Woody: A Prize-Winning Short Animation About a Wooden Man’s Dream of Becoming a Concert Pianist

“Ever since he was a child, Woody has dreamt of play­ing piano. The prob­lem is that he only has wood­en pad­dles for hands. Stuck in a job he doesn’t want, Woody spends his days dream­ing of being a con­cert pianist. His dreams are big…but they’re about to get out of hand.”

That’s how ani­ma­tor Stu­art Bowen sets up the short ani­mat­ed film, sim­ply called “Woody.”

Bowen shot the film on a pret­ty tight bud­get, with mon­ey raised large­ly through crowd­fund­ing. The direc­tor notes: “We built the sets out of paper, foam-core, & card­board so we could achieve an ‘in-cam­era’ look while keep­ing costs down. We shot black and white because coloured ink was too expen­sive. We sourced hun­dreds of Bar­bie clothes through Face­book to dress the crowd and were extreme­ly for­tu­nate to have a large group of vol­un­teers keen to help make the film.”

Screened at count­less film fes­ti­vals in 2013 and 2014, “Woody” won the award for best ani­mat­ed short at the Seat­tle Film Fes­ti­val and received an AACTA award for best short ani­ma­tion (among oth­er acco­lades).

You can find many oth­er cre­ative ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Can Nev­er Tune a Piano

Hear Friedrich Nietzsche’s Clas­si­cal Piano Com­po­si­tions: They’re Apho­ris­tic Like His Phi­los­o­phy

The Mak­ing of a Stein­way Grand Piano, From Start to Fin­ish