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BYU’s animated shorts have won awards in three decades. Now you can finally watch them all online

I’ve been writing for 18 years about BYU students winning awards for fun and funny animated short films, but I haven’t been able to share the actual videos with readers.

Now the wait is over.

BYU’s first award-winner was 2003’s “Lemmings,” which is a delightful little film. In early 2004, the school gave me a DVD with the five-minute video on it so I could review it. More than 20 film festivals invited BYU to screen it at their events but alas, there was no way for Deseret News readers to see the university’s first film to win a College Television Award, colloquially known as a student Emmy.

I recently wrote about the latest batch of BYU student animators to win an award. This time, I received a link from the College Television Awards so I could review “Stowaway,” a fabulously cute and funny short about an innocent baby Kraken terrorizing a pirate ship.

I also asked Kelly Loosli for permission to stream “Stowaway” on Deseret.com. The co-creator of the BYU Animation program wasn’t immediately sure if that was possible, because film festivals want exclusivity when screening films.

But then Loosli talked with his team and emailed me a Vimeo link with all of the program’s animated videos, and even some of the games created by students. So let’s all thank Kelly!

The BYU Vimeo account has a mere 434 followers. That’s a shame, because these films, as proven by the awards, are a hoot.

At 19 years old, “Lemmings” definitely shows its age. The video remains pixellated and rudimentary compared to “Stowaway,” which has the benefit of 19 years of technical advancements.

But show “Lemmings” to your kids and grandkids. They’ll laugh. And adults will get a kick out of the Steven R. Covey reference. You also can use it to teach a lesson or two about mob mentality.

In fact, rewatching it reminded me of Elder Clark G. Gilbert’s presentation with President Dallin H. Oaks on Tuesday at an Ensign College devotional. Elder Gilbert, the commissioner of the Church Education System and a General Authority Seventy, showed an old Candid Camera elevator experiment on social influence to illustrate his points about some of the negative uses and effects of social media and bandwagon thinking.

Pro tip: Watch the water in both “Lemmings” and “Stowaway.” Each film includes lots of animated water. Back in 2003, the students were really proud of reproducing the wet stuff as well as they did. It’s just about the hardest thing to do in animation, and “Lemmings” proved the students had talent.

The student team that produced the latest video, “Stowaway,” wasn’t shy about showing off their water-rendering skills. The pirate ship sails confidently on the open ocean, and water expertly slops out of a bucket when the baby Kraken emerges.

How to watch: Click here to find all of the videos. The first four are video games. Skip down and watch “Stowaway” and you’ll want to watch more. Further down, click on the blue “Load more” link a few times until you reach the very bottom to find “Lemmings.”

Enjoy!

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