Awesome Short Films

Like father, like son: Ezio’s dad Giovanni gets real blood on his hands with Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, a series of three live-action short films that’ll be released on YouTube starting 10/27.

Yellow Cake starts off innocently enough, but this mid-century style cartoon quickly morphs into something far more post-modern and disturbing with inequality, unrest and war.

Watch all 20 minutes of Turbo (we previewed it here) for free online; it’s a mashup of Tron and The Karate Kid and was shot using a RED camera by USC film school students.

Mark Fiore’s Technology is an animated short film that dares to ask (and rhyme) what happens when technophiles fully unplug from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Thanks, Chris!

It’s no Hollywood blockbuster, but what Hive Division lacks in budget they make up for with passion in Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy; this first part of three runs just under an hour.

Winner at numerous Australian film festivals, The Cat Piano is a stylish take on film noir by The People’s Republic of Animation with sensuous poetry and a graphic 2D look.

Created by Mexico-based Cru de Ladies, Mundo de Papel (“Paper World”) envisions a a life of college-ruled margins; it was made in 2 weeks using 3DS Max, After Effects, and Photoshop.

Like an artsy Matrix, Artificial Paradise, Inc is filled with organo-metallic monsters and wonderfully creepy sound effects; it was selected by both SIGGRAPH 2009 and ONEDOTZERO.

Tarboy is partly an animated short film with fighting robots and explosions galore, but it’s also an amazing technical demo: the entire movie was animated using Flash. Thanks, Will!

Based on the Philips Exeter Academy Library, Alex Roman’s atmospheric short film may look real, but it’s a partially CG work created with 3ds Max, Vray, AE and Premiere.

It’s fairly slow-paced, but JumpTrumpRumpBump’s trippy plot, jazzy music, and funky animations make up for it; each frame literally looks like a standalone art piece.

Wookie-sized props to the Make A Wish Foundation: Star Waiters is a 30 min film (it starts 9 min in) that fulfills 6th grader Mitch Kohler’s dream to make his own Star Wars movie.

Directed by Jesse Rosten, Cart pulls no punches when pulling the heart strings–surprising, considering that it’s a (beautifully filmed) short film about a shopping cart.

Slightly NSFW: The voice acting is hammy and it starts off slow, but The Seafarer redeems itself in the second half: think giant robots with laser beams, machine guns and cannons.

As if taking a cement block elevator to the ocean floor weren’t enough: Down to Earth is a funny short film about a pinstriped mobster who can’t catch a break even in his final moments.

Move over, Chuck Norris, Charles Nelson Reilly is in town: Weird Al and JibJab team up for CNR, a White Stripes spoof that paints the actor as the badass to end all badasses.

It’s complete nonsense, but what beautiful nonsense it is: Birdy Nam Nam puts Daft Punk and Heavy Metal in a blender and spits out robots, sneakers, sugar cubes and sarcophagi.

Men have pined and puzzled over women since time immemorial, a plight made all the more poignant by Virgile: it’s a retro-styled animated short film about being out of your league.

Monkey doctors, octopus sushi chefs, brain-eating anteaters: you might have to get therapy after Musicotherapie; it’s a ridiculously weird short film which is both hypnotic and neurotic.

Varathit Uthaisri’s SURFACE is a short film that shows everyday events such as walking, cooking, and even dropping things from an unconventional perspective: below.

Created by Korea-based animation team MESAI, Alarm is a beautifully rendered hi-def short film on the misery of waking up and the perils of the snooze button; thanks, Daniel!

Ben Harper and Sean Mullen’s short animated 3D film, Blip, has a relatively simple story: peace for two laser-toting warmongers just means twice the war for everyone else.

Inspired by Nike, Carl Erik Rinsch’s Exploit Yourself is 3D short film that blends Mirror’s Edge with Terminator; one thing’s for sure: we are SO screwed if the robots learn to Parkour.