In late December 2004, at the Republica de la Cromagñon nightclub in Buenos Aires, more than 4,000 fans gathered for a performance by the rock band Los Callejeros. The space was well over the club’s capacity of 1,500, while a number of routes were padlocked or blocked to prevent people from entering without paying.

When a fan shot a flare into the air—something Argentinian fans regularly do at large events—the pyrotechnic ignited the interior’s decor, comprised predominantly of highly flammable materials like styrofoam. The building erupted in a blaze that claimed 194 lives and injured nearly 1,500 more. With few available escape routes, little to no fire mitigation systems, and a packed club, pandemonium broke out at Cromagñon.

The fire quickly turned into one of the most devastating tragedies in Argentinian history. To mark 20 years since the disaster, a stop-motion short titled “LONA” poignantly memorializes the community’s loss. The title refers to “canvas,” like sneakers, and Malena Martinez directed and animated the film.

Focusing on pairs of shoes that dance to cheerful music, the work evokes joyful gatherings with friends to let loose and enjoy a concert. As the camaraderie continues, flowers begin to sprout from inside each sneaker, blossoming into a vibrant reminder of the lives lost in the fire.

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Rockets soar and sparks fly in Andrea Love’s animated tribute to a favorite New Year’s Eve tradition. In case you can’t make it to a live event this year, sit back and celebrate the launch into 2025 with the artist’s mesmerizing pyrotechnic show.

Love (previously) is known for her tender stop-motion portrayals of daily routines in her Cooking with Wool series, along with myriad felted scenarios for clients like Loewe, Michael’s, Hermès, and Netflix. Learn more about her work on her website, and explore all of her videos on YouTube.

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Anna’s next-door neighbor is a tornado. Constantly at odds with her surroundings, the young woman shields herself from chaos by staying inside, fussing over small details like the placement of books on shelves and adjusting crooked picture frames on the wall.

One day, strong winds leave Anna’s house askew, forcing her to venture just outside the front door. When the powerful vortex pulls both Anna and her keys into its mayhem, she must confront the reality of unpredictability.

“The Tornado Outside” is the creation of animation director Maria Tomazou, alongside a production team at the National Film and Television School in England. The award-winning short film came to life through stop-motion over the course of a year. According to Tomazou, nearly all elements in the film were animated while suspended in the air with rigs.

Watch “The Tornado Outside” on Vimeo now, and visit Tomazou’s website to explore more work. For behind-the-scenes clips, follow her on Instagram.

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What if succulents sprouted in squiggles? Or cacti turned orange and floated to the sky like balloons?

An imaginative animation by Hiroshi Takagishi pushes botanical specimens and their potential evolution to peculiar extremes. Inspired by contradictions and irregularities in nature, “Odd” is a digitally crafted film that envisions the ways various specimens could morph from one state to another. As cacti wiggle and wobble or burst into dainty green petals, their recognizable forms become strange and surreal.

Find more from Takagishi on Vimeo.

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“We might call that a cold case, right? There’s no evidence, there’s no murder weapon… It’s a crime scene, but the culprit—the criminal—has left.” Biologist Karen Lips’s opening words in the 2023 animated short film, “The Waiting,” portend a mystery with far-reaching implications.

Directed by Volker Schlecht and written by Alexander Lahl and Max Mönch, the award-winning film traces the mysterious disappearance of tree frogs in Costa Rica. Through a hand-drawn, mostly black-and-white style, rainforest creatures transform from plants, and tiny tadpoles metamorphose into full-grown amphibians.

In the 1990s, Lips undertook research in the Costa Rican rainforest, stationed in a small shack its resident scientists called “la casita,” where she monitored a group of fluorescent green tree frogs, Isthmohyla calypsa. The species possessed unique spikes on their hands that were used as weapons to physically fight for dominance within the habitat.

For nearly two years, she studied the Isthmohyla calypsa’s growth patterns, behavior, and habitat, before returning to the University of Miami to write up her research. When one final experiment prompted her to return to the forest, she arrived only to find that the frogs had vanished. “All of them,” she says.

At first, Lips wondered if the disappearance was the result of something she had done. Had they gotten scared? Had she bothered them too much? Perhaps there hadn’t been enough rain? “I thought… maybe I just need to wait long enough, and they’ll come back,” she says.

After waiting an entire summer, the frogs never reappeared. She was determined to solve the mystery, but no evidence remained to study. “There was no smoking gun,” Lips says. Eventually, she moved to another site to study a new set of frogs. But after a few days, her team began noticing unusual skin problems.

The malefactor turned out to be microscopic fungi known as chytrids, and it wasn’t limited to the mountainous cloud forests of Costa Rica. Researchers in countries across the globe reported similar findings when Lips shared her concerns.

Although it’s impossible to tell how the frogs initially came into contact with the fungus, humans bear the responsibility for their fate, and ultimately, that of many other creatures. The more we import and export food and other organic goods, the more likely invasive—and sometimes dangerous—organisms will spread. “We have made it super easy for infectious diseases of all sorts to leave the jungle and get to a major city in a couple of hours,” she says.

For frogs alone, the effects are considerable: “The estimate is somewhere between 150 and maybe 200 species have gone extinct in the past two or three decades,” Lips says. “Forty-one percent of all amphibians are in decline. And that’s worse than any other group of animals on the planet.”

Find out more about the film on Instagram.

