Following his time as a film student in Long Island, Andrew Laurendi enrolled in a digital filmmaking program at the Los Angeles Film School. In addition to studying film production and filmmaking techniques, Andrew Laurendi has firsthand experience making his own short films. As both a student and maker of films, he is well aware of the role short films have played in the rise of two of the world’s largest and most successful animation companies.
Disney is one of the biggest companies on the planet. In July 2026, the company had a market cap of $166 billion. As a film studio, Disney is responsible for several of the all-time highest grossing movies, including Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, and Avatar: The Way of Water (the number one, two, and three box office hits, respectively). But long before these massive, effects-laden feature films, Disney produced one of the most important short films ever made: Steamboat Willie.
Although the character Mickey Mouse debuted in the short Plane Crazy, Steamboat Willie receives special attention because it was one of the earliest animated films to synchronize sound and movement, a groundbreaking accomplishment in 1928. Walt Disney collaborated with his brother, Roy Oliver, and Ub Iwerks, the designer of Mickey Mouse, on the project. The positive reception to Steamboat Willie cannot be overstated, and Mickey Mouse immediately became the face of the fledgling studio.
Disney continued to produce animated shorts, many starring Mickey Mouse. Nine years after the release of Steamboat Willie, the company unveiled its first feature-length, 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Once again, Disney completely changed the animation industry, and this time all of cinema. The film paved the way for countless Disney classics, from Bambi and The Lion King to Frozen, all of which are animated features that serve as the lifeblood for the company’s global amusement park empire.
One of Disney’s most successful partner studios also got its start in short films. In 1986, Pixar released the two-minute short film Luxo Jr., which focused on the relationship between two desk lamps, a parent and child. Although short and simple, the film set a new standard for 3D animation at a time when animated features were completely dominated by traditional 2D techniques. Luxo Jr. showed great innovation in the use of shadow, reflection, motion, and even emotionally-driven narrative. In 2013, the Library of Congress recognized the project as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected Luxo Jr. for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
That said, Pixar’s journey to success was far from assured following the release of Luxo Jr. at the annual SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference. The studio’s first feature, Toy Story, came out almost a decade later. The studio’s hard work and dedication to groundbreaking animation paid off, of course. Numerous Pixar films have grossed more than $1 billion at the global box office, led by Inside Out 2 at almost $1.7 billion.
Pixar has continued to produce short films, many of which premier in theaters before the studio’s full-length movies. A few titles include Bao, Miss Fritter’s Racing Skoool, Piper, and Lava. They have also used characters from their full-length movies in short films, such as Toy Story That Time Forgot. Meanwhile, Luxo Jr. enjoyed its theatrical premiere before Toy Story 2 in 1999.
