In keeping with past tradition, Pixar’s newest feature film, Finding Dory, will be accompanied by a brand new Pixar animated short when it hits theaters this summer. The short is called Piper and tells the story of a hungry baby sandpiper “who ventures from her nest for the first time to dig for food by the shoreline. The only problem is, the food is buried beneath the sand where scary waves roll up onto the shore.” Take a look at the adorable first picture from the short below…
On how he got the initial idea for the six-minute long short, director Alan Barillaro said, “Seeing the way these sandpipers react to waves and run, I always felt, ‘Gosh, that’s a film, that’s a character.’ It’s always fun to show a world we’re familiar with but from a different perspective. We’ve all been to the beach, but have we ever viewed water from just an inch off the sand? That could be very fearful from a bird’s perspective.”
In the film, the bird will learn about “the way of the food chain” from a parent and come across a small hermit crab who teaches “her the way of the waves.” Additionally, Adrian Belew, from rock group King Crimson, will score the project.
Oftentimes, the shorts that debut alongside Pixar’s major releases garner just as much praise as the film itself, if not more. For example, last year the studio came out with two new movies and each had a short attached to it. Although Lava, which was shown before Inside Out, received generally mixed reviews, The Good Dinosaur’s short, Sanjay’s Super Team, was hailed as one of the studio’s best efforts yet and some would say earned higher praise than the feature it debuted in front of.
Finding Dory is set for release on is set for release on June 17th in the States and July 29th in the UK.
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Originally published April 6, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
