lucerne University of Applied Science and Art.

“I think one of the most difficult challenges was finding my own style for the movie. As a student your working with references, you have your idols and your inspirations, but its quite hard to define a style without copying someone.

“I had a lot of colors at the beginning and more and more I reduced colors and textures till I decided to go very simple with very hard contrasts in just black and white. I also refused to make complex backgrounds, which also helped reduce production time.”
 
 

“BEST FRIEND”
Short film 5:46
STASH 132

Co-directors Nicholas Olivieri, Juliana de Lucca, Shen Yi, Varun Nair, and David Feliu, at Gobelins in Paris: “As a student film, the theme was completely free though they suggested having groups of at least four people and films under five minutes.

“The biggest challenge was how to end the story. Everything went quite smoothly until we found out our ending was almost exactly the same as one of the scenes from Blade Runner 2049.

“We were upset about changing the ending without choice. But questioning ourselves really helped us to clear the whole story again.”