Pixar movies are great. The studio has put out several of the most incredible animated films of all time, and virtually every movie they produce is a home run. But sometimes, the short films they air before their movies are so great that they end up overshadowing the films themselves. So with a new film from the studio arriving very soon, fans are wondering what the new Pixar short before Finding Dory will look like, and how to get to see the highly-anticipated film themselves.
Luckily, Pixar has already released some information about the new short airing before Finding Dory, and it looks pretty great. Interestingly, the short also seems to thematically fit with Finding Dory , since it focuses on a cute animal in a water-based environment. The short is called Piper, and it tells the story of an adorable baby sandpiper who ventures out of its nest for the first time and must overcome its hydrophobia in order to find food and survive. That may sound pretty heavy for a Pixar short, but rest assured, it's going to be extremely cute judging by the promotional photos that Pixar has released so far. Honestly, the titular baby bird may be the most adorable creation to ever come out of the minds of Pixar's hallowed animators.
The short marks the directorial debut of longtime Pixar vet Alan Barillaro, who was inspired by seeing the way real sandpipers frantically flee from waves on the beach. "Seeing the way these sandpipers react to waves and run, I always felt, ‘Gosh, that’s a film, that’s a character,’” the director told EW . “It’s always fun to show a world we’re familiar with but from a different perspective. We’ve all been to the beach, but have we ever viewed water from just an inch off the sand? That could be very fearful from a bird’s perspective."
But Piper isn't just about cute birds being scared, there's a very human lesson in there as well. "It’s the kid at the playground feeling,” Barillaro said. “You fall down and you feel so small, but you look and see someone even smaller than you brush themselves off and tackle something, and learn from that in your own way. It was important to me to stay in the kid world and see the world from Piper’s eyes, and not be from the human perspective."
By the sound of things, Piper is going to be an inspiring, adorable, and relatable story. In other words, it should fit in just fine with the rest of Pixar's shorts.
Images: Walt Disney Pictures; Pixar
