Adam Paloian and his team at Pinreel Inc. are nominated for the 2024 “Best Sponsored” Annie Award for iconic duo Tenacious D’s Video Games music video. Paloian, who recently won an Emmy for The Cuphead Show, joins me to talk about working with Jack Black and Kyle Gass and directing this fast-paced showcase of animation, music and… of course… video games! (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Congratulations. You’ve had a big couple of months. Emmy win and now this. How have the last few months been for you, man?

Adam Paloian: Oh, it’s been pretty good. Yeah, it was a nice surprise. That Emmy was for… a Christmas episode of “Cuphead”, and I did that, I think, two years ago now. Animation takes a long time and then it takes another long time for it to premiere. So it was a nice surprise to win.

BOOM, about birds reacting to an erupting volcano (and hoping to stay alive and protect their eggs), has already won a Student Academy Award. Now it’s on the 96th Oscars shortlist for Best Animated Short Film. Find out how these five directors — Romain Augier, Charles Di Cicco, Gabriel Augerai, Yannick Jacquin and Laurie Pereira de Figueiredo — created BOOM in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This email interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Q: Congrats on the Student Academy Award win! How does it feel to have this honor?

A: Thank you very much! It is a huge accomplishment for us because it rewards our hard work on the short film, and getting a recognition from one of the most prestigious institutions in our field is a great addition to our curriculum.

Director Stéphanie Clement’s Pachyderme is on the 96th Annual Academy Awards Best Animated Short Film shortlist. It’s about a woman named Louise who recalls visiting her grandparents as a child. What follows is a serious and shocking look at their time together. Clement provides some context for how Pachyderme came to be in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This Email Interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: This is an intense story. What inspired you to make this animated short?

Stéphanie Clement: It all grew out from a shared interest for me and Marc Rius – scriptwriter and producer – to work together. We were seeking to tackle the delicate topic of incest. Based on psychological defense mechanisms such as repression and dissociation, we tried to build a story around an emotionally anesthetized character who struggles with their own memories.

Letter to a Pig is about a guest speaker in a classroom recalling a traumatic event and a female student who becomes immersed in the story. In this Animation Scoop Q&A, director Tal Kantor takes me through how she made one of this year’s 15 finalists for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar. (This Email Interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: This is an intense, impactful story. What element did you want to focus on first?

Tal Kantor: In the “Letter to a Pig” development phase, I recognized the necessity for multiple layers and elements to express the story’s complexity. My foremost focus was the emotional plot axis. I wanted to craft this film so above all it will be an emotional journey that enables a universal connection with each character — the survivor, the girl, and the pig. This way, the viewer can feel how one memory unfolds, as each one of the characters holds a different angle on the same story.

Academy Award nominee Dave Mullins (of Pixar’s Lou) is back on the Oscars Best Animated Short Film shortlist. He has directed WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko. Learn how Mullins took an iconic song and paired it with a powerful story to create a short that will likely be talked about long after awards season is over. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Where did it begin for you: with the two men, with the pigeon, or somewhere else?

Dave Mullins: I’m glad you feel that way! As a filmmaker, it’s so rewarding to hear that someone has connected with your story. The story for WAR IS OVER! came out of a meeting Sean Lennon and I had in the summer of 2021. Sean wanted to make a short film that honored his parents’ song “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and their anti-war message. Sean and I both strongly believe in that message and needed to figure out a way to best tell that in a narrative short film. We felt there were two primary story elements that needed to be in the film. First we wanted two soldiers on opposing sides of a war (who don’t know each other) to ultimately connect as people at the end of the film. And second we needed to show the true cost of war: the loss of innocent life. From there we discussed the best way to illustrate those concepts and the idea of the game of chess via carrier pigeon was born out of those conversations.

Flora Anna Buda is the director of 27, a 2024 Oscar shortlisted animated short about a 27-year-old woman trying to navigate life’s complications — what she experiences day to day and what she feels, emotionally, inside. Buda and I explore the short’s themes, which will likely resonate with some of this generation’s twentysomethings, in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This email interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Why did you want to make a short film that focuses on this specific age?

Flora Anna Buda: I feel like this age is particular and maybe one of the most vulnerable at least to my experience. It is really representing the frontier of adulthood where we need to compartmentalize and say goodbye to secondary pleasures that innocence and naivety gave us. It is the time to take responsibility and stand up for ourselves. Today is an especially difficult era for young adults to achieve an okay-enough life. There is not much support in developing countries for single people to create safety and a good base to start their own life. At least not where I grew up.

It’s a day in the life of a worker who loves ballet dancing and lives in a… Dog Apartment. Ordinary for him. Unique for us. This short comes from director Priit Tender, who is thrilled to be on the 96th Oscars Best Animated Short Film shortlist. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was conducted as an Email Interview and edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: What do you love about stop-motion animation?

Priit Tender: The touch of reality – sculpting the characters, choosing textures and materials, organizing the space of a set. It’s all real, even the team members. You have to go and talk to them, they listen, we discuss. I loved to cover a huge field with a mixture of clay and papier mache. It felt muddy and nice.

One of the fifteen 2024 Best Animated Short Film Oscars finalists is Eeva, from directors Lucija Mrzljak and Morten Tsinakov. A rainy funeral. A restaurant. Woodpeckers. And you should expect the unexpected. Tsinakov shared these answers to my Eeva questions, on behalf of himself and Mrzljak, for this Animation Scoop Interview. (This was edited for length and clarity.)

Q: How did you want to show the experience of a funeral?

A: Well, the funeral itself is just an introduction to the story and maybe not even that important. What we were mostly interested in was the behavior of Eeva and the people around her. The intentions of those around her are difficult to read – they seem to be good but maybe not quite genuine.

Director Stephen Vuillemin’s A Kind of Testament is on the 96th Annual Oscars Best Animated Short Film shortlist. One day, a woman discovers online that someone has taken some of her social media posts and turned them into animated video clips. It gets wilder from there. Vuillemin takes me through the thought process behind it all in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This email interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: This is a very specific and intense story. Where did the inspiration come from?

Stephen Vuillemin: I started making the film when I was 30. I was trying to give my life some meaning: I almost stopped going out, and instead, I was making the film, alone. I did that for five years by myself, and then with Remembers, a very cool animation studio in Paris, for one more year, until the movie was finished. So I guess the story is pretty much a reflection of that process: it’s about someone who “sacrifices” their time to make animation, and it questions whether or not it’s a good idea. I was also interested in confronting fiction and reality. In the movie, there are two characters, who both produce images. One is a younger woman, who shoots selfies, and one is an older woman who makes animations. Most people tend to consider photos (especially this genre of photos) as a representation of reality, and animation as fiction, but in the film, it’s not that clear. The story about the woman making the animations is made up, but since the animations exist (and you’re watching them), at least the part about “someone spent a lot of time making these animations” has to be real.

Director Yegane Moghaddam’s Annecy-winning Our Uniform is now one of the 15 finalists for the 2024 Best Animated Short Film Academy Award. It’s about an Iranian girl who recalls her school days and, specifically, what she had to wear. Clothing is a major component of the story and the unique look of Our Uniform, as Moghaddam describes in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This Email Interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: What inspired you to choose this topic for your film?

Yegane Moghaddam: The inspiration came from my lived experience. When you live in a country like Iran, you don’t have to think too hard to find ideas. The ideas will find you! We are surrounded by ideas. Every morning when you wake up, there’s a new headline and thus a new story. And of course the topic of Hijab has always been a hot topic in Iran, especially in the very recent years.