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How does jealousy snuff out creativity? A stop-motion film written and directed by Ainslie Henderson (previously) follows three furry, felted creatures struggling with each other’s success.

“Shackle” centers on the gremlin-like trio as they conjure the forest’s magic to make music. As pinecones spin like a top, dreamy sounds emerge, and slowly, the creatures add other objects to the woodland symphony. Shape-shifting sticks offer a rhythmic line, while autumn leaves provide a soothing melody.

When one envious character tries to steal the unusual instruments for himself, though, a cloud of darkness reveals that greed is incompatible with art.

The short film is a BAFTA nominee and was recognized as the Best British Film at the London International Animation Festival in 2022. Henderson has also been awarded numerous Vimeo honors for his work, which you can watch on the platform.

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When a mother arrives home with her young son to find her father in the kitchen, the simple act of preparing dinner prompts her to confront her childhood and cultural identity. As her father prepares spring rolls, a traditional Vietnamese meal, both are challenged to find common ground. And what ultimately brings them together is the youngest generation’s creative fusion.

“Spring Roll Dream” is a stop-motion short film directed and animated by Mai Vu while she was enrolled at the National Film and Television School in Buckinghamshire, England. The narrative follows a single mother named Linh, who has forged a life for her family in the U.S. But when her father visits from Vietnam, a statement says, “Linh is confronted with the past and culture she left behind and the question of where it belongs in her family’s new life.”

The figures, scenes, and foodstuffs emerge from sculpted paper, and the film’s dialogue captures bilingual interactions that shift between generations. Interiors glow in the evening light and uncanny happenings induce Linh to reconsider her relationship with her heritage.

“Spring Roll Dream” took home the Lights on Women Award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Watch now on Vimeo.

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When a brave black cat’s world is turned upside down after a massive flood, everything feels uncertain. Fortunately, when the feline teams up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog navigating a boat in search of dry land, the eclectic group relies on their unlikely friendships and a mix of courage, trust, and wits to survive in their newly aquatic world.

Flow is a new feature-length animated movie directed by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, co-written by Zilbalodis and producer Matīss Kaža. Focusing entirely on the animals’ movements, dramatic angles, and emphatic lighting effects, the film entirely foregoes dialogue for stirring music and emotive meows, barks, and purrs.

Notable for being rendered entirely in open-source software Blender, a tool used for making 3D graphics that has historically been employed for video game design, Flow taps into the possibilities of world-building. Critics liken the dreamy settings to an open-world video game, which as opposed to play that’s more structured or linear, encourages exploration and the joy of discovery.

Flow uses non-photorealistic imagery—also known as NPR, a computer graphics technique for expressing the aesthetics of other mediums, such as painting or drawing—to create otherworldly landscapes and interactions. Merging fantastical elements with accurate animal movements, the film strikes a remarkable balance between the real and the unreal.

Flow was selected to premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Film Festival in May, and it also screened at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it won three awards. Whet your appetite with the trailer, and see the film in select theaters now.

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In an isolated home in the tiny, prairie hamlet of Hairy Hill, Alberta, a young girl named Ethel lives with her three younger siblings. She carries the burden of caregiver as the children navigate a dysfunctional relationship with their mother, who cryptically transforms into a bird and flies away. Ethel is then faced with sustaining their livelihood on her own.

Director Daniel Gies co-wrote “Return to Hairy Hill” with Emily Paige, with whom he also co-founded Montréal-based studio E.D. Films. The short is based on the true story of a woman named Marie-Anne Ethel Garnier—Gies’s grandmother—who was born in Hairy Hill in 1940.

Rendered in black-and-white, otherworldly paper figures traverse a dreamlike landscape at the foot of a mountain range as winter approaches.

“Paper was always a key element used throughout the story to convey an impermanence and fragility of the human characters that contrasts with the organic, painterly animals and environments,” the studio says. Gies and Paige achieved the analog effect by using three-dimensional computer graphics to create the impression of stop-motion puppets.

The studio describes the project as “a haunting and deeply personal tribute to family folklore,” drawing on stories of what it’s like to live in remote and often harsh environments. As Ethel watches her siblings transmogrify into woodland creatures, she must carefully consider whether she will join them in her own metamorphosis or defy fate and venture into an entirely new life.

Real paper puppets served as models for the evocative characters, and the effects of light and shadow emphasize the fraught relationship between the known and unknown. Enmeshing a variety of styles, the animation includes three-dimensional painterly forests, sculptural details, and classic, two-dimensional techniques.

Check out E.D. Films’ website for a behind-the-scenes look at the process, and follow the studio on Vimeo.

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For one year, Los Angeles-based animator Daren Jannace would sketch 30 tiny drawings each day on standard yellow Post-It notes. Illustrating colorful squiggly lines, blob-like characters, and the occasional text, each square canvas became part of a larger stop-motion storyline called “10,946.”

The short film follows Jannace’s daily musings set atop a black cutting mat and paired with audio—music, a buzzing fly, and a child screaming included—recorded on his phone. Portraying a choreographed patchwork of life across 365 days, the animation also chronicles Jannace’s creative evolution as the drawings shift from more minimal scenes at the beginning to longer, more complex ideas as the year progresses.

Be sure to watch the credits, which include a glimpse of fellow animators who created similar works alongside Jannace. Head to Vimeo for more animations.

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