Fur your consideration 2025 - The fourth year of shorts reviews

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We are now in the fourth year of reviewing the dramatic shorts category based on the recommendations submitted to the Ursa Majors along with random ones I may have seen during the year, or items that maybe the algorithms caught that only get recommended at this time of year for some reason. The choices here are, once again, polished and only one or two in the whole list had missing elements. Without you all curating your choices these lists would not happen so thank you for your efforts this year.

New to the format this year is that I’ll lean toward sectionalizing so that the text before the video doesn’t go too much into spoiler territory and any text afterwards will go more into elements I liked that address the content itself as to not spoil any desire to view without being painted by those thoughts.

(Prior Years: 2024, 2023, 2022)

Spellbound

More often these days I’m introduced to quality works through the fandom’s new social platform of choice, Bluesky. The artist who goes by, ironically, “X” (full account name ProjectEndo), ended up on my feed as an impressive short loop that blew up the airwaves.

In this simple yet insanely crafted loop, a squirrel and a lizard sing at a karaoke. The song, Angels and Airwaves’s “Spellbound”, is a song I sought out afterward as it introduced me to it and it’s a good song. The style is pencil based, similar to the famous sections of the music video for Aha’s Take on Me but with more smooth frames per second.

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— 〚Ẋ〛 (@projectendo.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 8:37 PM

Lipsinking is tough, yet it is done here immaculately, and does not cheap out on separating the jawline from the upper lip. Every loop there are tiny details to take in that gives this series of pencil drawings life. The lens perspective and depth are also eyecandy.

When listening to the song itself I noted that the song couldn’t technically loop in the way it does in the animation, this is because it is actually double spliced to create a natural sounding loop, if you listen closely you can hear it near the end of the animation and at the start of it. I put this section down here because once you hear the gaps you can’t unhear them, I didn’t hear them until I got curious why there were no natural loops like this while listening to the original song.

Blinkomania

There were many animations with modern theming this year, and of all of them I think the conflict and story provided by this one strikes true to an issue in not only furry fandom, but also to nerdy consumerism. Blinkomania is an animation of a lady dinosaur getting caught up in an obsessive collection of simple little toys, like the Labubus, or Beanie Babies before them.

What made this one stand out and fun was the musical elements that pop up during the feature. The conflict between the seasoned collector triceratops and the fresh obsessive protagonist becomes an adversarial song where eventually sees the desire of our protagonist grow into a beast in and of itself, one which causes her to reflect her need to back off and treat her affliction.

My embarrassing old animations from art school

If the author is truly embarrassed for these animations, then I wonder how they’re animating now because these are very well done. However, I think that the title is a tongue in cheek play toward what likely inspired it, a series of shorts called “Rejected” by Don Hertzfeldt (you know, the “my spoon is too big” meme). Ironically though, this one may be a bit more family friendly than Rejected.

While a bit tamer than what seems to have inspired it, the quality and figure work of the characters is very impressive with squash and stretch, lip syncing, and the particularly devious implications of one of its shorts in its use of laxatives which made me squirm more than the short where the bunny gets cartoonishly blown apart by a bomb.

A Cartoon’s Revenge

A guy sits to watch TV and finds himself finding a schadenfreude enjoyment at the expense of a cartoon character on screen. This turns on its head as the cartoon character on the other side of the screen sees the man laughing at his misfortune. In this moment the cartoon finds a remote and decides to enact vengeance on the laughing man.

The technical skill in both animation on the cartoon side and the implementation to make the reality also take on the aspects of animation with squash and stretch, and the ultimate climax that blends the two factors together to me sets this one apart.

Feathers and Fur

The animation of this feature gives the story a very comic book feel. Another piece set in the modern age is our protagonist who is a bird and mammal hybrid trying to find the courage to ask his office crush out on a date. What follows is that some co-worker wingmen get involved and start antics that unsurprisingly makes human resources raise their eyebrows. And like any goofy means of swooning someone, expect a lot of internet meme references.

MAU MAKAN APA? 2 - The Last Place My Father Was Ever Seen

With a more Eastern influence in animation in story telling, the styling of this series is unique. In the story we follow a young wolf character under the watchful eye of some type of bodyguard arguing to be let out of their room. We learn the main character’s father was a major political figure who disappeared.

After the bodyguard reluctantly relents and allows the wolf to come with him, things don’t go so smoothly as mayaham breaks loose in the country. There is animated violence in this one.

