Get in the festive mood with our favourite animated Christmas feature films and shorts, made using new 3D tools including in Unreal Engine 5.
(Image credit: Disney)
Hunkering down and being enveloped by a festive animated film is a sure-fire way to ignite the Christmas spirit and have a cosy moment. But this year it’s better than ever, because the animation world is exploding with creativity thanks to the best 3D modelling software and best digital art software, new tools that enable artists to work with beautiful art styles that were out of reach before.
This year, these techniques have made their way into the Christmas genre. An Almost Christmas Story looks like a stop-motion animation made with cardboard, but it’s entirely CG. War is Over!, inspired my the music of John Lennon, uses layers of watercolour brushstrokes to look like an animated painting, and again, it’s all CG.
Beyond those entries, I’ve rounded up some of our favourite Christmas animations from the last few years, as well as a number of older ones that are worth revisiting.
01. War is Over! (2024)
'WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko' - 30 sec trailer - YouTube
Oscar-winning animated short War Is Over! follows the story of two fictional soldiers playing a game of chess via carrier pigeon during the first World War. It features John Lennon and Yoko Ono's anti-war song "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", and Sean Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono were executive producers.
The painterly, watercolour animation style of War Is Over! is rendered in Unreal Engine by Wētā FX under the leadership of writer and director Dave Mullins, previously of Pixar. Zac Retz, an alumnus of both Spider-Verse films, produced paintings that formed the basis of an aesthetic made up of layered brushstrokes and stylised art. It’s a poignant story with expressive characters that gives renewed momentum to the message of the original song.
War is Over! isn’t available to stream just yet, but the trailer should whet your appetite for when it is. You can read and watch a how the short film was made using Unreal Engine on the Epic Games website.
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02. An Almost Christmas Story (2024)
An Almost Christmas Story | Official Trailer | Disney+ - YouTube
Inspired by the true story of Rocky, an owl found inside the Rockefeller Christmas tree in 2020, director David’s Lowery’s 24-minute short follows the adventures of a similar owl as he finds friendship with a lost girl in New York at Christmas.
When his father suffers a mishap, Batman’s son, Damian Wayne, finds himself home alone on Christmas Eve and transforms himself into Little Batman to save Gotham City from villains who want to ruin Christmas.
Art director Guillaume Fesquet told Cartoon Brew: “Taking inspiration from Ronald Searle’s artistic style, our aim was to produce a Batman film that possesses a distinct aesthetic while paying homage to Searle’s universe.” Overall they wanted a look and feel that was “very illustrative and ‘sketch’-like”, and also took inspiration from Calvin & Hobbes. The final cartoon is a characterful romp full of motion and energy.
Klaus is an alternative Santa origin story that combines visual excellence with a great plot and interesting characters that are superbly voiced by the likes of J.K. Simmons (Klaus), Jason Schwartzman (Jesper) and Rashida Jones (Alva).
It’s a traditional 2D animation, with each frame hand drawn on digital tablets and animated in Toon Boom Harmony. A toolset was developed for layering light and shadow on top of 2D drawings to create the film’s distinctive look. If you're inspired by thus movie, read our guide to the best 2D animation software and start creating yourself.
Based on the 1962 children's picture book by author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day is an endearing story about a boy who wakes up to the first snow of the season and walks to his grandmother’s house to get some macaroni and cheese.
This lovely animation is narrated by Laurence Fishburne and uses an elegant 2D art style and Emmy-winning music direction to place the viewer in a friendly street with a diverse cast of characters. To learn more about, read Disney's 12 principles of animation all animators need to know.
A little girl nearly gets her family arrested when she snatches a statue of baby Jesus from the church because she thinks it is cold and needs warming up. The story may be a little saccharine for some, but the beautiful colour, lighting and art style makes Angela's Christmas well worth a watch.
Director Damien O'Connor explains on the Brown Bag Films website that blue and gold hues are used to represent emotion in the film. “As Angela moves through the story she moves from the cold blues into the warmth, eventually ending up fully basked in the gold heat of the family fire,” he says.
In a world where Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and the sandman are superheroes whose role is to protect children, the evil Pitch Black tries to ruin childhood by giving children nightmares. Guillermo del Toro as executive producer had a strong creative input, mingling his dark influence with the tone of the film, and cinematographer Roger Deakins added to the magic with his lighting treatments.
The main characters are voiced by Alec Baldwin (North), Isla Fisher (The Tooth Fairy), Jude Law (Pitch Black), Hugh Jackman (Bunnymund) and Chris Pine (Jack Frost). Rise of the Guardians lost money for Dreamworks when it was released, but 12 years later it’s still recognised as a great Christmas staple.
A robin with an identity crisis caused by being raised by mice tries to steal a magic star she believes will help her prove her mouse credentials, but ends up finding strength in her differences.
The 32-minute stop-motion film is produced by Aardman Animations and is different from their usual work in that the characters are made using resin, felt and twigs as opposed to their usual medium of plasticine. The characters are voiced by Bronte Carmichael (Game of Thrones), Adeel Akhtar (Four Lions), Gillian Anderson and Richard E. Grant.
Read our interview with Aardman's Clara Cornish to pick up some advice for getting into animation, and our 'Inside Aardman Animations' feature for an eye-opening look inside the British studio.
A boy whose belief in Santa is starting to wane boards a magical train to the North Pole to meet St Nick. The ultra-realistic animation style of this film was achieved using performance capture, a type of motion capture that uses extra dots to capture every subtlety of an actor's movements.
Tom Hanks played several characters, and had 152 markers stuck to his face to record his expressions as he acted out his roles in a black-box stage. The result is a visual that appears both animated and real, which is a good fit for this action-packed adventure. In our interview with Sony Pictures Imageworks' Rob Bredow revealed how on GPU-accelerated rendering was used to make The Polar Express. (Also see our how Tom Hanks is still using leading edge CG tech in new film Here.
Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, finds his way to Christmas Town and decides to take over. He distributes scary presents, kidnaps Santa and ends up getting shot by the military.
Over 30 years later, Tim Burton’s gothic weirdness guarantees this one will remain a Christmas classic for the foreseeable future. The film was produced with traditional stop-motion animation in a gruelling process that took more than three years. According to Far Out magazine, a crew of 120 animators made more than 227 puppets and used 20 sound stages to take 109,440 frames. And Jack Skellington had over 400 heads.
Watch The Nightmare Before Christmas on Amazon Prime now.
Tanya is a writer covering art, design, and visual effects. She has 16 years of experience as a magazine journalist and has written for numerous publications including 3D World, 3D Artist, ImagineFX, Computer Arts, net magazine, and Creative Bloq. For Creative Bloq, she mostly writes about web design, including the hottest new tools, as well as 3D artwork and VFX.
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