Disney+'s An Almost Christmas Story was directed by David Lowery and produced by five-time Academy Award-winner Alfonso Cuarón. The short is the third and final installment in Cuarón’s holiday shorts collection for Disney+. His first short,
Le Pupille, earned an Oscar nomination in 2022 in the Live Action Short Film category, while last year’s
The Shepherd was shortlisted.
An Almost Christmas Story was inspired by the true events of a tiny owl rescued from the New York City’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 2020. Moon is a curious young owl who unexpectedly finds himself stuck in a Christmas tree destined for New York City. In his attempts to escape the bustling city, Moon befriends a lost little girl named Luna, and together, they embark on a heartwarming adventure.
The animated short features the voice talents of Cary Christopher (Moon), Estella Madrigal (Luna), Jim Gaffigan (Papa Owl), Mamoudou Athie (Pelly), Alex Ross Perry (Dave The Dog), Gianna Joseph (Peaky), Phil Rosenthal (Punt), Natasha Lyonne (Pat) and John C. Reilly (The Folk Singer). The project is a collaboration between Disney Branded Television and Cuarón’s Esperanto Filmoj, in association with Titmouse and Maere Studios. Animation services were provided by 88 Pictures.
According to director David Lowrey, the film went into production in the summer of 2023, with Maere Studios beginning to build assets and do shot layouts.
"The team at 88 Pictures commenced with character in the spring of 2024, and their work was incorporated into the layouts that Maere was already lighting and texturing," he reveals.
Ultimately, in spite of his initial inclination to do as much practically as possible, nothing was ultimately captured in-camera.
"Over the course of our photographic tests with puppets and models, we ultimately concluded that the best course of action for the needs of this particular project was to animate the film entirely in CG."
Maere Studios (www.maerestudios.com) founder Nicholas Bateman says re-creating Rockefeller Plaza and nearly 10 blocks along West 59th Street in Manhattan was the project's biggest challenge.
"In the end, we wound up building all of these sections from our digital toy-kit of cardboard pieces - corners, cubes, strips, filling," Bateman explains. "From there, we finaled, lit and dressed all our sets. The last stage really helped us achieve the final look. We rendered those sets, painted over the images and then projected those matte paintings back over the scene. Therefore, while we went through all the traditional processes of the building, lighting and camera framing, we were able to hide the seams of the closeup foreground and the looser, painted details fading into the background. This ensured that every scene would always be unique, high quality and seamlessly fade into this classic old-Hollywood style backing."
Bateman says Maere Studios is entirely reliant on Blender for its toolset, with ZBrush used for character sculpting.
"Maere Studios is a Blender-based studio, and it certainly is the only software that could have made this possible," he explains. "We are massively indebted to the incredible work done by the good people at the Blender Foundation. We built many new tools to plug directly into Blender, designing our own add-ons for snow simulations, traffic, cardboard weathering, and lots of technical render tools to refine our passes and integrate matte paintings. We also used no generative AI at any point in the process of the short, and made sure that every image was made by human hands."
An Almost Christmas Story is currently streaming on Disney+.