Off Topic: We’re impressed and crying over the Kitbull Pixar short

Kitbull is a departure for Pixar — with its 2D, animated kitten and pit bull characters — but it’s no less charming.

The new animated short follows the tumultuous relationship between a tiny, black kitten and big pit bull. The animation is digitally hand-drawn, so it’s a little more visually uneven than your typical Pixar film. The craft that you’d expect from the famous studio remains though.

A lot of the scenes in the first half of the film stay close and protective over the similarly-minded kitten. They start to get interrupted by shots of the initially-intimidating pit bull and eventually widen out to include both of them. It’s a small visual technique that builds the crux of the story — which thankfully ends on a hopeful note! There’s also a keen way the soundtrack cuts in and out that underlines the two characters’ interactions and makes the turning point way more emotional than it might have been otherwise.

The film is largely about leaving your comfort zone and learning to love those that aren’t like you, which is something that’s pulled directly from the childhood of Rosana Sullivan, its creator. “At first I just wanted to draw something that made me feel good and was fun,” she said in the meet the filmmakers video, “but it evolved into something that more personal to me eventually.”

Kitbull uses an art style that focuses on abstract ideas of everything from the kitten and dog to the gritty Mission District of San Francisco, a place where Sullivan actually lived herself.

You can see all of that personal inspiration in Kitbull as well as the storytellers’ deft writing and framing. It’s a sweet little short film that’s definitely worth watching if you haven’t already. We’ve seen a few interesting shorts from Pixar lately via their SparkShorts program, and we should see more in the future. With the quality of this short, I’m very excited to see what SparkShorts does next.