What impresses me about this one is the interaction with the music and animation. Also there is a good mix of light humor and seriousness of the situation put forth. A more traditional 2D animation style is used to advertise the monopolistic mega-corporation responsible for all of society’s food. It sticks out in style and care and does unique panning shots, particularly in the riot scenes.

GIL NEXT DOOR - Episode 1: I Like Mayors

This cartoon’s animation evokes the feeling of Rocko's Modern life. The voice acting is good and well lip synced and the characters are memorable. This story covers a young tadpole getting the opportunity to become mayor for a day winning an essay contest while his older toad brother tags along, and of course things don’t go over so simple even just for a single day.

The thing that got a chuckle out of me for this one was the lampooning of the political process in that the law proposal put forth by the fledgling mayor (free ice cream will be served in a traffic cone every first tuesday of the month) was taken down by their assistant, to which she indicates that it would take a long time to go through committee because that’s how the process works. But when the emergency came up and panic set in, the blue tadpole when asked to take action immediately proposed the same idea as he did earlier under duress— and got it immediate implemented.

Given how emergency powers are ripe for abuse, it is quaint yet amusing that such a non-sequitur, yet mostly harmless, proposal got pushed through due to executive emergency powers. It really makes me nostalgic in other ways in a world where those powers are increasingly being used to atrophy liberty for the average citizen in our current world.

Bun Hunting 2.0: YOU CAN (not) BE BAKED

The sequel to last year’s Ursa Major winning Bun Hunting Overture by Piti Yindee. It once again continues in its loony toons-esque push and pull of a wolf wanting to eat a rabbit, but the rabbit passively avoiding the situation by playfully antagonizing the predator. This time with lots of baking puns that rise to the occasion. Give it a watch, it’s the yeast you can do.

When taken together, in the first episode the wolf indicates that the “chase” is what makes the meal worth it. While not running, the bunny character, introduced as Billy Buns in this episode, that Hank pines for is in a different sort of game to avoid capture. This classic premise is really nostalgic and put together with modern sensibilities and tongue in cheek innuendo means this series will continue to do well in this audience.

Slap the Deck

If you liked the 4th wall break of the first Bun Hunting where Hank stretched out the aspect ratio, which given it won the Ursa’s last year it seems you do, then you’ll find this one takes that idea to the next level. A deckhand gets jealous of his coworker and gets so frustrated that he wants to off the little guy. But in order to do so he pushes the borders of the cartoon space and interacts with the cartoonist working on the project.

There is a mixture of many elements here that make this one rise above the others. Its environments being 3D have characters being smoothly animated in 2D, yet somehow don’t clash. The camera shifts along that space yet maintaining consistency. Mix this with the fourth wall breaking elements and it’s impressive that it all holds together. The ultimate end scene brings all of these skills out in full force before concluding.

Snowbear

This one is probably going to win.

I don’t say this lightly, but this short is just on a whole other level. It reminded me of actual professional work such as Disney’s Brother Bear. And sure enough, the creator of this short, Aaron Blaise, did work for Disney on that very movie, along with the Lion King animated film and other Disney renaissance films. So when it comes to humanizing animal characters, animation’s Mike Tyson decided to enter the ring this year. Sorry everyone else.

Speaking of punch, this one will hit you right in the feels, bring a tissue.

Humanizing an animal, without using language, is challenging, you need to rely on the environment and prop story telling to a higher degree and this one nails it. The bear’s loneliness and search for companionship is his primary motivation, while the world and environment around him start to interrupt that longing search in the worst of ways. He plays in the snow in ways we had in our youth humanizing him so that we feel for his successes and failures. And in reflection creates a wish to act in such a way to keep ourselves from failing him and doing what we can to maintain the environment in which the bear lives.

In that the animation has a charity fundraiser for such a cause on its YouTube page.

Business Butterfly

Another animation that evokes deep emotions of longing, conflict, and earned warmth and freedom, which I’m glad seems to have made a comeback this year. I think when it comes to being an adult furry this animation puts that emotion into a short form. An office worker has a secret that they hide behind a facade, but we see the day that this mask breaks as a butterfly breaks free from the order and structure they were forced into.

The coloration on this one is just gorgeous. The character’s lithe design works well with the creature that he eventually falls into. And as someone who is now well into adulthood and sees the strains office life can put one in and the pining of freedom, it just makes the message of this one resonate particularly strong.