Pixar - Day and Night

This is one of my favourite animated shorts of all time for a very specific reason: it uses both traditional and digital methods of animation to create one brilliantly executed short film! Besides that element, there are many other aspects of this short that add to its brilliance:


Digital and Traditional Animation:

Because the Night and Day characters are more abstract characters, they exist in the two dimensional world holding within each of them another world, a three dimensional world. They are simply outlines with blackness and nothingness surrounding them. Pixar inventively animated the Night and Day characters using the traditional method of animation while using digital 3D animation for the rest. This also makes the Night and Day worlds a lot more realistic to the audience.

Sounds:

The use of sound is also quite inventive: The characters are silent, in the sense that they don't speak however they convey noises through different occurrences happening in their individual worlds.

 

 For instance, In the morning the Day character stretched out his back as a cluster of clouds appear and thunder can be heard.

 

 Night laughs at Day as a group of ducklings waggle by, quacking. 

 

Night punches Day in the face while a Lumberjack hacks at a tree. Day falls over along with the tree.

 

When he sits up, a flock of birds flies past his head making chirping noises.

 

Night howls with a wolf while Day shows off the women having a pool party during the day.

Character Design:

 Night and Day are quite similar to each other, highlighting what they have in common. Their design is simple but carries a lot of character. For example; what sets Night apart from day is his sharp and pointed nose and narrow head. What sets Day apart from Night is his rounded nose and head. Otherwise, the pair are quite similar yet still strongly recognizable through the short, even after the sun sets/rises and they switch their roles. 

Spacial Design:

Lastly, the spacial designs in this short are incredibly clever: the characters often overlap showing the differences of day and night in the same locations. While they argue and fight with each other, they experience certain spacial elements that contribute to their actions. Apparently, although they are clearly mythical creatures, they are not immune to the laws of physics.

 

Moral:

Of course there is a moral to the story. At the end of the short, Night notices a broadcast that Day seems to miss. Night drags Day back to hear what was being said. The quote is from Dr. Wayne Dyer from a lecture in 1970:

Fear of the unknown.

They are afraid of new ideas.

They are loaded with prejudices, not based upon anything in reality, but based on… if something is new, I reject it immediately because it’s frightening to me. What they do instead is just stay with the familiar.

You know, to me, the most beautiful things in all the universe, are the most mysterious.

Night and Day look at each other, seemingly experiencing a sense of deep understanding and compassion for one another. They embrace. As they do, the sun in Night rises as the sun in Day sets and the two discover that the worlds that separated them were in fact the world they share.

 

Here is the full short film, it is certainly a touching one: